Jack Vu and Abby Manuel had been part of a volunteer program teaching weekly computer and Spanish classes to kids in Houston’s East End for more than a year, when one day the kids stopped showing up.
Masked federal immigration officers had been making their presence felt in the Lawndale-Wayside neighborhoods, Vu said, prompting families to shelter inside. “We were reading books, throwing the football with the kids, we knew their names, and they knew our names, and it was the fear that was keeping them away,” he said.
The experience motivated the two Rice University students to create a digital map documenting U.S. Immigration Customs Agency activity, and awareness around their project has been growing since it went live in June.
“People didn’t understand what was happening in their community, they couldn’t find any information, so we wanted to fill that void,” Manuel said.
With the rise in ICE activity during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Vu said he and Manuel hope the map tracker turns a light on what is happening in communities across the country.
“People become afraid to leave their houses, participate in the usual programs or play soccer outside,” he said.
The tracker, icemap.dev, culls data from online sources to give the public a hawk-eye view of the activities of the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations nationwide .
Using the platform, Media Cloud, and generated by scripts that run on a schedule to harvest ICE-related local and national media coverage from the web, the map casts a wide net, Vu said.
“We don’t discriminate; it turns out that the aggregated stories tell the truth,” he said.
First, fuck ICE. Second, thank you, Jack and Abby, for your volunteer work and for your action. Third, take a look at what they have built and see what you can do with it, including what you can be inspired to do by it. More like this, please.
Our local group Heart of Texas Network for Immigrant Rights (HOTNIR) is using this to help track ICE activity in McLennan County.