Apple and Google blocked downloads of phone apps that flag sightings of U.S. immigration agents, just hours after the Trump administration demanded that one particularly popular iPhone app be taken down.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said such tracking puts Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at risk. But users and developers of the apps say it’s their First Amendment right to capture what ICE is doing in their neighborhoods — and maintain that most users turn to these platforms in an effort to protect their own safety as President Donald Trump steps up aggressive immigration enforcement across the country.
ICEBlock, the most widely used of the ICE-tracking apps in Apple’s app store, is among the apps that have been taken down. Bondi said her office reached out to Apple on Thursday “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 Thursday to the app's creator, Joshua 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, 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.”
In a Friday interview, Aaron decried the company for bending to what he described as “an authoritarian regime.” And immigration rights advocates like Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, added that these actions marked “a disturbing example of how tech companies are capitulating to Trump.”
“These apps are a lifeline for communities living in uncertainty and fear of when ICE might show up to tear their families apart,” Matos said in a statement.
Downloads of apps like ICEBlock have surged since Trump took office for his second term earlier this year. Aaron said he launched the app in April as a way to help immigrant communities protect themselves from surprise raids or potential harassment. It had more than 1 million users, he said.
While not specifying details on the total number of platforms removed, Apple confirmed to the AP on Friday that they removed “similar apps” due to potential safety risks that were raised by law enforcement. Google followed their move, saying that several similar apps violated their policies for Android platforms.
While some advocates don't find all of these apps particularly useful — pointing to potential misinformation and false alarms — they echoed criticism of moves to suppress them.
“What really worries me is the kind of precedent that this sets” where the government can “basically dictate what kinds of apps people have on their phones,” said civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo, who works at Harvard University's Cyberlaw Clinic.
Caraballo said outside the U.S., government pressure to block apps has been “kind of a hallmark of an authoritarian regime,” such as when Chinese pressure in 2019 led Apple to remove an app that enabled Hong Kong protesters to track police.
Bondi warned over the summer against apps that allow people to communicate about the location of law enforcement officers and specifically called out ICEBlock’s Aaron.
“We are looking at him and he better watch out because that’s not a protected speech,” Bondi said in a July interview on Fox News.
Those warnings escalated last month after a gunman opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas. Officials including FBI Director Kash Patel said the gunman had searched for apps that tracked the presence of ICE agents, though they haven't said if he actually used one of the apps or whether any of them played a role in the attack.
Aaron said tying the gunman to the apps made little sense because the app only works if somebody else is reporting ICE activity within a 5-mile radius of another iPhone user.
“You don’t need an app to know that ICE agents are at an ICE detention facility,” he said. “This is just an easy excuse for them to use their power and leverage to take down something that was exposing what they are doing — and that is the terror that they are invoking on the people of this nation every single day."
He also said the app worked similarly to popular navigation apps like Waze, Google Maps and Apple’s own Maps app, which allow users to report police speed traps.
It's “not illegal in any way, shape or form, nor does it dox anybody,” he said, adding that ICEBlock is similarly “an early warning system for people.”
Those who use the apps or other online methods to monitor ICE activity say most people who use them do so for their own safety or out of concern for their loved ones.
“People are extremely scared right now," said Sherman Austin, who founded Stop ICE Raids Alert Network in February. He pointed to rising fears around racial profiling and violent arrests impacting families.
"They want to know what’s going on in their neighborhood and what’s going on in their community,” Austin said, describing people getting violently thrown to the ground by ICE agents in broad daylight.
Also known as StopICE.Net, Austin’s platform similarly uses crowdsourcing, but instead allows its users to track ICE activity more broadly online or through text alerts, without the need to download a separate app. Austin says the platform has reached more than 500,000 subscribers as of Friday.
The group has similarly criticized the Trump administration for what it says are retaliatory attacks targeting those who are exercising their First Amendment rights. Last month, the platform said it learned that the Department of Homeland Security has subpoenaed Meta for data on StopICE.Net's Instagram account.
