Developer of ICE tracking app ‘ICEBlock’ sues Trump administration after Apple’s App Store pulls it

On Monday, Joshua Aaron, creator of the widely used ICEBlock app — which allowed users to share real-time alerts about federal immigration enforcement sightings — filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming First Amendment violations after Apple pulled the app from its store.
The suit follows Apple’s October removal of ICEBlock, which had surpassed 1 million users, after the Trump administration pressured the company — an unusually direct instance of the U.S. government successfully demanding a tech platform take down an app.
Brad Brooks for Reuters:
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Aaron said he thinks the Trump administration is not just attacking his free speech rights, but those of all citizens when it goes after apps like ICEBlock, and that he hoped his lawsuit helps stop the administration “from eroding the Constitution.”
“When we see our government doing something wrong, it’s our duty as citizens of this nation to hold them accountable, and that is exactly what we’re doing with this lawsuit,” Aaron said.
The Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Aaron’s suit. Apple, which is not named as a defendant, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When it removed the app from its store, Apple said it took action based on information from law enforcement about safety risks. The Justice Department confirmed that it had contacted Apple to pull the app, and Bondi said in a statement at the time that ICEBlock was designed to put ICE agents at risk, which the developer strongly disputes.
The app, which is still functioning for people who downloaded it before its removal from app stores, allows users to report publicly observable activity of federal immigration agents and their locations.
The suit cites a message Apple sent to Aaron that said “information provided to Apple by law enforcement” showed that his app violated the company’s guidelines “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.”

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MacDailyNews Take: Congress, not Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), wrote U.S. immigration law.
ICE agents are federal law-enforcement officers whose job is to enforce the rules that the U.S. Congress wrote and the president signed.
Congress has decided who may enter, how they must enter, how long they can stay, and what happens if someone enters or stays illegally. Those decisions are codified in Title 8 of the U.S. Code and related statutes.
The laws that ICE agents are following today were overwhelmingly written and passed by the 104th Congress (1995–1996) and signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1996.
The ICEBlock app enables anonymous crowdsourced reporting of ICE agent sightings within a 5-mile radius, alerting users in real-time to evade enforcement actions. This crowdsourced tracking effectively doxxes federal officers, exposing their locations during operations and potentially enabling ambushes or harassment, as evidenced by a reported 500% surge in assaults on ICE agents in 2025.
As we wrote back in October when ICEBlock was pulled the Apple’s App Store, “It never should have been in the App Store in the first place.”
Officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons, have condemned the ICEBlock app as a direct threat to law enforcement lives — likening it to providing “a hitman the location of their target” — with real-world links to incidents like the Dallas ICE facility shooting where the perpetrator used similar apps.
Laws are changed only one constitutional way: a majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate (or a simple majority with budget reconciliation) pass a new bill, and the president signs it — or Congress overrides a veto.
Any official (including ICE agents, judges, or even the President) who decides to selectively ignore or not enforce an existing law they personally dislike is breaking their oath of office and violating the Constitution’s command that the President (and by extension his officers) “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3).
If the majority of people want different immigration rules, they have to win elections, control Congress, write the new law, and get it signed — exactly what happened in 1996 when reformers did precisely that and created today’s enforcement system. There is no legal shortcut that lets bureaucrats, activists, or local officials nullify a federal statute just because they don’t like it. That’s just lawlessness.
If you think it’s too difficult to win elections, control Congress, write the new law, and get it signed, you’re likely not in the majority on that issue – as an October 2025 Harvard/Harris poll bears out, finding 56% of U.S. citizens support deporting all illegal aliens and 78% support deporting illegal aliens with criminal records.

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