What To Do When You See ICE in Your Neighborhood

Federal agents near MacArthur Park in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles on July Photo Carlin Steihl Los Angeles Times via Getty Images To commemorate days of its Los Angeles occupation U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its auxiliary federal forces swarmed the city s MacArthur Park earlier this week with cavalry gunner-mounted humvees and lines of agents kitted out for war Monday s boondoggle later revealed in a leak as Operation Excalibur resulted in no known arrests This slapdash show of force accomplished little more than shutting down a children s summer camp and further pissing off beleaguered Angelenos It failed in part because LA has spent the past month learning how to fight back Local news reports indicate that activists were ready They preemptively raised the alarm with multilingual flyers had lawyers on deck and shouted warnings through megaphones once federal agents arrived During the botched raid U S Perimeter Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino made it clear that the occupation is only just beginning Better get used to us now Bovino advised Fox News at the scene Because this is going to be normal very soon We will go anywhere any time we want in Los Angeles We re peaceful people But we re not going to allow y all to kidnap us to beat us to brutalize us But in Downtown LA that evening a coalition of district groups held their own press conference celebrating days of resistance Well aware of the impotence or unwillingness of elected leaders to meaningfully hinder the federal terrorization of the city and the complicity of local law enforcement these groups have spent the past month numerous much longer than that organizing collective approaches to protect those without documentation Fired up by that morning s raid speakers were clear-eyed about the David-vs -Goliath fight ahead But they were more resolved than ever to win it As everyone there seemed to fully understand Los Angeles is the test matter for what President Donald Trump will try to get away with elsewhere Fighting back here matters far beyond city limits Ron Gochez who founded Uni n del Barrio s LA chapter and helpers patrolling the streets and manning the hotlines for the affiliated Locality Self Defense Coalition closed the rally with an impassioned call to action Related Documenting ICE Agents Brutal Use of Force in LA Immigration Raids If they want to keep attacking us they have to know they re going to suffer losses too he shouted to a roaring crowd You can take it how you want We re peaceful people But we re not going to allow y all to kidnap us to beat us to brutalize us We re not going to allow it We will fight back But what can you literally do to effectively resist when not if ICE comes to your town With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act s unprecedented new funding for Trump s detention and deportation machine it s clear the administration s fascistic operations will only grow bigger and bolder I ve been reporting on and observing anti-ICE agitation around LA nearly every day over the past month In this time I spoke with activists leading the fight including Gochez and experts from organizations like No Sleep for ICE the National Immigrant Justice Center and the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles or NLG-LA Here are certain tips gleaned from those conversations on what to do when the state s masked kidnappers descend upon your town Understand the Risks To gain certain on-the-ground advocacy experience while pursuing her law degree Elizabeth Howell-Egan became a board member at the NLG-LA which provides pro bono legal patronage for immigrants and protesters arrested by federal agents She cautioned that while the First Amendment and other protections should safeguard those recording and reporting on immigration raids there s often a gulf between the letter and application of the law NLG-LA takes great pains to underscore this disparity and the unfair but inherent dangers that come with exercising these liberties at their popular know your rights workshops Know your rights know your risks know your reality We say know your rights know your risks know your reality Howell-Egan explained Saying I don t consent to this search seemingly won t stop the police from searching you But that could make it so in theory they have to throw out whatever charge they find from that illegal search Like others I spoke to Howell-Egan encouraged activists to do their utmost to avoid the expensive time-consuming and physically perilous prospect of arrest Calling resistance efforts a marathon not a sprint she stated a preference for collective mass-defense approaches that endanger as inadequate individual protesters as attainable Salute When You re the Source Out running errands and see a cluster of weirdos kitted out for war milling about like they re stuck in a Call of Duty matchmaking lobby Grab particular pics and vids to raise the alarm Keep in mind that specificity is paramount when logging these sightings both to increase efficacy and avoid panic Fortunately one of master s own tools has proven itself an invaluable counterintelligence asset Plucked straight from U S military field books the acronym S A L U T E can help you gather the majority pertinent details It s also the practice almost universally recommended by the groups I spoke to Size How several people and or vehicles do you see Activity What specifically are