On 3 October 2025 Apple removed Eyes Up, an app that archived video of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement conduct collected from social platforms and news sources. The removal came a day after Apple removed ICEBlock, an app that reported ICE sightings, following public pressure from the Department of Justice. Attorney General Pam Bondi said ICEBlock “is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs.” Apple’s stated reason to the ICEBlock developer was “objectionable content”; no Apple reason for the Eyes Up removal was reported.
Google removed comparable Android apps, including Red Dot, on 3 October, saying they shared the location of a group that had recently faced violence.
Platform governance impact
The removals concentrated attention on how app-store gatekeeping affects independently developed documentation tools. On 8 December 2025 ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron sued Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE acting director Todd Lyons and Tom Homan in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that their demands to Apple violated his First Amendment rights. That case remained pending. In a separate suit brought by the developers of Eyes Up and a Chicago-area ICE-sighting group, Judge Jorge L. Alonso of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted a preliminary injunction on 20 April 2026, finding the plaintiffs likely to succeed on their claim that officials had coerced Apple and Facebook into removing their tools. A preliminary injunction is not a final ruling on the merits. Neither app had been restored to the US app stores as of September 2026.