What To Do When You See ICE in Your Neighborhood
Justin Caffier is a journalist and occasional artist based out of Los Angeles. His investigative and experiential writing has featured in VICE, New York Magazine, and other outlets. You can find him on most platforms @justin caffier .
To commemorate 30 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. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino made it clear that the occupation is only just beginning. 'Better get used to us now,' Bovino told 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 community groups held their own press conference celebrating 30 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 — many 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 case for what President Donald Trump will try to get away with elsewhere. Fighting back here matters far beyond city limits.
Ron Gochez, who founded Unión del Barrio's LA chapter and volunteers patrolling the streets and manning the hotlines for the affiliated Community Self Defense Coalition, closed the rally with an impassioned call to action.
'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 actually 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 some tips gleaned from those conversations on what to do when the state's masked kidnappers descend upon your town.
To gain some 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 support 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' probably 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 few individual protesters as possible.
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 some 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 most pertinent details. It's also the practice almost universally recommended by the groups I spoke to.
Size: How many 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 activities 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 activities around LA, I relied on trusted individuals from my personal network of journalists and activists, as well as community groups and organizers leading local efforts. But if you're just getting started, the accounts mentioned in this article, any of the more than 65 groups that have joined LA's Community 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.
After sharing your hot ICE tip, there's another key step. Call your area's Rapid Response Network, 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 victory posts once a location is confirmed agent-free.
A No Sleep for ICE representative, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for their safety, said the account functions thanks to a network of volunteers who turn tips into a robust database of vehicles, license plates, individuals, and locations believed 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 said. 'We can produce photos today and, by tomorrow, none of it will matter.'
No Sleep for ICE relies almost entirely on community 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 few extra seconds confirming their information before contacting tip lines.
We may never know how much worse the false sighting problem 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 community watchdogs has to be investigated — often sending volunteers 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 volunteers on a goose chase or confirming a true threat.
Though Snapchat and Instagram stories condition us to believe our online ephemera expires after a 24-hour life cycle, counterintelligence warnings warrant more active 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 culture 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.
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 many activists, this end-to-end encryption app became standard operating procedure long before ICE's 2025 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 said 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 always matter if you never hit 'send.'
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 simply 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 case when the Department of Homeland Security deployed a historically grim 'um, actually' on June 19 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 Border 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.
Many 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 few dollars more to spare, consider donating directly to the organizations active in your community. Even the ones not asking for donations would almost certainly accept a few bucks to help with all the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by their volunteers.
Though this guide is primarily advising on 'observe and report'-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 community watches to join. But you should keep in mind that such interventionist approaches come with higher degrees of risk and warrant more in-depth training than just reading an article.
The many organizations making up LA's Community Self Defense Coalition conduct the boots-on-the-ground work protecting residents of this 'sanctuary city' that its elected officials and law enforcement officers refuse.
Community Self Defense Coalition volunteers like Gochez often wind up playing the role of scouts. Once ICE agents are spotted, volunteers follow them to their target location and get on megaphones, warning members of the community to stay indoors or, as Gochez described a recent victory in the Highland Park neighborhood, encouraging everyone with documentation to come outside and scare the outnumbered agents into retreat.
Gochez, a high school history teacher of 20 years, starts his prowl for ICE at 5:30 a.m. He told me that there's always a need for more volunteers, though he'd prefer would-be patrollers get properly educated first.
'We've trained thousands of people to do [community patrols] in different parts of the country and here in LA locally,' he said. '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 quickly.'
'We can visibly tell that the agents are really, really frustrated. Public opinion is absolutely turning against them.'
