This Indiana man made an app to hold ICE accountable. Now, he's suing. - IndyStar

Mark Hodges was in the third or fourth grade at Carmel's Smoky Row Elementary School when he used his First Amendment rights to push back against leadership.

In an attempt to overturn a new assigned seating policy, he drafted a petition and circulated it among his classmates. He met and presented it to his principal but ultimately was unsuccessful.

More than two decades later, he is again pushing back against authority.

Hodges and a Facebook moderator from Chicago are suing two top Trump officials — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem — for pressuring Apple and Meta to remove channels created to monitor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The lawsuit is backed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a national First Amendment watchdog organization.

"When this pressure did come from the government to remove it from the app store, it obviously came with a choice," he said. "It's an important lesson that when the government overreaches and when the government oversteps, you can't just shrug and move on. They work for us, not the other way around."

The Indiana native is behind the ICE monitoring website and app, Eyes Up, which is a video archive where users can submit footage or record directly into the app. It's one of several apps, social media pages and collectives the Trump administration is targeting.

Bondi, Noem and other federal officials have repeatedly criticized ICE monitoring apps, social media pages and groups, claiming that it risks officers' safety and is illegal.

Hodges called their assertions absurd. It's necessary and a constitutionally protected activity to document and preserve examples of what federal enforcement looks like, he said, especially as enforcement grows more aggressive and present in communities across the country.

"I didn't really think it would attract as much attention as it has, positive and negative," he said. "I'm not affiliated with a political party. I don't like either of 'em. It just happens that this administration is doing something incredibly egregious, and so I think that they need to be held to account for that."

Despite being unavailable for IOS users, Eyes Up is still accessible via its website and the Google Play Store.

Drawn to accountability

Hodges, 33, considers himself a longtime First Amendment advocate, especially when using those rights to hold the government accountable. That ethos motivated him to attend the Missouri School of Journalism.

"I didn't end up spending much time in journalism in terms of my professional career, but it has always been an ongoing interest of mine," he said. "I was happy to come back to this whole idea of government accountability, really citizen journalism in a way."

For the past decade, he and his wife have been self-employed, assisting commercial clients with advertising campaigns and video production. The flexibility of Hodges' day job made it possible to work on his passion project in his free time.

Last year, he created a spreadsheet to track videos posted of immigration enforcement, but when he'd go check on those links, they'd sometimes be deleted. He decided to act when a Reddit moderator took down a video filmed during immigration raids and protests in Los Angeles.

After that, Hodges began working on the bones of what would become Eyes Up from his quiet, tree-shaded home in Brown County, where he lives with his young family. He started an LLC for the project called the Kreisau Group, which references an anti-Hitler resistance group in Nazi Germany that Hodges came across while reading over the years.

The information catalogued on his website could be used in immigration hearings, lawsuits and news coverage, he said. It moves the archiving process to a safer space, he said, out of the hands of social media companies, where content could disappear for a number of reasons.

"That was the goal to make this into a place where government accountability could actually happen," he told IndyStar. "Evidence could be preserved, and it's all protected under the First Amendment."

Behind Eyes Up

Though not a web or app developer by trade, Hodges said Eyes Up started as a simple, free website. As it gained traction, he turned it into an app for greater accessibility.

After debuting on Apple and the Google Play Store last fall, Hodges said his app has 5,000 active users and hundreds of videos.

The key difference between Eyes Up and other apps like ICEBlock and Facebook ICE sighting groups is that it does not provide real-time location data about ICE operations — a key grievance of Trump officials. Regardless, posting that information is still largely protected by the First Amendment.

Eyes Up has two functions: importing video and viewing a map of submitted footage. The website also has a feature where a person can record video into the website where it will automatically save into the cloud if the phone is confiscated or destroyed, which has happened in some cases.

Americans have a First Amendment right to observe and record law enforcement and other government employees while they are doing their jobs publicly, according to several First Amendment organizations. They can do so as long as don't interfere with officers' work.

After users submit footage, Hodges and his team of 30 volunteers vet the videos to confirm the date and location they were filmed. They use street view on Google Maps to identify physical landmarks and check for oddities to ensure it's not faked or created by artificial intelligence. He said they fact-check the best they can using public information and news reports.

That work, he said, creates "a really accurate, highly vetted list of occurrences."

The website includes a map with pinpoints of submitted videos, mirroring hotspots where enforcement has been most intense. Around Indianapolis, Eyes Up includes four videos, including a forceful arrest of Honduran men last year. The other three are unconfirmed sightings.

Despite being unavailable for Apple users, Hodges said he is already seeing a spike in use following the lawsuit. He said he and his volunteers will be busy working through the existing backlog of submitted videos.

The USA TODAY Network - Indiana's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.