Opposing ICE may save the country. It can also ruin your life

Listening to this implausible outline heightened my growing sense that Concepcion was fraying around the edges. Aside from dealing with routine mental health issues, he was now under enormous financial pressure: unemployed, yet on the hook for upwards of $3,000 a month in AI subscriptions and hosting services. “Last night I laid down and cried,” he told me during one vulnerable moment. “I was like, ‘Damn, this has been tough, all this not knowing what’s going to happen, not knowing where the next paycheck is going to come from.’

People in Concepcion’s orbit know that he tends to let his better angels erase his common sense. Curt Hedges, an executive at a health supplement company who has been friends with Concepcion for years, once contributed a large sum to Concepcion’s charitable efforts to buy equipment for a group of Laotian photographers. “He doesn’t have a moderate switch, he’s either all in or all out,” he says. Yet Hedges has seen how Concepcion’s emotions, however noble, can lead to personal problems, including massive credit card debt. When he started receiving text messages from Concepcion about DEICER at 3 a.m., Hedges began to worry. “I was hesitant to save him, because when you save him, it puts him in that situation for another six months,” he told me. “It’s not as healthy as it should be.”

When the ice packed up To Minneapolis this winter, its agents came equipped with all kinds of sophisticated surveillance tools. As first reported by 404 Media, for example, ICE now deploys an app called ELITE that uses Medicaid and other confidential health data to identify potential detainees. Agents were also increasing their reliance on Webloc, a software that can track every cell phone within a several-block radius.

But the city’s enthusiastic resistance was not without its own technological resources. In addition to Signal conversations, many locals have embraced People Over Papers, a crowd mapping tool found on IceOut.org that has a lot in common with DEICER. The site was filled with dozens of eyewitness reports about suspected ICE agents surveilling schools, chatting with local cops, and eating at taquerias.

I reached out to Concepcion in mid-January to get his opinion on the situation in Minneapolis and inquire about his ongoing disputes with Apple — I knew he was now preparing his third appeal over DEICER’s expulsion from the App Store. But when we connected, he said he had a more pressing concern on his mind. On the morning of January 9, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Gabriel’s father.

According to Concepcion, Gabriel’s father was driving his car with his wife to the restaurant when they were stopped. Agents praised the couple for their cooperation, then gave them an agonizing choice: One would have to submit to arrest, while the other could be released, Concepcion said. Gabriel’s father volunteered to fall and was subsequently transferred to Batavia, the same detention center where his son spent a few terrible weeks in April.

Concepcion dropped everything to once again provide material assistance to Gabriel’s family. He arranged a meeting with a lawyer, who indicated that bail was highly unlikely in the current environment; Instead, he recommended filing a habeas corpus petition, a legal maneuver that could take several months to process. (Since January 2025, more than 30,000 people in immigration detention centers have filed habeas corpus petitions.) Concepcion also traveled to Batavia to visit Gabriel’s father, who was in poor health due to the facility’s conditions. Sections of the center are exposed to temperatures so low during the winter that detainees have nicknamed them “Las Hieleras,” meaning ice boxes.