While Gochez laments that anyone has been captured in government 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,' said Gochez, 'but we know that this would be 10 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. Public opinion is absolutely turning against them.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
LOL: NYT writer admits that shaming right-wing family members failed
One of my favorite recurring features in the mainstream media — maybe it's a favorite of yours as well — is when some progressive liberal in The New York Times or The Atlantic or elsewhere writes a column on how to avoid your conservative family members during Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or even the Fourth of July. The premise of these articles is always the same: The toxic rightwing views of your grandma, or your Uncle Steve, or your great aunt Betty, constitute a form of emotional labor that you, a good, moral, upstanding progressive should not have to be subjected to. Some of these entries don't merely suggest that liberals should avoid and shun rightwing family members and friends — they actually suggest that you should belittle or mock them. You may remember a ghastly Los Angeles Times column with this title: ' Mocking anti-vaxxer's COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but necessary.' Indeed, COVID vaccine skeptics were a favorite target of liberal op-ed writers year after year. But now, one card-carrying member of the liberal establishment, former Obama speechwriter David Litt, thinks that showing conservatives and covid vaccine skeptics was, in fact, a mistake of sorts. And he has a new piece in The New York Times that makes that case. It's called 'Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?' I'd say it was never time to snub your family over politics in the first place. But better late than never, I suppose. In his op-ed, Litt explains how for years he sort of tried to avoid making conversation with his brother-in-law, Matt, an ardent Joe Rogan fan who possesses contrarian, non-mainstream opinions that aren't universally right-wing but are definitely non-progressive. Matt, importantly, declined to get the COVID vaccine, a choice that David disdained. He wrote the following in his New York Times column: 'We were on opposite sides of a cultural civil war. The deepest divide was vaccination. I wasn't shocked when Matt didn't get the COVID shot. But I was baffled. Turning down a vaccine during a pandemic seemed like a rejection of science and self-preservation. It felt like he was tearing up the social contract that, until that point, I'd imagined we shared. Had Matt been a friend rather than a family member, I probably would have cut off contact completely. As it was, on the rare and always outdoor occasions when we saw each other, I spoke in disapproving snippets.' To David's credit, he admits in the column that he's decided he was wrong to snub his vaccine-hesitant relative. David says that this siloing effect, whereby we start only interacting with people with whom we totally agree, is unhealthy for the country. He writes, 'When we cut off contacts, or let algorithms sort us into warring factions, we forget that not so long ago, we used to have things to talk about that didn't involve politics. Shunning plays into the hands of demagogues, making it easier for them to divide us and even, in some cases, to incite violence.' I agree with that, and I'm glad David no longer thinks that it's a good idea to shun people over politics as a general principle. He's sorry he did that and admits he was wrong. But here's the thing: Shouldn't David also admit that his main beef with his relative — the thing that so riled him up about right-wing people — was a fervent belief that David ended up being wrong about, namely the importance of the COVID vaccine? Nowhere in his column does this progressive New York Times writer — who was willing to shun someone for not getting the jab — acknowledge that as it turned out, getting that vaccine is a personal choice that doesn't have much bearing on other people's health. David writes that choosing not to get the vaccine was shredding the social contract. Actually, no, forcing people to get the COVID vaccine on pain of losing their jobs — now that was shredding the social contract. And it's exactly what former President Joe Biden tried to do, until the Supreme Court stopped him. So while I'm happy to see New York Times liberals admit that it's bad form to lose friends and family members over politics, I'd also like to see them admit that when it came to this issue, specifically, they were really, really wrong. But don't worry. To any liberal friends and family members, I'm certainly not going to shun you because of it.
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Former NHL enforcer Nick Tarnasky gives full story behind viral golf fight video: ‘That instantly set him off'
Former NHL enforcer Nick Tarnasky has shared his side of the wild golf course fight that blew up in social media videos last week. On the 'Spittin' Chiclets' podcast, Tarnasky said the fight erupted on Hole 15 of the Alberta Springs Golf Course in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada on July 4, with an inebriated man taking 20-25 minutes to play each hole and challenging course-goers to fights. 'At the end of the day, I asked him not to, told him he shouldn't get involved with me, I asked him to move on, I gave him every opportunity not to, and he charged at me,' Tarnasky said. 'I'm not going to fold over, that's not my nature.' The fight did not end well for the drunk golfer, since identified as a man named Trevor Ogilvie, who ended up getting tossed in a pond and badly beaten up by Tarnasky. Tarnasky, who is 6-foot-2, 230 pounds and played five seasons in the NHL, said the altercation took place after Ogilvie was threatening to fight just about everyone in his path, including Tarnasky's friend and friend's fiancee. With Ogilvie and his friend holding up Hole 15, Tarnasky said he rolled up and said, 'Hey guys, we gotta get moving.' 3 Ex-NHLer Nick Tarnasky (left) fighting Trevor Ogilvie on July 4. X/NUCLRGOLF 'That instantly set him off,' Tarnasky recalled. 'He's doing the fist-clenching and the pumping his arms, and that's where the altercation starts that's on the video.' Tarnasky said he was trying to 'make it fun' and not escalate the situation by threatening Ogilvie, but he couldn't help but warn that he would toss Ogilvie into the nearby pond. 'If I hear I'm going to get thrown in the pond by this f—ing mutant, maybe I'm going to chill out,' Tarnasky said. 'I thought maybe that could be a fun way to be like, 'You guys are in the wrong, let's speed things up.'' Ogilvie, who later admitted that the incident was 'not his finest moment' and that his 'mouth ran faster than is brain,' did not take the hint, and ended up getting bodyslammed into the pond by Tarnasky, who accumulated 297 total penalty minutes in the NHL. 3 Trevor Ogilvie admitted the fight was 'not his finest moment.' X/NUCLRGOLF After the portion of the incident that can be seen in the viral video, Tarnasky said he told Ogilvie and his friend to 'get the f— outta here,' which they eventually did. The police eventually showed up to the course, with Tarnasky openly explaining what he did and why he did it. Tarnasky called the aftermath of the crazy scene 'pretty tough' and 'pretty overwhelming,' even if he's being heralded as the hero of the situation. 3 Nick Tarnasky with the Hartford Wolf Pack on April 13, 2016. Getty Images 'It's nice to hear from damn near every single teammate I've played with for 13-14 years of my life,' he joked. 'Guys are fired up.'
