The maker of an iPhone app that flagged sightings of U.S. immigration agents sued the Trump administration for free speech violations on Monday, alleging that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi used her “state power” to force Apple to remove the app.
Apple in October removed ICEBlock and other apps from its app store after Bondi said they put Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at risk by enabling people to track ICE activity in their neighborhoods.
The lawsuit from ICEBlock app maker Joshua Aaron argues that the government's actions violated the First Amendment.
“We’re basically asking the court to set a precedent and affirm that ICEBlock is, in fact, First Amendment-protected speech and that I did nothing wrong by creating it,” Aaron said in an interview Monday. “And to make sure that they can’t do this same thing again in the future.”
Aaron said the other part of the lawsuit “is to basically have them stop threatening myself and my family.”
The lawsuit asks a federal judge to protect the Texas-based software developer from prosecution, alleging “unlawful threats made by Attorney General Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, ICE Acting Director Todd M. Lyons, and White House Border Czar Tom Homan to criminally investigate and prosecute Aaron for his role in developing ICEBlock.”
The Department of Justice said it had no comment on the lawsuit beyond Bondi's previous statements about the app.
With more than 1 million users, ICEBlock was the most widely used of the ICE-tracking apps in Apple’s app store until Bondi said in October that her office reached out to Apple “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 to 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 in October, 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.” Aaron has countered that it works no differently from Apple's own maps app that lets drivers know about nearby police speed traps.
Google also followed Apple in taking down some ICE-tracking apps from its app store in October, though ICEBlock was never available on its Android phone platform.
Aaron said Trump's immigration enforcement initiatives have only grown more aggressive since his app was taken down, and less information makes possible a “paramilitary force that can continue to operate with impunity.” He's repeatedly compared Trump's immigration enforcers to the “Gestapo” secret police force of Nazi Germany, though the lawsuit itself doesn't make that connection, instead drawing on U.S. founders' warnings against domestic despotism.
“I mean, these are people that are wearing masks --- which is the antithesis of everything about this country -- and they are not identifying themselves, and they’re zip-tying children and they’re throwing women into vans,” Aaron said by phone Monday.
Bondi told Fox News earlier this year that Aaron was endangering law enforcement and “giving a message to criminals where our federal officers are. And he cannot do that. And we are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out, because that’s not protected speech.”
Aaron said he launched the app in April as a way to help immigrant communities protect themselves from surprise raids or potential harassment. Immigrant advocates had mixed feelings about the app's usefulness, but civil liberties experts said efforts to remove it resembled what authoritarian governments have done outside the U.S., such as when Chinese pressure in 2019 led Apple to remove an app that enabled Hong Kong protesters to track police.
Apple, which is not a party in the lawsuit, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about it.