Austin said StopICE.Net immediately challenged the action, adding on Friday that the subpoena is now temporarily blocked and pending a hearing with a judge.
Meta declined comment Friday. DHS did not directly respond to a request for comment about the subpoena on Friday, instead directing the AP to a statement from Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who reiterated that “ICE tracking apps put the lives of the men and women of law enforcement in danger" and criticized media outlets for framing Apple's “correct decision” to remove apps like ICEBlock as "caving to pressure instead of preventing further bloodshed.”
Developers like Austin, meanwhile, say removals of these apps and other federal threats should alarm everyone.
“We’re up against a regime, an administration that’s going to operate any way it wants to — and threatens whoever it wants in order to get its way, in order to control information and in order to control a narrative," he said. “We have to challenge this and fight this any way we can.”
FILE - Buildings are reflected behind the logo at an Apple Store, in downtown Chicago, Oct. 19, 2017. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)
Pedestrians chant, "ICE go home!" as federal immigration agents walk along North Clark Street in the River North neighborhood, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025, in Chicago. (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)
NUSEIRAT, Gaza Strip (AP) — Sitting in her wheelchair, Haneen al-Mabhouh dreams of rebuilding her family, of cradling a new baby. She dreams of walking again. But with her leg gone, her life in Gaza is on hold, she says, as she waits to go abroad for further treatment.
An Israeli airstrike in July 2024 smashed her home in central Gaza as she and her family slept. All four of her daughters were killed, including her 5-month-old baby. Her husband was severely burned. Al-Mabhouh’s legs were crushed under the rubble, and doctors had to amputate her right leg above the knee.
“For the past year and a half, I have been unable to move around, to live like others. For the past year and a half, I have been without children,” she said, speaking at her parents’ home.
The 2-month-old ceasefire in Gaza has been slow to bring help for thousands of Palestinians who suffered amputations from Israeli bombardment over the past two years. The World Health Organization estimates there are some 5,000 to 6,000 amputees from the war, 25% of them children.
Those who lost limbs are struggling to adapt, faced with a shortage of prosthetic limbs and long delays in medical evacuations out of Gaza.
The WHO said a shipment of essential prosthetic supplies recently made it into Gaza. That appears to be the first significant shipment for the past two years.
Previously, Israel had let in almost no ready-made prosthetic limbs or material to manufacture limbs since the war began, according to Loay Abu Saif, the head of the disability program at Medical Aid for Palestinians, or MAP, and Nevin Al Ghussein, acting director of the Artificial Limbs and Polio Center in Gaza City.
The Israeli military body in charge of coordinating aid, known as COGAT, did not respond when asked how many prosthetic supplies had entered during the war or about its policies on such supplies.
Al-Mabhouh was asleep with her baby girl in her arms when the strike hit their home in Nuseirat, she said. For several weeks while recovering in the hospital, al-Mabhouh had no idea her children had been killed.
She underwent multiple surgeries. Her hand still has difficulty moving. Her remaining leg remains shattered, held together with rods. She needs a bone graft and other treatments that are only available outside of Gaza.
She was put on the list for medical evacuation 10 months ago but still hasn’t gotten permission to leave Gaza.
Waiting for her chance to go, she lives at her parents’ house. She needs help changing clothes and can’t even hold a pen, and remains crushed by grief over her daughters. “I never got to hear her say ‘mama,’ see her first tooth or watch her take her first steps,” she said of her baby.
She dreams of having a new child but can’t until she gets treatment.
“It’s my right to live, to have another child, to regain what I lost, to walk, just to walk again,” she said. “Now my future is paralyzed. They destroyed my dreams.”
The ceasefire has hardly brought any increase in medical evacuations for the 16,500 Palestinians the U.N. says are waiting to get vital treatment abroad — not just amputees, but patients suffering many kinds of chronic conditions or wounds.
