There have been many questions in recent days stemming from actions by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in shutting down dozens of web sites. As we have said many times, ICANN was not a party to those actions by ICE, nor was it a target of them.
ICANN does not take down domain names – we have no technical or legal authority to do that. We have no involvement in the takedown of any website, which is an issue of national authority. ICANN knew nothing about this enforcement action until after the fact.
And with good reason, since we are not a law enforcement entity or an agent of the U.S. or any other government. ICANN is the non-profit coordinator of the Internet’s global domain name system and is not involved in website content in any way.