Last October’s ICEBlock was removed from the App Store following pressure from the US government. Now, the app’s developer, Joshua Aaron, is suing 14 representatives of the administration. Here are the details.
ICEBlock developer fights back
As soon as ICEBlock became the go-to crowdsourced app for registering sightings of immigration officers, the US government got involved.
Following a CNN report featuring the app, US Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that apps such as ICEBlock risked “jeopardizing the safety of DHS personnel,” and threatened Aaron personally, stating that “we are looking at him,” and he’d “better watch out”.
Then, after pressure from the government, Apple began removing ICEBlock and similar apps from the App Store, stating that they fell within the “objectionable content” category of the App Store review guidelines.
Now, as spotted by NPR, Aaron has filed a lawsuit against:
- Pam Bondi, referred to in the lawsuit as Attorney General, United States Department of Justice
- Kristi Noem, referred to in the lawsuit as Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security;
- Todd Lyons, referred to in the lawsuit as Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement;
- Thomas Homan, referred to in the lawsuit as White House Border Czar
- 10 unnamed federal officials.
The lawsuit states that Aaron created ICEBlock out of fear that “Trump’s incendiary rhetoric about immigration would lead to aggressive, indiscriminate enforcement of immigration laws, exposing immigrants and citizens alike to violence and rampant violations of their civil liberties”, and claims that this notion was right.
It retells how media coverage helped the app rise in popularity, and addresses the threats Aaron received before Apple pulled the app:
This lawsuit also challenges the 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. These threats were intended and designed to chill Aaron and others from engaging in expressive activity—specifically, sharing information about publicly observable law-enforcement actions and to deter technology companies and journalistic institutions from supporting, amplifying, or facilitating such speech.
The lawsuit states that the app doesn’t allow the upload of any kind of media, has no chat feature, and doesn’t have accounts or user profiles, as a way to ensure user privacy. It also addresses the app’s limitations to maintain its use as closely as possible to how Aaron intended, including a five-minute report limit, a four-hour data expiration, and de-duplication of sightings.
It also claims that Apple’s reasoning to pull the app from the App Store was unjustified, since the company approved it in the first place, following an initial back-and-forth with App Review representatives, based on the fact that multiple apps, such as Waze, offer real-time crowdsourced tools to precisely signal the presence of law enforcement:
By late March 2025, after performing its thorough review and vetting process, Apple confirmed that ICEBlock was suitable for hosting and publication on its App Store. On April 2, 2025, ICEBlock was officially launched on the Apple App Store for public download. In its first month on the App Store, ICEBlock was downloaded fewer than 5,000 times.
Finally, the lawsuit requests that the court declare the actions taken against Aaron unlawful, arguing that they violate the First Amendment. It also asks the court to forbid the US government from demanding that similar apps get pulled from the App Store and similar platforms, and requests that the court forbid the US government from “threatening, investigating, or prosecuting Aaron”.
You can read the full lawsuit document here.
What’s your take on the lawsuit? Let us know in the comments.
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