Apple pulls ICE-tracking apps citing unproven safety claims
Censorship blocking · 29.09.2026

Apple removed ICE-tracking apps from the App Store, including ICEBlock. The official version: the apps threaten officers' safety. The reality, according to Congressman Jamie Raskin: there's zero evidence for this.

The story used as a pretext is absurd in itself. In Dallas, a shooter opened fire on an ICE building and killed not agents, but two detainees. US Attorney Nancy Larson called it a "tragic irony" — the victims turned out to be the very people supposedly being protected from surveillance. But then DHS and FBI Director Kash Patel flipped the story 180 degrees: now it's not a tragic irony, but proof that agents are being "targeted."

Patel claimed the shooter had searched for ICE-tracking apps. Raskin, in a letter to Apple, tears this apart: there's no evidence. And even if the shooter really had opened such an app, using an agent tracker to find the fixed address of a government building would be rather excessive. According to available data, he found the address through the standard app that's on every iPhone. Surveillance technology on the level of "Maps."

A separate masterpiece is DHS's statistic about an 8000% rise in death threats against ICE agents in October 2025. An impressive figure — except it can't be independently verified, since the agency doesn't disclose the data to anyone. Take it on faith, or don't — whichever you prefer.

The bottom line, in Raskin's own words: it looks like Apple is helping the government violate its own users' rights — the First Amendment, which allows recording and covering the actions of one's own government. A company that spent years selling itself as a privacy champion is quietly censoring apps on command from above, using someone else's tragedy as the justification.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/apple-worked-with-trump-admin-to-remove-ice-tracking-apps-lawmaker-says/