Apple said Thursday that it eliminates an application that allows users to share information on sightings from immigration and customs compliance agents, which the ice chief had criticized.
Iceblock was removed from Apple’s app store along with other applications like this, Apple said.
“We create the App Store to be a safe and reliable place to discover applications,” Apple said. “According to the information we have received from the police about the security risks associated with Iceblock, we have eliminated it and similar applications from the App Store.”
Trump administration officials have complained about assaults and threats to ice agents, including being “Doxxed”, a term that means that personal information is shared online.
Iceblock does not imply sharing personal information about agents, but notifies people within a radius of 5 mile sightings.
The application was launched in April, about three months after President Donald Trump was inaugurated after a campaign in which he promised to take energetic measures against people in the country without legal authorization. The downloads took off in June, the month of immigration raids were launched in Los Angeles.
Fox Business, who first reported that the application had been withdrawn on Thursday, reported that the officials of the Justice Department asked Apple to eliminate iceblock in the direction of Attorney General PAM Bondi.
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comments from NBC News.
Bondi said in a statement to Fox Business: “We communicate with Apple today demanding that they eliminate the Iceblock application of its application store, and Apple did it.”
Bondi told the media that “Iceblock is designed to put ice agents at risk just by doing their job.”
The White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt and the interim director of ICE, Todd M. Lyons, also criticized the application in July.
A message that seeks a comment by the founder of Iceblock or other affiliated with the application, which was sent through its website, was not immediately returned on Thursday night.
The application is taking off a little more than a week after a 29 -year -old Texas man, Joshua Jahn, opened fire against people in an ice installation by Dallas Sally Port, killing two detainees and himself. No ice agent were injured.
After the shooting, Marcos Charles, operations director of the ICE field field office, said Jahn used ice monitoring applications. He didn’t say which.
There have been more than 1 million downloads of the Iceblock application, according to the appfigues applications monitoring firm. The downloads took off in June, according to the firm.
That month, ICE increased immigration raids in Los Angeles. The protesters protested the raids, and some stores in the center were looted. The Trump administration sent the National Guard to the city without a request from the governor of California Gavin Newsom, a controversial movement that critics called political theater and an attempt to intimidate and terrorize residents.
A federal judge ruled on September 2 that the deployment of personnel of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles was illegal. American district judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco ruled that he violated a nineteenth -century law that prohibits the use of soldiers for the activities of application of civil law.
Laura Strickler contributed.
