Lawsuit: White House Pushed Apple to Remove ICE Tracking App From Store

The developer of an iPhone app that allows users to report and track immigration enforcement operations across the U.S. is suing several Trump administration officials, alleging that they unfairly characterized his app’s intent, leading to it being unduly removed from the Apple Store.

Joshua Aaron, the creator of the app, which is called ICEBlock, filed the suit this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He lists several Trump administration officials as defendants, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director Todd Lyons, and White House border czar Tom Homan.

According to the lawsuit, Aaron created the app in early 2025 to allow “members of the public to report publicly observable locations of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.” By April, the app was available on the Apple App Store, and by October, it had been downloaded more than 1 million times.

Around that time, however, Apple removed the app from the store, a decision that Aaron alleges came after public pressure from those officials, who falsely claimed that Aaron had sinister intent and that the app “invites violence” against immigration agents.

White House officials “have falsely claimed that ICEBlock and similar apps are responsible for violent attacks on law enforcement officers,” the lawsuit states. “No actual evidence has ever been cited to support these claims.”

Bondi stated in October that direct comments to Apple were what led to the app’s removal. By her own admission, the White House had “reached out to Apple demanding they remove the ICEBlock app” from its store — “and Apple did so,” she added.

“The United States government used its regulatory power to coerce a private platform to suppress First Amendment-protected expression,” Aaron alleges in his complaint.

ICEBlock has always displayed a disclaimer on the app, telling users it is for “information and notification purposes only” and that the app is not for “inciting violence or interfering with law enforcement.”

“Fundamentally, ICEBlock neither enables nor encourages confrontation — it simply delivers time-limited location information to help users stay aware of their surroundings in a responsible and nonviolent way,” the lawsuit states. “Not only is it designed that way — with functionality that ensures it can only be used for informational purposes — but it also includes this express prohibition against any other use.”

Notably, the complaint’s arguments are similar to those made by Republicans who sued social media companies in 2022, after the companies restricted their accounts due to their false claims regarding COVID-19 and vaccines.

In the past, Apple has removed apps from its store at the request of other countries’ governments, but the removal of ICEBlock, at the request of the U.S. government specifically, is atypical, The New York Times reported. In comments about his app’s removal, Aaron suggested that the decision demonstrates that Apple is “in bed with this administration or under threat from it.”

Indeed, Apple is one of many corporations that has donated sizable sums of money to help fund the construction of an extravagant ballroom in the East Wing of the White House, posing a possible conflict of interest for those companies and the Trump administration.

Aaron’s lawsuit seeks to have the actions of the officials listed as defendants deemed as an unconstitutional abridgment of his First Amendment speech rights. He is also seeking to “permanently enjoin Defendants…from coercing, threatening, or demanding Apple or other app distribution services in order to stop distribution of the App.”