ICEBlock Sues Trump Admin Over Pressuring Apple for App Store Removal

Two months ago, Apple removed ICEBlock, an app that allowed immigrants to track Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity through user sightings. Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi proudly took credit for the removal. At the time, ICEBlock vowed to fight the decision, and on Monday, they followed through on that promise.

ICEBlock’s developer Joshua Aaron filed a lawsuit against Trump administration officials, claiming that “the United States government used its regulatory power to coerce a private platform to suppress First Amendment-protected expression.â€

ICEBlock became available on the App Store in April 2025 and amassed more than one million users until it was removed in October 2025. It was modeled after Waze, a Google-owned traffic app that relies on real-time crowdsourced data.

Aaron says that he developed the app in response to the Trump administration’s unprecedented immigrant deportation campaign.

“He feared 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,†the lawsuit claims. “Aaron was right.â€

The Trump administration has detained hundreds of thousands of immigrants, and, in some cases, U.S. citizens, since taking office less than a year ago. According to recent data from UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project, more than a third of those arrested, roughly translating to 75,000 people, have no criminal records.

The President has since promised to expand the crackdown, going so far as to vow to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.â€

Protests against the Administration’s immigration policy have been raging across the country for months. ICEBlock was a part of this pro-immigrant rights movement, aiming to give everyday people a tool against ICE raids, in which the agents often come masked or even sometimes undercover.

Trump administration officials, for their part, claim that the ICEBlock app jeopardizes the safety of ICE officials. Some officials have said that the app was used in the fatal shooting at a Dallas ICE facility, though the shooter could have known the location of the facility without any tracker app.

In response to mounting pressure, Apple officially removed the app in early October.

“For what appears to be the first time in Apple’s nearly fifty-year history, Apple removed a U.S.-based app in response to the U.S. government’s demands,†the lawsuit claims.

Following the removal, Bondi told Fox News in a statement that her office “reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so.â€

Aaron claims that the Administration’s actions not only impede on his and the parent company’s First Amendment rights but also are an effort to deter other tech companies and media organizations from “supporting, amplifying, or facilitating†speech that shares “information about publicly observable law-enforcement actions.â€

Bondi first publicly spoke against ICEBlock in June 2025, shortly after the app skyrocketed in popularity following a CNN report. In an appearance on Fox News, Bondi openly threatened Aaron and shared her intentions to prosecute CNN for airing the segment.

Shortly after the removal of ICEBlock in October, Apple also removed Eyes Up, yet another ICE-related app that allowed users to upload videos of ICE officers engaging in abusive behavior, with the goal of preserving the digital evidence to be used in later legal cases.