'Protect, Not Target': ICE Tracker Expands To Cover Long Island

ISLIP, NY —An ICE tracking app documenting sightings around Long Island went live Monday, expanding its Suffolk County coverage established earlier this year, according to its creator, community empowerment organization Islip Forward.

The app first launched in January as a response to the Trump Administration's commitment to mass deportations around the country, as ICE agents have detained immigrants at routine immigration check-ins in New York City and during raids around Long Island.

The ICE tracker is a community-driven platform that addresses both verified and false reports of ICE sightings around Long Island. As of press time, the ICE tracker has documented 37 sightings in Suffolk while numerous people have been detained, according to Islip Forward. In addition to warning the immigrant community, the app also aims to curtail the fear spread by false reports, IF reps told Patch previously.

"ICE is using apps to track our people like they’re fugitives. But we can build apps too — not to target, but to protect. The Long Island ICE Tracker is our response to a system that wants us silent and afraid. We’re not backing down," Ahmad Perez, Islip Forward's founder and executive director, told Patch.

The tracker expansion follows the lawsuit filed last Tuesday in the Supreme Court of the State of New York challenging Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman's agreement with ICE agents. It's the first lawsuit to take on the 287(g) statute in New York state, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which shared a copy of the suit on its site. At issue is Blakeman giving the Nassau County Police Department a role in handling ICE activities, which includes having 10 detectives immediately join the ICE program he announced in February.

The tracker expansion also follows the June 11 detention of Nuvia Martinez Ventura, a mother of five young children living in Brentwood who was detained at a routine immigration check-in at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City and sent to the Houston Contract Detention Facility,where she faces deportation, her attorney, Ala Amoachi, told Patch.

In a statement, IF representatives said the app expanded because "Long Island families deserve real-time information and real protection, not silence and complicity."

On June 16, IF said the tracker has "surged past 60,000 uses since its January launch," and an announcement for a Brentwood rally against ICE raids reached over 250,000 people.

In a statement, IF said that when the tracker was launched, they were "responding to fear rooted in real, verified ICE activity targeting their communities." Since then, IF reps said, each of the 37 sightings documented on the app "carries the weight of disrupted lives, separated families, and a system that refuses to be accountable."

"But over the past few weeks, something even more chilling has come into view," IF said in a statement. "We’ve seen fire departments cooperating with ICE, local police departments in Nassau and Suffolk standing by—even assisting—as people are taken from their homes. We’ve seen Bruce Blakeman fan the flames of xenophobia, stoke division and weaponize his office to make immigrants feel less safe. We've seen enough."

So the ICE tracker was expanded, bringing real-time, anonymous push alerts to every town in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

The statement continued: "Because this isn’t just happening in Islip. It’s happening in Freeport. In Westbury. In Huntington Station and Brentwood. We will always stay rooted in Islip, where this fight began. But when the institutions meant to protect us turn against us, we don’t shrink. We rise, organize and expand."