The DOJ has not yet taken action and may be waiting for a third-party complaint. A GW Law professor tells NR he plans to file one.
“ICE standing outside of the building,” at a waste disposal plant in Alexandria, Va.
“Many ICE agents, masked, stopping motor vehicles and asking for documentation” in northeast Washington, D.C.
“ICE took a construction worker they have Missouri license plates” in Woodridge, Ill.
Alerts like these are broadcast daily on mobile applications used to track Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The platforms have come under renewed scrutiny after authorities revealed that Joshua Jahn, 29, used the apps to prepare for his attack on an ICE facility in Dallas last week. Jahn opened fire on a van full of ICE detainees, killing two and wounding another.
“The shooter used the ICE tracking apps,” acting head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Marcos Charles said last week. “Anyone who creates or distributes these apps that is designed to spot, track and locate ICE officers are well aware of the dangers that they are exposing to law enforcement.”
Real-time alerts about ICE officials are “no different than giving a hitman the location of their intended target,” Charles said.
The apps’ developers — and the legal teams that represent them — argue they are simply informational tools, and any attempt to ban them is an infringement on the First Amendment.
The Department of Homeland Security, however, argues that the apps are a tool designed to aid the obstruction of law enforcement, released to the public at a time when attacks on ICE officers are skyrocketing.
“The use of apps to monitor the routines, locations, and happenings of DHS law enforcement strongly resemble obstruction of justice,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told National Review. “Our brave ICE law enforcement officers are facing a more than 1,000 percent increase in assaults against them. Secretary Noem has been clear: If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
How Do the Apps Work?
ICEBlock, Coqui, People Over Papers, and StopICE.net allow users to report ICE sightings anonymously and even to share information about individual officers.
Users can pinpoint the exact locations of ICE officers on maps. They can also post photos of the officers or their vehicles. Users in an immediate radius are then alerted to the presence of ICE agents.
ICEBlock, the most popular of the apps with over 1 million users, removes most alerts within four hours of their initial posting. There seem to be few guardrails on how users confirm sightings; when this reporter issued a fake alert to the presence of an ICE agent at the National Review office in Rosslyn, Va., the alert remained live for four hours.
Because the platforms allow users to post comments with the sightings, users can get specific with their notes. “ICE detention happening NOW,” one user posted on Tuesday afternoon near the Walter E. Convention Center in Washington, D.C. “FBI, CBP, and MPD.”
On most platforms, individuals can also create additional alerts to the presence of law enforcement — not strictly ICE officials. One ICEBlock alert, issued in Arlington, Va., on Tuesday, read “Five all blacked out government SUVs. Could be ICE could be secret service.”
National Review traveled to sightings around the D.C. area within multiple hours of sightings being reported but could not locate ICE agents.
ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron disputes the connection between the software and attacks, like the one Jahn orchestrated last week, and others.
“If you understand how ICEBlock works, it’s ludicrous to think it had anything to do with finding the location of ICE agents. He attacked an ICE detention facility. We don’t need to know from an app that police officers are at the police department,” Aaron told CBS News.
Police officers are, of course, in little danger when inside their police station. It’s when ICE officers are on the streets executing their mission that they’re at their most vulnerable. And, according to the Trump administration, the apps make them more so.
Are the Apps Legal?
Trump officials have expressed willingness to push back against the apps in court but have not yet taken legal action.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in July after CNN published a profile of ICEBlock that she was working with the Justice Department to prosecute CNN “because what they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities.” Border Czar Tom Homan encouraged the DOJ to investigate CNN for the report as well. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi warned Aaron, the ICEBlock developer, to “watch out” because he is “not protected” under the Constitution.
The DOJ also recently fired Aaron’s wife, Carolyn Feinstein, who was a forensic auditor for the department for nearly a decade, because she holds a stake in the company that owns ICEBlock’s IP.
“ICEBlock is an app that illegal aliens use to evade capture while endangering the lives of ICE officers,” a DOJ spokesperson said, adding that the department “will not tolerate threats against law enforcement or law enforcement officers.”
While cabinet officials have threatened CNN over its report, as well as certain app developers, they have yet to take legal action or open an investigation against any of the platforms. The DOJ could be waiting for a third party to file a formal complaint, which John Banzhaf, professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, plans to do later this week, he shared exclusively with National Review.
App developers claim that the platforms serve as a practical, well-meaning warning system, and Aaron has defended the app’s legality and purpose as “100 percent protected speech.” Opponents say the apps impede or interfere with law enforcement activity. In ICEBlock’s case, the app’s name lays out its intended purpose: To block ICE.
Developers also say that nothing differentiates community alerts about ICE agents from alerts on transportation apps that notify individuals about traffic stops. But some lawyers disagree.
Imagine that a car is flashing its headlights to warn oncoming drivers that the cops are up ahead, conducting speed checks. What differentiates that situation from alerting individuals to ICE presence?
“First of all, flashing headlights does not encourage people to violate the law. In fact, the argument is made, and it’s actually spelled out in a number of these decisions, that [flashing headlights] are encouraging people to obey the law,” Banzhaf told NR. “They’re saying, if you’re speeding, you better slow down, otherwise you’re going to get a ticket. They’re not encouraging people to do anything they otherwise wouldn’t do.”
With the anti-ICE tracking apps, on the other hand, “We know from experience and we know from the name of the app [ICEBlock] that people are going to show up, not every time and not all people, but in most of these cases, for the very purpose of committing a crime of impeding or interfering with a law enforcement officer,” Banzhaf said.
Anti-ICE organizations in Los Angeles, New York, and elsewhere have used ICE tracking apps to disrupt immigration raids. In one case on Long Island, a team of anti-ICE activists used ICE tracking apps to “get local people to take immediate action,” one activist told Reuters.
“Lots of crimes depend upon and are based upon speech, and the mere fact that they are based upon speech doesn’t necessarily mean that they are in any sense protected by the First Amendment,” Banzhaf continued. “Blackmail, for example, is speech. I say to you, ‘Give me $10,000 or I will tell your employer that you did X, Y and Z.’ Is it protected by the First Amendment? No.”