Raid Alerts app will help warn undocumented immigrants of impending raids
A start up is creating an app to crowdsource information about immigration raids to provide alerts to help undocumented immigrants avoid them.
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The app is being developed by 27-year-old developer Celso Mireles, who like many of the 11 million plus undocumented immigrants living in the US, has lived in fear of surprise deportations.
"The process is to crowdsource information [on raids] and verify it," Mireles told Motherboard. "If someone reports a raid, there has to be multiple verifications. Organizers from the immigrant community want to defend against trolls. Then the system will know and send a message to everyone in a 10 to 20 mile radius."
Mireles, who has recently become documented after 25 years living in fear of immigration raids, began work on the app during the Obama administration but has since ramped up development in light of the recent increase in raids.
The open source project, known as Raid Alerts has gained much support recently with volunteers coming in from software developer GitHub.
The app, which is expected to launch in around three months, will send SMS alerts to subscribers based on indicators like geolocation or a zip code which they provide when signing up. A web app version is also looking to display a feed of social media content on a specific hashtag based around the raid, providing even more visibility.