NPR. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong. And I'm Daryam Woods. It's becoming a familiar

site in Chicago and its neighboring suburbs.

Residents and bystanders, spot-masked and armed agents that look like they're part of the federal government's deportation campaign there.

That's led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.

Neighborhood residents honked their car horns when they see agents.

They blow whistles. Get out of you. They film video on their phones.

They text each other and call in tips to local immigration advocacy groups. This activity is hard to escape. I live in a Chicago suburb and I've seen helicopters circling overhead and my social

media groups are blowing up. And it's not just Chicago. Agents from ICE and U.S. Customs and Border

Protection are also carrying out immigration enforcement in cities like Los Angeles and Portland,

Oregon. And a lot of residents are using their phones to document and report sightings of agents.

But the federal government is going after major tech platforms that facilitate these alerts.

It asked Facebook to suspend a group called Ice Sighting Chicagoland that had almost 80,000 members.

And it asked Apple to remove an ice-spotting mobile app from its platform.

Today on the show, we talked to the developer behind that Apple app, and we learn what the

government crackdown on these tech tools has to do with the ongoing legal battle over Apple's

power in mobile apps.

Joshua Aaron caught the tech bug early.

He learned its first computer language at an after-school program in fourth grade.

When he was 13, he wrote a blackjack program on an Apple computer.

Later on, he got certified as a desktop technician for the company.

I love their operating system. Their devices are phenomenal.

I happen to love their products.

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