Apple bows to Trump administration pressure over ICE tracking apps

The second Trump administration has seen a series of capitulations by major companies to the White House. Now, President Donald Trump’s threats have taken a bite out of another major brand: Apple announced it has removed several apps from its store that allowed users to report sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The most prominent of these apps, ICEBlock, has pledged to fight the move, which seemed to come directly at the behest of the Trump administration.

Reportedly had 1 million users

The exact number of apps removed from the App Store isn’t clear, but Apple made its removal of ICEBlock the focal point. The company “created the App Store to be a safe and trusted place to discover apps,” Apple said in a statement to several media outlets. 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.”

ICEBlock, like several other similar apps, is a “crowdsourced platform that allows users to report ICE activity with just two taps on their phone,” the app’s website said. It lets communities “stay informed about ICE presence within a 5-mile radius,” though it does not share personal information about ICE agents. Apple decided to remove the app because it didn’t comply with App Store guidelines around “objectionable, defamatory, discriminatory or mean-spirited content,” Apple told ICEBlock creator Joshua Aaron in an email obtained by CNN.

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The app had more than 1 million users, according to its developer, and had been in the White House’s crosshairs for a while. As a result, it seems that Apple made the decision only after “coming under pressure from the Trump administration,” said The Associated Press. The Justice Department has previously threatened legal action against media outlets for even “reporting on the app’s existence,” though it is “unclear what crime that would amount to,” said The New York Times.

Attorney General Pam Bondi also said that the app was removed as part of a direct government request. The Justice Department “reached out to Apple demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so,” Bondi told Fox News Digital. The Justice Department will “continue making every effort to protect our brave federal law enforcement officers, who risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe.”

Latest company to face Trump’s scrutiny

Apple is just the latest in a long string of brands that have been targeted by the Trump administration. Several of these instances involve financial settlements following a lawsuit brought by the president; another tech company, YouTube, recently agreed to “pay President Trump $22 million to settle his 2021 lawsuit, which he filed after the company suspended his account following the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot,” said Axios.

Other major companies that have settled lawsuits with Trump include Paramount, Meta and Disney. People inside these brands are “failing to stand up more forcefully to what many inside these industries say are abuses of presidential power” because they are “scared that the president will do more damage if they try to resist, scared that he may even target them personally,” said the Times. But while some companies have settled, the owner of ICEBlock has pushed back against the removal of his product from the App Store. There is “nothing illegal about using the app,” he said on MSNBC, pledging to fight the app’s deletion.