New safety app Watcho aims to protect LA Latinos from immigration raids

Like many people, when immigration enforcement operations broke out in Los Angeles more than a year ago, Adrian Hernandez felt a driving force to help, protect and uplift the communities he admired and cared about.

The 27-year-old born and raised in the Mid City neighborhood in Central L.A. — heavily hit by ICE raids — redirected his work to creating an app where Spanish-speaking Latinos could stay up to date with the latest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sightings and arrests, as well as other real-time safety incidents.

Hernandez, a recent University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) graduate, used his studies in design media arts and entrepreneurship to develop and launch Watcho, a real-time safety map for L.A. and Southern California built specifically for the Latino community, to share and track incidents as they happen. 

When ICE raids took full force in L.A., Hernandez saw the many daily incidents throughout the city. “I noticed there wasn't one centralized place to store that information and incidents,” he said. “I thought to myself that there could be a better way of storing this information and making it more accessible to people.”

How it works

The free app displays reported incidents as pins on a full-screen map of L.A. and California. 

Incidents are submitted and logged daily by Hernandez and additional Watcho administrators, he said. Some reports are also made available through the Stop ICE Raids Alert Network and integrated into the app. Hernandez said that with Watcho, the goal is to build a system that allows users to upload their own reports, but as of now, for accuracy and to avoid misinformation, only verified and confirmed reports by administrators are displayed in the app. 

“Watcho only shows confirmed reports through all these sources as we wish to provide the latest concrete up-to-date news,” he said. 

One of the most categorized incidents in the Watcho app is that of “kidnappings,” logged this way for transparency purposes, according to Hernandez.

“For example, there have been too many videos of people being stopped in their car during a traffic stop or just pulled over randomly and then stripped away from the car violently. That's quite literally kidnapping,” he said. 

Incidents on the app are all color-coded, with recent sightings displayed in orange, recent kidnappings in red and incidents happening in real time in green.  

When opening the app, users can use their current location to see incidents in the exact radius they are located, but Hernandez explained they can decline this feature and input a location manually or simply explore regions within the entire map. 

One of the app's key features is that anyone can use it without worrying about their name, location, email or other personal information being used. Unlike other apps, Watcho does not require users to create an account or sign up to access the map. 

App origins and security

As a first-generation Mexican American, with parents from Oaxaca, Mexico, Hernandez said the inspiration behind the app was his family, who were Spanish speakers and for whom accessing information about raids in real time was not as easy to find or navigate digitally. 

Hernandez, who after college worked as a product designer for companies like Snap Inc., decided to develop something independently under his own design collective, Taque Studios. “I really love focusing my work around people and my values around community,” he said.

The idea behind the app originated from seeing increasing reports from community patrol groups like Union del Barrio, Centro CSO, Los Angeles Rapid Response Network and the Community Self Defense Coalition, as well as news segments like the Daily Memo, a daily report back on ICE sightings and other verified incidents shared by L.A. Taco reporters and staff. He got the idea to create Watcho so that these sightings and arrests could be documented, archived and monitored in one single place. 

“This [app] would not be possible without them,” Hernandez said when talking about ICE watchers, community first responders and patrols. 

Unlike other high-tech apps, which collect and monetize users' personal information through third-party advertisers and data brokers, Watcho does not require any personal information or even a login. 

“This was a very intentional decision when creating the app,” Hernandez said. “I realized there's not a lot of trust within the Latino community when it comes to technology, software or companies that do mass surveillance.”

Hernandez said that in a time when federal immigration enforcement relies heavily on mass surveillance technologies, data aggregation, and artificial intelligence to dox people with license plate readers, facial recognition software and cellphone location tracking, he wanted to create an app that didn't compromise his community’s privacy. 

"I wanted to get rid of any login information. I don't want to store any data. I want this to be instantaneous to users and to the Latino community and for it to actually help people in real time,” he said. 

Language justice 

Another of the app's key features is being able to set it up to function in either Spanish or English.

“Latino communities speak Spanish, so this was a huge pivotal feature that needed to be in the app. [Users] can dictate their preferred language right away as soon as you open the app,” Hernandez said. 

Making the app bilingual was the most obvious choice, he said, as he had grown up in spaces where language barriers limited social connection, civic participation and community integration for many.

“I go back to my mom, who strictly speaks Spanish. Making sure that she's able to use this app was a huge indicator that this is a necessity and I had to build it like that,” he said. 

Latinos in tech

As a first-generation Latino working in the technology world, building apps that can track and document immigration enforcement, he said, has been a challenging journey but also one that has reminded him of the value his parents taught him and his siblings. 

“This is one way I can give back to my community, which has helped me so much,” he said. 

When asked if he ever feared facing increased targeting and pressure — the way many immigrant advocates and groups helping immigrants in L.A. have faced in the last months—he said he continuously tries to redirect that fear. 

“I don't think it's the fear that drives me. It's more that I know there are more people in need of information because they are actually fearing for their lives and their safety,” he said. “I'm first-generation Mexican American and anything could change, but as of now I have this privilege of not having to worry about things like that.”

Hernandez, who previously worked in San Francisco—home to cutting-edge technology and app giants like Apple, Google and Meta — said being a Latino building apps for his immediate community has been a lifelong dream. 

“Sometimes there are a lot of things weighing against us, but there's no dream too big. There's nothing we, Latinos, can't do,” he said. 

Watcho is available on the Android Store. In its first week, it had 56 downloads, all organic. This week, the app became available for iOS. 

In the near future, Hernandez looks to connect and partner with organizations and community ICE observers to help ensure that all sightings are documented with more accuracy and details and that the app could be used as a tool for the immigrant community of L.A. and throughout Southern California. 

“Watcho wouldn't be here today without the people, community organizers, watch groups and people who run their own resources and local groups. The more we work together, the more information we have to showcase and share with the Latino community, and the more resources we have,” he said. 

You can now download the app on the Android Play Store or on iOS for iPhone users.