As of Dec. 1, 235 patients have been evacuated since the ceasefire began in October, just under five a day. In the months before that, the average was about three a day.
Israel last week said it was ready to allow patients and other Palestinians to leave Gaza via the Israeli-held Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. But it's unsure that will happen because Egypt, which controls the crossing’s other side, demands Rafah also be opened for Palestinians to enter Gaza as called for under the ceasefire deal.
Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO's representative in the occupied Palestinian territory, told The Associated Press that the backlog is caused by the lack of countries to host the evacuated patients. He said new medevac routes need to be opened, especially to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, where hospitals are ready to receive patients.
Yassin Marouf lies in a tent in central Gaza, his left foot amputated, his right leg barely held together with rods.
The 23-year-old and his brother were hit by Israeli shelling in May as they returned from visiting their home in northern Gaza that their family had been forced to flee. His brother was killed. Marouf lay bleeding on the ground, as a stray dog attacked his mangled left leg.
Doctors say his right leg will also need to be amputated, unless he can travel abroad for operations that might save it. Marouf said he can’t afford painkillers and can’t go to the hospital regularly to have his bandages changed as they’re supposed to.
“If I want to go to the bathroom, I need two or three people to carry me,” he said.
Mohamed al-Naggar had been pursuing an IT degree at the University of Palestine before the war.
Seven months ago, shrapnel pierced his left leg during strikes on the house where his family was sheltering. Doctors amputated his leg above the knee. His right leg was also badly injured and shrapnel remains in parts of his body.
Despite four surgeries and physical therapy, the 21-year-old al-Naggar can’t move around.
“I’d like to travel abroad and put on a prosthetic and graduate from college and be normal like young people outside Gaza,” he said.
Some 42,000 Palestinians have suffered life-changing injuries in the war, including amputations, brain trauma, spinal cord injuries and major burns, the WHO said in an October report.
The situation has “improved slightly” for those with assistance needs but “there is still a huge overall shortage of assistive products,” such as wheelchairs, walkers and crutches. Gaza has only eight prosthetists able to manufacture and fit artificial limbs, the WHO said in a statement to the AP.
The Artificial Limbs and Polio Center in Gaza City, one of two prosthetics centers still operating in the territory, received a shipment of material to manufacture limbs just before the war began in 2023, said its director, Al Ghussein. Another small shipment entered in December 2024, but nothing since.
The center has been able to provide artificial limbs for 250 cases over the course of the war, but supplies are running out, Al Ghussein said.
No pre-made prosthetic legs or arms have entered, according to Abu Saif of MAP, who said Israel does not ban them, but its procedures cause delays and “in the end they ignore it.”
Ibrahim Khalif wants a prosthetic right leg so he can get a job doing manual labor or cleaning houses to support his pregnant wife and children.
In January, he lost his leg when an Israeli airstrike hit Gaza City while he was out getting food.
“I used to be the provider for my kids, but now I’m sitting here," Khalif said. "I think of how I was and what I’ve become.”
Prosthetic limb technician Ahmed Al-Ashqar, 34, prepares a leg amputation splint in the first stage of building an artificial leg at Hamad Hospital in Zawaida, central Gaza Strip, Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Yassin Marouf, 23, second from right, who lost his left foot and suffered a severe injury to his right leg after Israeli shelling in May, sits on a mattress in a tent surrounded by family and neighbors in Zawaida, central Gaza, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Haneen al-Mabhouh, 34, who lost her leg in an Israeli strike on her home that also killed all four of her daughters, including her 5-month-old baby, shows a photo of one of her daughters on a cellphone while sitting in a wheelchair in her family home in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Haneen al-Mabhouh, 34, who lost her leg in an Israeli strike on her home that also killed all four of her daughters, including her 5-month-old baby, sits in a wheelchair in her family home in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Yassin Marouf, 23, who lost his left foot and suffered a severe injury to his right leg after being hit by Israeli shelling in May, lies in a tent surrounded by his family in Zawaida, central Gaza, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
