The censorship workaround.
What happens when civil-society tools are removed from app stores under government pressure? AntiFreeze is a case study in architectural resistance.
At a Glance
- What it is
- A free, anonymous, community-powered alert system for reporting ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) activity. Users within 5 miles of a sighting receive an instant push notification.
- How it's distributed
- A Progressive Web App (PWA) installed directly from a browser — not the App Store, not Google Play.
- Why that matters
- ICEBlock and similar apps were removed from Apple's and Google's stores under federal pressure in October 2025. AntiFreeze was built specifically so that can't happen to it.
- Privacy controls
- Push notifications are opt-in. Location can be set manually or turned off entirely — the app never requires live GPS. Notifications are encrypted from AntiFreeze's own servers to each device, with no third-party push vendor in between.
- Who built it
- Josh, a solo developer based in the U.S. Midwest, working on AntiFreeze as a hobby/civic-tech project.
- Users
- 4,077 as of June 17, 2026, growing organically with no paid acquisition.
- Languages
- English and Spanish — bilingual from launch.
- Cost
- Free. No ads, no data collection, no accounts. Optional donations accepted via Ko-fi and crypto — no paid features, no premium tier.
- Backed by
- Cloudflare Project Galileo — providing enterprise-level security and DDoS protection at no cost to projects serving vulnerable communities.
The 30-Second Pitch
In October 2025, the Trump administration pressured Apple and Google to remove every ICE-tracking app from their stores. ICEBlock, the most-used app in the category, was pulled overnight. The communities that relied on those tools lost them in a single news cycle.
AntiFreeze was built to survive exactly that scenario. It's a Progressive Web App — a website that installs to your phone's home screen with its own icon and splash screen, runs full-screen, and behaves like a native app, including push notifications. There is no app store gatekeeper. There is no corporate intermediary that can be pressured into removing it.
A user sees ICE activity, opens the app, taps "Report." Their location is captured, the report is anonymized, and within seconds, every AntiFreeze user within 5 miles gets a push notification. Users can also browse recent sightings nearby — as a list (newest first) or on a map — or open the full nationwide feed with a tap.
No accounts. No emails. No phone numbers. No personal data is ever collected or stored.
Screenshots
Key Facts for Reporters
How it works
- Reporting radius: Anonymous reports are pushed to all users within a 5-mile radius in real time.
- Browse view: Shown as a list by default — sightings within 25 miles from the past 48 hours, newest first — or on a map. A See All Sightings button opens the full nationwide feed of every reported sighting from the past 48 hours. (The window was 72 hours at launch; it was shortened to 48 so the feed reflects current conditions, not stale ones.)
- Install: Visit antifreeze.app on a phone browser → tap "Add to Home Screen" → done. Works on iPhone and Android.
Anonymity & privacy
- No sign-up. No account creation. No email, phone number, or name is ever requested or stored.
- AntiFreeze identifies devices via an anonymous device ID — there is no link to a real-world identity.
- Push is permission-gated. Notifications only work if you allow them, and you can opt out of sightings alerts at any time in Settings.
- Location is optional. Users can set their area manually instead of sharing live GPS, or turn location off entirely — the app never requires continuous location access.
- The project does not run ads or sell data. Voluntary donations are accepted via Ko-fi and crypto — there are no paid features, no premium tier, and donating doesn't change anything about how the app works.
Why a PWA, not a native app
- Apple removed ICEBlock from the App Store in October 2025 after the Justice Department reached out demanding its removal.
- Google followed suit and removed similar apps.
- A Progressive Web App is hosted on the open web. There is no platform gatekeeper that can remove it on government request.
- This is the central design decision of the project: censorship resistance through architecture.
Infrastructure & security
- AntiFreeze is enrolled in Cloudflare's Project Galileo, which provides free enterprise-grade security to civic-tech, journalism, and human-rights projects facing politically motivated attacks.
- Self-hosted encrypted push. AntiFreeze runs its own notification system. Push messages are encrypted from AntiFreeze's server until they reach the device, and there is no third-party push provider (such as OneSignal) that could read them or be pressured to cut them off.
- Native-app experience, no app store. The PWA installs with its own icon and splash screen and runs full-screen like a native app — with no App Store, no Google Play, no sideloaded APK, and no jailbreaking or rooting required.
- The app supports both English and Spanish, with full bilingual UI and notifications.
Growth
- Launched March 2026.
- 1,500 users in the first 48 hours of broad public exposure.
- 4,077 users as of June 17, 2026 — growing entirely through word of mouth, organic press, and community sharing.
Founder Quote
All quotes can be attributed to Josh, the solo developer behind AntiFreeze. Josh prefers to be referred to by first name only in coverage.
Primary quote — on the censorship angle
"ICEBlock didn't fail because the technology was bad. It failed because it had a single point of failure: the App Store. AntiFreeze was built so that the same phone call that killed ICEBlock can't kill this. It runs on the open web. There's no gatekeeper to pressure."
On community and protection
"If ICE is spotted four blocks from your house while you're making dinner, your phone should buzz and tell you. That's it. That's the whole idea. People deserve to know what's happening in their own neighborhoods, and they deserve a tool to share that with each other that nobody can take away."
On why a solo developer built this
"I'm one person. I don't have a company behind me, I don't take money for this, and I don't run ads. I built it because the tools communities were relying on had a single point of failure, and that failure happened exactly the way everyone should have expected it to."
On privacy
"There's no sign-up, no email, no phone number, no account. We use an anonymous device ID and that's it. We don't know who our users are, and we never will. That's not a marketing claim — it's the architecture. There's nothing to hand over because we never collected it."
Selected Press Coverage
- Border Report (Nexstar): "AntiFreeze: New mobile app tracks ICE movements, operations" — March 2026
- NewsNation, KTLA, MSN, WGN Radio, CBS17, WKRG: Syndicated coverage of the Border Report piece.
- Daily Kos: "I built an ICE tracking app that can't be pulled from the App Store. Because it was never in one." — March 2026
- Daily Kos follow-up: "AntiFreeze hit 1,500 users in 48 hours. Here's what changed." — March 2026
- Life on the Wicked Stage (warnercrocker.com): Independent blog repost referencing the Daily Kos coverage — March 2026
A current list lives at antifreeze.app/press.
Suggested Story Angles
Community safety in the immigration crackdown era.
How communities are using mutual-alert technology to protect each other in a moment of escalated enforcement.
The solo-developer civic-tech story.
One person, no funding, no team, building infrastructure that thousands of people rely on. Why this kind of project keeps emerging in moments of institutional failure.
The privacy story.
No accounts, no data collection, permission-gated notifications, optional location, and a self-hosted encrypted push system with no third-party vendor. A working counterexample to the assumption that useful apps require user data.
Built bilingual from day one.
AntiFreeze launched with full English and Spanish support — built in from the start to serve the communities most directly affected by ICE enforcement, not retrofitted later.
Available Assets
- Logo (PNG)
Download → - Press Kit (PDF)
Download → - Screenshot — Sightings Feed
Download → - Screenshot — Report Page
Download → - Screenshot — Push Alerts
Download → - Map of activity / usage geography
Email → - Founder interview
Email →
About the Developer
AntiFreeze is built and maintained by Josh, a U.S.-based solo developer who works on the project independently and as a hobby. Josh prefers to be referred to by first name only in coverage. Available for interviews via email and Bluesky.