Apple worked with Trump admin to remove ICE-tracking apps, lawmaker says

“There appears to be no direct connection between the Dallas incident and the apps you removed,” Raskin said. To ensure that no Americans’ core speech rights are violated by removals unconstitutionally ordered by the government, Raskin has asked Apple to “send a full list of the apps it removed following concerns from the Justice Department” so that it will finally be possible to “conduct an independent review of those removal decisions.” Federal officials have insisted that Apple acted on its own. However, in a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration officials of censoring watchdogs, ICEBlock creator Joshua Aaron told the court that officials publicly bragged about getting the app removed. And in Apple’s July letter to Raskin—which was signed by Timothy Powderly, Apple’s senior director of government affairs—the iPhone maker seemed to confirm this. Powderly specifically cited agency reports of a “significant increase in ICE activity and threats against ICE” as triggering the follow-up review of ICE-tracking apps. The Trump administration has asked the court to dismiss Aaron’s lawsuit, claiming that Apple independently chose to moderate that content, despite comments from agency officials suggesting otherwise. It doesn’t matter that former officials like Pam Bondi publicly took credit for removing ICEBlock from the App Store, boasting that she made the “demand” and “Apple did so.” Those comments were merely officials expressing opinions about Apple’s promotion of supposedly dangerous apps, they argued. They’re hoping the court will agree that Aaron has not uncovered evidence of communications that can be “reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action” against Apple “if Apple chose not to remove ICEBlock from the App Store.” But in an August ruling, the Second Circuit recently upheld that courts broadly recognize “a First Amendment right to record law enforcement activity in public,” Aaron argued in a recent filing that could influence how the case is decided at this stage. In his opposition to the government’s motion to dismiss, Aaron maintained that the record showed that the government was acting to censor Americans. The then-Attorney General told the nation she demanded removal of the app, Apple reversed a decision it previously reached after a thorough five-week legal review citing only “information provided to Apple by law enforcement,” and the then-Attorney General characterized Apple’s response as “compliance.” If the case proceeds, which Aaron expects it will, discovery would likely reveal the actual communications between government officials and Apple leadership, which so far have remained hidden. Only then can a court sufficiently determine if “a threat of adverse government action” triggered app removals, Aaron argued. Raskin told Apple that he thinks the removal decisions won’t fly under the First Amendment. “Monitoring the actions of federal immigration authorities who have been deployed to (users’) neighborhoods… is a core First Amendment right and not a crime,” Raskin said.