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