they doing that s suspicious Location What address cross streets or landmark are they at the more specific the better Uniform What are they wearing whether it s fatigues nondescript civilian clothes or something else entirely Time What date and time did you observe them Equipment What guns weapons or devices do they appear to be carrying Follow and Repost With Discretion Thanks for taking such comprehensive notes Now where do you send them There s no evidence the feds are conducting how do you do fellow antifa honeypot busts But anyone attempting to post alerts about the sessions of federal agents would be wise to operate as if they were The groups I spoke to remain concerned about infiltrators stymying their efforts Even at the press conference activists clocked and called out a suspected undercover among the crowd Unfortunately there s no one-size-fits-all approach for this element of activism To safely discover and interact with the patchwork of anti-ICE exercises around LA I relied on trusted individuals from my personal configuration of journalists and activists as well as neighborhood groups and organizers leading local efforts But if you re just getting started the accounts mentioned in this article any of the more than groups that have joined LA s Area Self Defense Coalition or the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights are solid sources of information And if you re ever unsure about an entity s bona fides sites like mutualaidhub org can help determine if an outfit is legit or carpetbagging Share Tips Thoroughly and Responsibly After sharing your hot ICE tip there s another key step Call your area s Rapid Response Framework a multi-organizational community-based coalition that helps mobilize to protect vulnerable immigrant groups in real time These groups can take your tip and turn it into action Take for instance No Sleep for ICE The group s Instagram account provides daily lists of hotels lodging federal agents resulting in noisy protests designed to make the occupation inhospitable for the occupiers No Sleep for ICE also does the critical job of issuing on-the-fly corrections and win posts once a location is certified agent-free A No Sleep for ICE representative who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for their safety mentioned the account functions thanks to a system of participants who turn tips into a robust database of vehicles license plates individuals and locations deduced to be associated with the federal forces This critical information is relevant for just a short moment making the group s work feel almost Sisyphean Nothing is consistent Everything changes every day the representative noted We can produce photos in the present day and by the following day none of it will matter No Sleep for ICE relies almost entirely on neighborhood tipsters to piece together enough of the puzzle to build a working theory of which hotels are hosting agents before the group begins the corroboration process The last thing the group wants according to the source is to act on a false positive The overarching fear brought about by the raids has engendered a better safe than sorry reporting strategy among citizen spotters where anything that could be ICE-related is passed along But tipsters could considerably lighten the load by spending a limited extra seconds confirming their information before contacting tip lines We may never know how much worse the false sighting predicament has been made by deeply ingrained and addictive social incentives of the online platforms used to share warnings Nonetheless every tip sent to No Sleep for ICE and other society watchdogs has to be investigated often sending helpers scrambling to check false alarms such as Recreation and Parks Department employees Forest Rangers and film crews Taking an additional beat to check a suspicious car for tinted windows hidden grille lights or a backseat cage can mean the difference between sending contributors on a goose chase or confirming a true threat Remove When It s No Longer Relevant Though Snapchat and Instagram stories condition us to believe our online ephemera expires after a -hour life cycle counterintelligence warnings warrant more advancing digital stewardship Don t forget to take your post down and ideally replace it with an update or retraction should the situation change This practice may seem like overkill but there can be real consequences Outdated or unsubstantiated warnings don t just merely send latecomers into harm s way They also keep people from their jobs customers from businesses and exacerbate the society of fear these raids seek to foment Nobody s perfect or keeping a record of you here Consider this the digital activism equivalent of returning your shopping cart Do the small but right thing Download Signal if You Haven t Yet Organizers have so far used the big social media platforms to great effect to protect their local immigrant communities But these tech platforms are nonetheless inherently compromised by the oligarchs who own them There s not yet concrete proof these services are feeding relevant intel to an administration they are courting during this renaissance of pay-to-play politics but it s prudent to act as if they are Enter Signal the imperfect but still exceedingly secure messaging app historically favored by journalists whistleblowers and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth For various activists this end-to-end encryption app became standard operating procedure long