Apple and Google block apps that crowdsource ICE sightings. Some warn of chilling effects

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Apple and Google blocked downloads of phone apps that flag sightings of U.S. immigration agents, just hours after the Trump administration demanded that one particularly popular iPhone app be taken down.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said such tracking puts Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at risk. But users and developers of the apps say it’s their First Amendment right to capture what ICE is doing in their neighborhoods — and maintain that most users turn to these platforms in an effort to protect their own safety as President Donald Trump steps up aggressive immigration enforcement across the country.

ICEBlock, the most widely used of the ICE-tracking apps in Apple’s app store, is among the apps that have been taken down. Bondi said her office reached out to Apple on Thursday “demanding that they remove ICEBlock" and claiming that it “is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs.”

Apple soon complied, sending an email Thursday to the app's creator, Joshua Aaron, that said it would block further downloads of the app because new information “provided to Apple by law enforcement” showed the app broke the app store rules.

According to the email, which Aaron shared with The Associated Press, Apple said the app violated the company’s policies “because its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group.”

In a Friday interview, Aaron decried the company for bending to what he described as “an authoritarian regime.” And immigration rights advocates like Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, added that these actions marked “a disturbing example of how tech companies are capitulating to Trump.”

“These apps are a lifeline for communities living in uncertainty and fear of when ICE might show up to tear their families apart,” Matos said in a statement.

Downloads of apps like ICEBlock have surged since Trump took office for his second term earlier this year. Aaron said he launched the app in April as a way to help immigrant communities protect themselves from surprise raids or potential harassment. It had more than 1 million users, he said.

While not specifying details on the total number of platforms removed, Apple confirmed to the AP on Friday that they removed “similar apps” due to potential safety risks that were raised by law enforcement. Google followed their move, saying that several similar apps violated their policies for Android platforms.

While some advocates don't find all of these apps particularly useful — pointing to potential misinformation and false alarms — they echoed criticism of moves to suppress them.

“What really worries me is the kind of precedent that this sets” where the government can “basically dictate what kinds of apps people have on their phones,” said civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo, who works at Harvard University's Cyberlaw Clinic.

Caraballo said outside the U.S., government pressure to block apps has been “kind of a hallmark of an authoritarian regime,” such as when Chinese pressure in 2019 led Apple to remove an app that enabled Hong Kong protesters to track police.

Bondi warned over the summer against apps that allow people to communicate about the location of law enforcement officers and specifically called out ICEBlock’s Aaron.

“We are looking at him and he better watch out because that’s not a protected speech,” Bondi said in a July interview on Fox News.

Those warnings escalated last month after a gunman opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas. Officials including FBI Director Kash Patel said the gunman had searched for apps that tracked the presence of ICE agents, though they haven't said if he actually used one of the apps or whether any of them played a role in the attack.

Aaron said tying the gunman to the apps made little sense because the app only works if somebody else is reporting ICE activity within a 5-mile radius of another iPhone user.

“You don’t need an app to know that ICE agents are at an ICE detention facility,” he said. “This is just an easy excuse for them to use their power and leverage to take down something that was exposing what they are doing — and that is the terror that they are invoking on the people of this nation every single day."

He also said the app worked similarly to popular navigation apps like Waze, Google Maps and Apple’s own Maps app, which allow users to report police speed traps.

It's “not illegal in any way, shape or form, nor does it dox anybody,” he said, adding that ICEBlock is similarly “an early warning system for people.”

Those who use the apps or other online methods to monitor ICE activity say most people who use them do so for their own safety or out of concern for their loved ones.

“People are extremely scared right now," said Sherman Austin, who founded Stop ICE Raids Alert Network in February. He pointed to rising fears around racial profiling and violent arrests impacting families.

"They want to know what’s going on in their neighborhood and what’s going on in their community,” Austin said, describing people getting violently thrown to the ground by ICE agents in broad daylight.

Also known as StopICE.Net, Austin’s platform similarly uses crowdsourcing, but instead allows its users to track ICE activity more broadly online or through text alerts, without the need to download a separate app. Austin says the platform has reached more than 500,000 subscribers as of Friday.

The group has similarly criticized the Trump administration for what it says are retaliatory attacks targeting those who are exercising their First Amendment rights. Last month, the platform said it learned that the Department of Homeland Security has subpoenaed Meta for data on StopICE.Net's Instagram account.

Austin said StopICE.Net immediately challenged the action, adding on Friday that the subpoena is now temporarily blocked and pending a hearing with a judge.

Meta declined comment Friday. DHS did not directly respond to a request for comment about the subpoena on Friday, instead directing the AP to a statement from Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who reiterated that “ICE tracking apps put the lives of the men and women of law enforcement in danger" and criticized media outlets for framing Apple's “correct decision” to remove apps like ICEBlock as "caving to pressure instead of preventing further bloodshed.”

Developers like Austin, meanwhile, say removals of these apps and other federal threats should alarm everyone.

“We’re up against a regime, an administration that’s going to operate any way it wants to — and threatens whoever it wants in order to get its way, in order to control information and in order to control a narrative," he said. “We have to challenge this and fight this any way we can.”