Apple Removes ICE Tracking App After Trump DOJ Pressure
Apple has removed ICEBlock, an crowdsourced platform that tracked the sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the Justice Department said.
“We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement to Fox News Digital, which was first to report on the app’s removal.
“ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed,” she said.
A spokesperson for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the ICEBlock link to the Apple store delivers a message, “App not available.”
Last month, FBI Director Kash Patel said that the assailant who opened fire at an ICE facility in Dallas had search ICE tracking apps.
Joshua Aaron, the creator of the app, did not immediately respond to a request for comment via thE ICEBlock website. But in a statement to CNN, he said that “ICEBlock is no different from crowdsourcing speed traps, which every notable mapping application, including Apple’s own Maps app, implements as part of its core services. This is protected speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. We are determined to fight this with everything we have.” Aaron also has denied that the app was for the purposes of inciting violence.
The White House previously lashed out at CNN for even reporting on the app, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was working with the DOJ to see if they could prosecute the network.
At the time, a CNN spokesperson said, “This is an app that is publicly available to any iPhone user who wants to download it. 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.”
At the start of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ensure that “no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.”
At the time, Trump and others on the right had alleged that the Biden administration had exerted undue pressure on social media platforms to remove Covid-related content they deemed as misinformation.
Trump’s executive order said, “Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook has sought to get in the president’s good graces, after Trump has imposed tariffs that have impacted the company’s electronics manufacturing overseas.