before ICE s onslaught But as more first-timers are joining the cause it s useful to follow these guidelines If it s sent to you on Signal particularly images and videos don t take that content off the app at least without permission Set a timer so your messages and images automatically expire after a while Don t use your legal name or phone number as your user name If you must screenshot cropping out all avatars and initials is just the start Also scour the text or image for any potentially identifying features Signal even has a tool for blurring critical information If an event organizer has already posted about an activity on a social media platform it s likely fine to reshare it there But if you want to share with someone who is not a mutual on declared platform sending that link or image via Signal is more secure than doing so over iMessage or WhatsApp Those abstracted philosophical hypotheticals trolley problems and obviously satirical jokes you share with your pals that touch upon topics like violence sedition and treason are a healthy reaction to processing the horrors of the world around us But don t you ever put that in any text box outside of Signal It doesn t invariably matter if you never hit send When in Doubt Just Call Them Feds A recurring tactic of this administration and its online minions bots and boot-lickers alike has been to weaponize pedantry The tactic is to discredit or exclusively waste the time of well-intentioned people by challenging anyone who mixes up any inconsequential detail while chronicling the chaos unfolding around them Such was the development when the Department of Homeland Shield deployed a historically grim um veritably on June after the Los Angeles Dodgers claimed to turn away ICE agents attempting to use their stadium for raid staging This had nothing to do with the Dodgers DHS quote tweet challenged CBP vehicles were in the stadium parking lot very briefly unrelated to any operation or enforcement Aw geez Turns out they were Customs and Demarcation Patrol not ICE Who gives a shit Especially when they re all working toward the same evil ends while purposefully obfuscating their identities Don t sweat if you can t figure out which federal agency a group of Special Ops cosplayers belong to but don t chum in the water either When in doubt a simple feds will suffice Related ICE Stated They Were Being Flown to Louisiana Their Flight Landed in Africa Open Your Wallet Multiple of the immigrants targeted by feds make their living selling food as street vendors The looming threat of raids has made it near impossible for them to do their public-facing jobs so activists have begun organizing cart buy-outs to purchase and redistribute their product for them If you ve been meaning to get more fresh fruit in your diet there s never been a better time or method to do so than with one of these If you have a insufficient dollars more to spare consider donating directly to the organizations advancing in your neighborhood Even the ones not asking for donations would almost certainly accept a scant bucks to help with all the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by their contributors Volunteer Your Time Though this guide is primarily advising on observe and summary -style resistance efforts there s certainly more you can do if posting ICE sightings and attending protests doesn t feel like enough There are free street medic training classes car caravan blockades and even population watches to join But you should keep in mind that such interventionist approaches come with higher degrees of threat and warrant more in-depth training than just reading an article The a multitude of organizations making up LA s Locality Self Defense Coalition conduct the boots-on-the-ground work protecting residents of this sanctuary city that its elected authorities and law enforcement officers refuse Society Self Defense Coalition supporters like Gochez often wind up playing the role of scouts Once ICE agents are spotted participants follow them to their target location and get on megaphones warning members of the district to stay indoors or as Gochez described a contemporary domination in the Highland Park neighborhood encouraging everyone with documentation to come outside and scare the outnumbered agents into retreat Gochez a high school history lecturer of years starts his prowl for ICE at a m He communicated me that there s inevitably a need for more assistants though he d prefer would-be patrollers get properly educated first We ve trained thousands of people to do society patrols in different parts of the country and here in LA locally he disclosed But we re also getting a ton of people patrolling on their own and following agents too close or too fast and that can get ugly very fast We can visibly tell that the agents are really really frustrated Community opinion is absolutely turning against them While Gochez laments that anyone has been captured in governing body operations at all he thinks the figure would be much worse if people were not so aware of their rights or stepping up to protect each other We know that a lot of people have been taken in LA explained Gochez but we know that this would be times worse if it wasn t for the organized resistance that we ve been putting up against these people And we can visibly tell that the agents are really really frustrated Community opinion is absolutely turning against them The post What To Do When You See ICE in Your Neighborhood appeared first on The Intercept