Tech company Apple has blocked its users from accessing ICEBlock, an application that notifies people where Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity is taking place, in the company’s latest act of capitulation to the president’s authoritarian ambitions.
Apple said Thursday it is removing an app that allows users to share information about sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, which the head of ICE had criticized. ICEBlock was removed from Apple’s App Store along with other apps like it, Apple said. ‘We created the App Store to be a safe and trusted place to discover apps,’ Apple said. ‘Based on information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock, we have removed it and similar apps from the App Store.’
“I am incredibly disappointed by Apple’s actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move,” the app’s developer, Joshua Aaron, told 404 Media. “We are determined to fight this with everything we have.” ICEBlock did not immediately respond to MSNBC’s request for comment.
I wrote about ICEBlock in one of my Tech Drops back in July, and Aaron sat with MSNBC around that time to explain how his Jewish roots and the disturbing similarities he’d noted between Hitler’s Nazis and ICE agents inspired him to launch the app. That the Department of Homeland Security has continued to promote its bigoted mass deportation agenda with references to white supremacist and neo-Nazi propaganda since then only bolsters such comparisons.
ICE officials have said that the man who shot at a Dallas ICE facility used a tracking app, but did not specify ICEBlock or suggest it was used in planning the attack. As Aaron told CBS News, “It’s ludicrous to think [ICEBlock] had anything to do with finding the location of ICE agents. He attacked an ICE detention facility.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox Business that such apps “put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs” — a claim administration officials have made about other efforts (including news media reports) to shine a light on ICE agents and their activities. And the administration has used similar justifications to excuse ICE agents for wearing masks to hide their identities, a disturbing trend that’s drawn comparisons to the Ku Klux Klan.
Tracking ICE is one way to warn people about where potential raids are taking place and enables them to act within their rights to monitor such public activity. The intent of the Trump administration’s efforts to shut down apps like ICEBlock seems quite clear — all with the collaboration of Big Tech oligarchs who’ve offered golden gifts and effusive praise for America’s wannabe king.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
