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In recent days, as ICE activity intensified throughout New York City, locals responded with the means at their disposal: challenging officers directly on the streets, verbally confronting them as they moved through neighborhoods, and documenting their actions with smartphone cameras. This continuous recording has become a somewhat potent measure against President Donald Trump’s bolstering of ICE; officers have started wearing masks to avoid identification, and the abundance of photos showing armed police and active National Guard units in otherwise peaceful urban areas has underscored the harsh irony of their operations. Activist-inspired images have spread rapidly on social media: a woman on Canal Street in New York, wearing a polka-dot business dress, displaying her middle finger to ICE agents; a man in Washington, D.C., tossing a Subway sandwich toward a federal officer this past August. The recent “No Kings” demonstrations featured participants dressed as inflatable frogs, inspired by a similar individual who was pepper-sprayed while protesting outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Oregon. Some may dismiss these online images as mere outrage bait, but this digital content is at least acting as a vibrant defensive tool in the absence of effective political solutions.
Concurrently, social media has functioned as a renewed source of visibility in recent weeks, recalling instances such as when Twitter became a pivotal organizing tool during the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, or when Facebook and Instagram played a role in amplifying the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. However, the early-era grassroots optimism of social media is largely absent, replaced by a feeling that posting is a final option. Following Trump’s authorization of the National Guard deployment to Chicago earlier in the month, the governor of Illinois, J. B. Pritzker, advised citizens to “record and narrate what you see—put it on social media.” However, if the anti-MAGA movement is leveraging the internet, so are ICE and the Trump Administration. Right-leaning creators are using similar platforms to pinpoint and reveal individuals as targets for raids. According to reports in Semafor, the Trump-sympathetic YouTuber Nick Shirley’s videos of African migrant vendors on Canal Street appeared to contribute to recent ICE raids in that location. ICE itself is also actively monitoring social media. The investigative news site The Lever uncovered documents indicating that the agency has employed an A.I.-powered monitoring product called Zignal Labs, which generates “curated detection feeds” to assist in criminal investigations. According to reports in Wired, ICE also intends to develop a team of dozens of analysts to oversee social media and identify potential targets. Recent videos, highlighted by 404 Media and other news outlets, have allegedly depicted ICE agents employing technology created by the data-analytics company Palantir, founded by Peter Thiel and others, to examine social-media accounts, governmental records, and biometric data of those they detain. Social media has evolved into a political watchtower where your posts function as expressions of your politics, and what you share can increasingly be used to your detriment.
In parallel, a new generation of digital tools has surfaced to aid in monitoring the monitors. The apps ICEBlock, Red Dot, and DEICER all empower users to determine the locations of ICE agent activity, establishing an online version of an alert network to notify potential targets. Eyes Up offers users a way to record and upload footage of abusive law-enforcement behavior, creating an archive of possible evidence. Its creator is a software developer named Mark (who uses only his first name to keep the project separate from his professional career); he was moved to develop Eyes Up earlier this year, after witnessing clips of ICE abductions and harassment circulating on social media and becoming concerned about their preservation. As he explained to me, “They could vanish at any moment, whether the platforms decide to moderate, whether the individual deletes their account or the post.”
In the end, the app itself was also susceptible to sudden removal. After its launch on September 1st, Eyes Up attracted thousands of downloads and hours of uploaded video. Then, on October 3rd, Mark received a notification that Apple was removing the app from its store, stating that it might “harm a targeted individual or group.” Eyes Up is not unique. ICEBlock and Red Dot have been banned from both Apple and Google’s app stores, the two most prominent marketplaces; DEICER, like Eyes Up, was removed by Apple. Pressure on the tech companies appeared to originate from the Trump Administration; following a fatal shooting at an ICE field office in Dallas in late September, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, asserted in a statement to Fox News Digital that ICEBlock “endangered ICE agents simply for performing their duties.” Mark is appealing Apple’s decision regarding Eyes Up through its official channels, and the creator of ICEBlock, Joshua Aaron, has claimed that his app should be treated similarly to services like Google’s Waze, which enable users to alert each other about highway speed traps. But, currently, they must manage with reduced reach.
The politically charged removal of these tools illustrates an irony—ICE is upset that its own methods have been turned against it. Mark described a “double standard”: technological applications that align with the Administration’s objectives are proceeding without opposition, partly because tech companies have grown more willing to accommodate the President’s preferences. “It’s evident whose rules they’re following, who they’re trying to curry favor with,” Mark said. Like other avenues of self-expression, digital-communication technology has become precariously restricted under Trump; only those tools operating independently of Big Tech appear to be dependable avenues for dissent. Sharing clips of the polka-dotted-dress lady on social media may be therapeutic, but it will only take the resistance so far.
Nevertheless, we record and we post because it is preferable to the alternative, which is enduring governmental oppression silently. This past weekend, a friend of mine in Washington, D.C., where I reside, sent a photograph she had taken of armed National Guard members patrolling the Sunday-morning farmers’ market in Dupont Circle. Trump’s militarized policing has occurred intermittently in the city since August, when the Administration took control of the local police force, and residents have become accustomed to seeing uniformed troops disrupt our daily lives. I most often encounter them while walking through mostly deserted residential streets in the middle of the afternoon, and I take photographs with my phone to highlight the unsettling excess of this activity: our President’s extreme and hazardous reaction to a nonexistent crisis. Sharing these images is a small reminder of the reality of these events. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
