US citizens are tracking ICE in real time to warn migrants. Is that legal?

Highlights: 

• From California to New York, activists are using apps to track ICE raids
• Legal experts say the surveillance is lawful - so long as activists don't get in the way
• The Trump administration says it is exploring ways to prosecute the activists

In Los Angeles, Francisco "Chavo" Romero and a dozen other immigration activists were out before dawn on a recent summer morning, gathering near an ICE staging area so they could tail the immigration agents' vehicles and send alerts over social media on the officers' whereabouts.

In Austin, a technology worker created an app to report sightings of agents - it has over 1 million users. On Long Island, New York, another activist developed a similar app to report immigration enforcement raids in local areas.

As President Donald Trump ramps up his mass deportation efforts with $75 billion in new funding through 2029 to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, civilian surveillance of federal immigration agents is becoming increasingly assertive, according to interviews with a dozen activists, legal experts, and historians.

"With minimal resources, we've been able to confront, challenge and expose a billion-dollar repressive state apparatus that is attacking and kidnapping our people," said Romero, 50, an activist with Union del Barrio, an immigrant rights group, in Los Angeles.

Romero said he and other activists gather nearly every morning near an ICE staging area around Terminal Island, about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. They watch for agents heading out in marked and unmarked vehicles to conduct operations - then follow from several car lengths and alert the public on the agents' locations.

Romero says he's protecting the Latino community. The Trump administration says he and anyone else surveilling ICE agents in an effort to warn people about their work are helping criminals.

"Interfering with federal law enforcement is a crime – so is assaulting law enforcement and harboring criminal illegal aliens," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Reuters when asked to comment on citizen surveillance. "Anyone who uses apps or other methods to commit crimes will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law."

Six legal experts told Reuters that surveillance of ICE is largely protected under the US Constitution - as long as the activists don't interfere with that work. Courts have long held that recording law enforcement activists in public areas is legal.

"If activists are recording ICE and telling people where they are with the intent to have people avoid ICE or have people physically interfere with ICE, that's where it potentially gets dicey," said Sophia Cope, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's civil liberties team. "If a case like that went to court, that might be a relevant factual difference to a court."

Hans von Spakovsky, a legal expert with the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, agreed it would be difficult for the Trump administration to prosecute activists for surveilling ICE agents - but he said he saw a narrow opening.

While courts have upheld the legality of mapping apps that warn motorists of police ahead, von Spakovsky said such tools encourage people to slow down and obey the law. With the ICE-tracking apps, the Trump administration could argue that the efforts are encouraging people to break the law.

"It's a difference a judge may be willing to look at if the Justice Department tries to prosecute somebody for developing one of these apps," von Spakovsky said.

'WATCH OUT'

Attorney General Pam Bondi said in July that Joshua Aaron, the Texas-based creator of ICEBlock, the most popular ICE-tracking app, should "watch out" and argues that he is "not protected" under the Constitution.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has said she's working with the Department of Justice to see if Aaron and other app makers can be prosecuted. "If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, we will hunt you down and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Noem said in an email to Reuters.

Asked if he had been contacted by the government, or if he's facing any charges or a lawsuit, Aaron simply replied: "Nope."

"This administration tends to blow a bunch of hot air in front of the cameras, but then they don't follow up and do anything because they know they don't have a legal leg to stand on," Aaron said. "You can't limit what people can see with their own eyes."

Aaron's family has not escaped unscathed - his wife, Carolyn Feinstein, was recently fired from her decade-long job as a forensic auditor in the Department of Justice's U.S. Trustee Program. The department said in a written statement Feinstein was fired because she held a stake in the company that holds the IP for ICEBlock.

Ahmad Perez, 23, the son of a Moroccan immigrant mother and Puerto Rican father and founder of Islip Forward, a group of volunteers that built an ICE-tracking app in January focused on two counties on Long Island, said he was focused on getting local people to take immediate action. The app has 80,000 users.

Perez and a team of volunteers verify anonymous ICE sightings sent in via the app before sending out a push notification. Volunteers go into the street to check, or speak to nearby police departments to make sure the report did not mistake a local police officer for an ICE agent.

"We all want criminals out of our streets. We all want the gang members out of our communities," Perez said. "But what we're seeing now is innocent families, we're seeing innocent children with no criminal records, sometimes US citizens being detained … and expedited out of the country like it's a FedEx package."