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The app’s name may have made it sound like a game. In reality, it was far from one and served as a vital tool to help individuals evade ICE agents within their own cities.
In the past year alone, countless acts of cruelty have been committed under the guise of immigration control. Many of these have taken place in the United States, a nation once celebrated as a land of opportunity for immigrants. Today, those same immigrants live in fear, cowering in the presence of law enforcement for there’s a chance that they may get deported.
At the heart of this harsh reality is President Donald Trump, who has made it his mission through these next four years to preserve a certain demographic within the nation. In order to do so, he enforced agents from the country’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest just about anyone whose genes do not fit this intended demographic.
These people, citizens or not, are later deported, often against what the US constitution and law preaches. In the few months that he has been President, the Trump administration managed to deport nearly 200,000 people.
With this in mind, the app ICEBlock was developed and launched in April by Joshua Aaron. The platform allows users to report and alert others about the presence of ICE agents in the vicinity. Users within a five-mile radius of a sighting receive push-notifications giving them time to avoid these officials. Hours after a report is posted, it disappears to ensure real-time relevance.
This crowdsourced, anonymous early warning system also allows users to provide optional details about agents or vehicles for better identification in the case of a run-in. The app managed to gain rapid popularity especially in dense cities like Los Angeles where Trump’s deportation activities are prominent.
Due to better anonymity and privacy guarantees that app was only available for iOS. Aaron argued that such an app on Android phones would require the collection and storage of device IDs, compromising the user. Nevertheless, at its peak, there were tens of thousands of users but that did not come without its controversies.
With the app having been gaining traction exponentially, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice claimed that the app posed safety risks to ICE agents. Additionally, they stated that these reported sightings could aid individuals to evade arrests and deportation.
