The man behind a viral app that tracks deportation officers is accusing the Trump administration of violating his free speech rights after Apple removed the app from its store.
Joshua Aaron, the liberal activist who launched ICEBlock earlier this year, filed a lawsuit against several top administration officials in federal court on Monday, according to court documents. Aaron, who has publicly praised Antifa in the past and likened Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Nazis, is claiming the White House unconstitutionally suppressed his free speech rights when it successfully coerced Apple into removing ICEBlock from its App Store in October.
“This lawsuit challenges these government officials’ unconstitutional threats and demands against Apple, which pressured it to remove the ICEBlock app from the App Store,” the lawsuit states. “In particular, Attorney General Bondi’s coercion of Apple has censored Aaron and ALL U Chart, Inc., which owns ICEBlock’s intellectual property, by making ICEBlock — their speech— unavailable to the public.”
“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 continues.
Aaron’s lawsuit targets Attorney General Pam Bondi, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Border Czar Tom Homan and other top federal officials, according to court documents. The legal challenge was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
ICEBlock is a crowdsourced app that alerts users when ICE agents or other federal immigration authorities are spotted within a five-mile radius. Anyone on the app can ping others nearby if they see immigration agents and list other identifying details, such as what the officers are wearing and what car they’re driving, ostensibly allowing illegal migrants nearby to avoid apprehension.
The app received an incredible rise in popularity following a CNN profile over the summer, growing from 20,000 users in June to more than one million users by the beginning of October, according to the lawsuit.
The Trump administration adamantly opposed the app at the time, noting that threats and attacks against ICE agents were at an all-time high and apps such as ICEBlock only served to put agents at risk.
“Advertising an app that basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs is sickening,” ICE acting director Todd Lyons said in June, ripping CNN for airing the segment. “My officers and agents are already facing a 500% increase in assaults, and going on live television to announce an app that lets anyone zero in on their locations is like inviting violence against them with a national megaphone.”
Such dire warnings appeared to reach fruition after a deadly shooting at an ICE facility several months later.
29-year-old Joshua Jahn fired multiple rounds atop a Dallas rooftop on Sept. 24, with the purported intention of hitting ICE agents who were nearby and conducting enforcement activities, but ended up shooting three detainees before taking his own life. FBI Director Kash Patel later revealed that Jahn allegedly downloaded a document listing the location of Department of Homeland Security facilities and searched for apps that tracked immigration agents, but didn’t specify which apps Jahn allegedly used.
By October, the Department of Justice confirmed that Apple had removed the app from its store.
“We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation at the time. “ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed.”
Aaron identifies himself as a supporter of Black Lives Matter, a movement long plagued with allegations of financial mismanagement, and “Proud #Antifa” on his Bluesky account. A DCNF review of his X account also identified repeated instances in which he praised and defended Antifa.
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