Meet ICEblock: The app that lets residents know when immigration agents are in their community

Yahoo

2 days ago

A nationwide spike in immigration enforcement actions under Donald Trump's administration has been met with a surge in social media activity organizing against them.
Grassroots efforts on social media platforms are sharing legal information and alerting users to real-time locations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in neighborhoods across the country.
But one developer has built a tool to specifically alert users to ICE's whereabouts, adding to a growing patchwork of social media-driven, real-time alerts on the state of Trump's anti-immigration footprint.
More than 70,000 users are on ICEBlock, an anonymous crowd-sourced app that lets users report real-time ICE activity within a five-mile radius.
By Tuesday morning, the app was the top social networking app in Apple's App Store, and the third most-downloaded free app overall — behind Love Island USA and ChatGPT. Later that afternoon, ICEBlock reached No. 1.
'In recent years, ICE has faced criticism for alleged civil rights abuses and failures to adhere to constitutional principles and due process, making it crucial for communities to stay informed about its operations,' according to the app's website.
'Modeled after Waze but for ICE sightings, the app ensures user privacy by storing no personal data, making it impossible to trace reports back to individual users,' the website says.
ICEBlock is available in 14 languages and exclusively available on iOS devices over privacy concerns that Android could expose user information. Its slogan: 'See something, tap something.'
'When I saw what was happening in this country, I wanted to do something to fight back,' developer Joshua Aaron told CNN, adding that the administration's sweeping deportation efforts resemble systemic removals in Nazi Germany. 'We're literally watching history repeat itself.'
The app 'does not condone violence of any kinds,' Aaron told The Independent. 'We state this multiple times in the app, and I have reiterated this in every interview I have given. ICEBlock serves to 'inform not obstruct' and its goal is to allow people to avoid potentially harmful encounters with ICE.'
Following coverage of the app on CNN on its business and tech website, administration officials have accused the network of 'advertising' and 'promoting' it — and suggested Aaron should be criminally prosecuted.
'What they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations, and we're going to actually go after them and prosecute them,' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Tuesday. 'What they're doing is illegal.'
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the app 'sounds like this would be an incitement of further violence against our ICE officers.'
Leavitt and other administration officials have repeatedly claimed ICE agents experienced a '500 percent' increase in 'violence' against them, though the data supporting that figure is unclear. Administration officials have repeatedly threatened to prosecute anyone who reports information about ICE agents' locations.
'We haven't seen the clip. We'll take a look at it. But certainly it's unacceptable that a major network would promote such an app that is encouraging violence against law enforcement officers who are trying to keep our country safe,' she told reporters on Monday.
ICE acting director Todd M. Lyons called the network's 'promotion' of the app 'reckless and irresponsible.'
'Advertising an app that basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers' backs is sickening,' said Lyons, touting the '500 percent' figure.
'And going on live television to announce an app that lets anyone zero in on their locations is like inviting violence against them with a national megaphone,' he added. 'CNN is willfully endangering the lives of officers who put their lives on the line every day and enabling dangerous criminal aliens to evade U.S. law. Is this simply reckless 'journalism' or overt activism?'
A statement from CNN noted there is nothing illegal whatsoever about writing about it or any other app.
'This is an app that is publicly available to any iPhone user who wants to download it,' the statement said. 'There is nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app, nor does such reporting constitute promotion or other endorsement of the app by CNN.'
Aaron said the administration's threats have not deterred him.
'We will not be intimidated,' he told The Independent.
'As long as ICE agents have quotas, and this administration ignores people's constitutional rights, we will continue fighting back,' he said. 'No human is illegal.'
Communities have long relied on social media platforms to spread the word about police sightings. Instagram and X users flag sobriety checkpoints. Drivers log speed traps on Google Maps and Waze. And Citizen, originally named Vigilante, maintains a network of police scanners and lets users upload their own real-time crime footage.
Instagram stories and group chats on encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp are now full of location-specific ICE information.
Thousands of people follow Reddit communities like r/ICE_raids, r/LaMigra, and r/EyesOnICE, pooling information from immigration attorneys, news outlets and advocates for real-time updates on raids and how to handle federal law enforcement interactions. Protests and marches — including 'No sleep for ICE' events where demonstrators sing, play music and bang pots and pans outside hotels where agents are staying — are organized almost exclusively through social media apps and chats.
Google Maps and Waze users are reporting 'icy conditions.' And on TikTok, where users fear certain language could be blocked from users' algorithms, accounts are offering similar advice for 'staying safe on the road.'
That ubiquity of social media resistance also is meeting an expansive government surveillance network that continues to grow under the Trump administration, fueled by a small army of Silicon Valley contractors.
Days after Trump entered office, ICE posted several notices on the federal procurement website seeking contractors for a range of tools to expand the agency's capacity to track and surveil immigrants.
Contractors are reportedly leading government-wide efforts to build advanced facial recognition software, sophisticated tracking devices, and, of course, social media screening.
'ICE is trying to turn people's faces into QR codes,' according to Will Owen, communications director with civil rights watchdog the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. 'This is a dystopian attack on immigrant communities that will tear families apart through the click of a camera lens. It will also lead to countless mismatches, since real-time facial recognition is especially error-prone.'
Palantir, a tech firm founded by Trump ally Peter Thiel, is allegedly behind a government-wide surveillance system collecting information across all agencies.
The Trump administration has deployed officials across federal law enforcement agencies to focus on immigration enforcement, with an alleged directive from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to make at least 3,000 daily arrests — a quota that immigration attorneys say will almost certainly result in 'collateral' arrests that could devastate families and communities.
The administration is also expanding partnerships with local police departments and jails to pursue and detain immigrants and demanding Congress earmark billions of dollars for more detention centers.
More than 57,000 people are currently held in ICE custody, or roughly 140 percent more than its detention capacity. A vast majority of those immigrants do not have a criminal record, and 93 percent have not been convicted of any violent crime.
The Trump administration has thus far detained an average of roughly 20,000 immigrants each month, three times as many under the same point in 2024.
"When I see things like ICE outside of elementary schools, that's what we are trying to push back against, because you need to do more,' Aaron told TIME. 'You need to protect your neighbors.'