Two Rice University freshmen, Jack Vu and Abby Manuel, have developed an online platform called ICE Map to track immigration enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents across the country. The tool aggregates local news reports to provide real-time information on ICE activities, aiming to inform communities amid heightened enforcement since President Trump's second inauguration. Inspired by personal experiences in Houston, the students launched the project shortly after high school and have since gained attention from activists and presented at MIT.
Since President Trump's second inauguration in 2025, ICE has intensified enforcement in major cities, employing methods that have sparked protests and scrutiny, including the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. In response, Rice University freshmen Jack Vu and Abby Manuel created ICE Map, an online tool that consolidates verified local news reports on ICE actions to show where and how enforcement unfolds in real time.
The idea stemmed from Vu's volunteer work with immigrant children in East Houston. In April 2025, the children stopped attending sessions after an ICE raid left families afraid to leave home. "They’re not even going to school," Vu recalled. Manuel, a high school classmate, joined him, and they began coding in coffee shops, launching the site within two weeks. They used Media Cloud to gather articles from local newspapers, filtering for relevance to immigration enforcement and excluding false positives like weather-related mentions of 'ice.'
ICE Map processes thousands of articles through a pipeline to identify relevant incidents with location data, mapping them for users in areas like Houston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. "We pull thousands and thousands of articles... and assess if they’re relevant to ICE activity," Vu explained. Unlike crowdsourced reports, it relies on vetted news sources, including some ICE releases, to provide a broad picture. The platform has attracted around 100,000 users, with most traffic from Washington, DC, Cleveland, and Houston.
Reception has been largely positive, especially locally, though initial online promotion drew mixed reviews. Visibility surged after Greta Thunberg shared it on Instagram and Rice University highlighted the project. The students presented at the 2025 New(s) Knowledge Symposium at MIT, incorporating feedback to refine the tool. "Getting to present it to them was the first time I felt like we realized that, ‘OK, this tool is really, really meaningful,’" Manuel said.
Looking ahead, Vu and Manuel plan to expand sources for greater accuracy, viewing the project as a blend of technology and public policy. They distinguish ICE Map from databases like the blocked ICE List by focusing solely on public news, not individual agents. Amid events like the Minneapolis shootings, Vu noted the map's role in revealing truths: "What hurts ICE the most is for people to know the exact truth about what they’re doing."
