Initially created to promote Latino businesses, the app already has more than 100,000 downloads.
14ymedio, Miami, 19 June 2025 — The maps in the Hack Latino app were originally created to discover places, businesses and restaurants, and to share them with the Latino community in the United States. Happy destinations, very different from what its users are seeing these days as an addition: indications about where raids of the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) are being carried out in real time.
The app already has more than 100,000 downloads in the Play Store and in WhatsApp groups among Cubans with Form I220A: it is “the theme of the moment,” says Pedro, from Havana. He arrived in Florida more than three years ago by the “route of the volcanoes,” via Nicaragua. Now awaiting a hearing in the Immigration Court since he arrived in 2022, he is part of a group at risk of detention and deportation, among which the use of Hack Latino is multiplying.
“It was a lot of work and took us so much work to get to a country where we thought we would be safe”
“It is helping many of us to be alert and take precautions,” another I220A migrant who prefers anonymity tells this newspaper. “It took us a lot of work to get to a country where we thought we would be safe,” he says, complaining about the tightening of immigration policies by the Trump Administration, which includes increased surveillance, the ability granted to ICE agents to detain foreigners in any city of the country and the order for mass deportations.
The man, who gradually managed to bring his wife and children from Cuba, continues: “We are living in a horror movie. I understand that they want to clean up the country, but I think they should do it with criminals, not family people who are working just to bring a put a plate of food on the table.”
Among the “I220As”as they call themselves, there is the same mood, not only of concern but also of disappointment. When Trump took office, the general opinion of those who had this type of permission was favorable to the new president, full of hope that he would regularize their situation. They have been in migratory limbo since Trump canceled the policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden, and now their tone has changed completely.
“This crazy old man is leading the country to chaos and ruin. This is not defending the republic! This is racism followed by oligarchy with a view to forced dictatorship,” says one of the comments that can be read in a group of migrants. “What matters is to satisfy the whim of that madman in the White House,” replied another.
“This crazy old man is leading the country to chaos and ruin”
These are some of Hack Latino’s new clients. Created as “a community of Latinos in the US to connect businesses and highlight the importance of Latin America,” the new use given to its interactive maps actually connects with the story of its founder, Adrián Lozano Jr., a Mexican emigrant to the United States.
In an interview with Factor de Éxito [Success Factor], the entrepreneur, born in the Mexican city of Torreón, Coahuila, recounts how he became aware of the needs of migrants “by performing traditional jobs for the Latino community, from construction to catering.” His app, he explained, “seeks not only to provide critical information, but also to empower the Latino community to actively participate in the economy and be successful in its journey through the United States.”
Lozano also shared “a key experience that marked his commitment to the Latino community”: the deportation of a relative when he was nine years old, which left him with “a deep scar, but also strengthened his determination.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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