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump seen pocketing FIFA medal as he walks on stage to hand Chelsea replica club championship trophy
Trump seen pocketing FIFA medal as he walks on stage to hand Chelsea replica club championship trophy U.S. President Donald Trump was seen sneakily pocketing a FIFA Club World Cup winners medal onstage moments before he handed Chelsea a replica trophy. The president was given the medal to look at by Gianni Infantino while handing others out to the winning squad at New Jersey's Metlife Stadium Sunday. Though videos showed Trump later tucked the medal into his suit blazer when the FIFA CEO seemingly reached for it back. Advertisement Infantino appeared to shrug off the incident, flashing the thumbs up and allowing Trump to keep the medal. Eagle-eyed social media users were quick to react to the clip, which went viral over the weekend and following the game, with one labeling the brazen act 'The Art of the Steal.' 'He didn't play a minute,' complained another. Donald Trump was seen sneakily pocketing a FIFA Club World Cup winners medal onstage moments before he handed Chelsea a replica trophy (REUTERS) Donald Trump was seen sneakily pocketing a FIFA Club World Cup winners medal onstage moments before he handed Chelsea a replica trophy (REUTERS) It comes after Trump himself revealed that the winner's trophy that he had handed to Chelsea captain Rhys James had actually been a replica, and that FIFA officials had given him the real silverware. Advertisement Before the showpiece game, held at the 80,000-seat stadium in New Jersey, Trump told broadcaster DAZN that the real trophy currently sits in the Oval Office, after it was gifted to him by Infantino during a visit in March. 'They said, 'Could you hold this trophy for a little while?' We put it in the Oval Office,' Trump said. 'And then I said, 'When are you going to pick up the trophy?' He says, 'We're never going to pick it up. You can have it forever in the Oval Office. We're making a new one.'' 'And they actually made a new one. So that was quite exciting…It's in the Oval right now,' he added. Soccer fans, and even the players themselves, were also baffled after the president also made no effort to leave the stage after presenting the fake trophy. Star player Cole Palmer (center left) was seen reacting with astonishment as Trump initially took pride of place (Getty Images) Soccer fans, and even the players themselves, were also baffled after the president also made no effort to leave the stage after presenting the fake trophy. Star player Cole Palmer (center left) was seen reacting with astonishment as Trump initially took pride of place (Getty Images) Trump himself revealed that the winners trophy that he had handed to Chelsea captain Rhys James had actually been a replica, and that FIFA officials had given him the real silverware (Getty Images) Trump himself revealed that the winners trophy that he had handed to Chelsea captain Rhys James had actually been a replica, and that FIFA officials had given him the real silverware (Getty Images) Advertisement Soccer fans, and even the players themselves, were also baffled after the president also made no effort to leave the stage after presenting the fake trophy – opting instead to stand and clap alongside them. Star player Cole Palmer, who scored two of Chelsea's three goals in the victory over Paris St Germaine, was seen reacting with astonishment as Trump initially took pride of place next to James. In a later interview, Palmer admitted: 'I knew he was gonna be there but I didn't know he was gonna be on the stand when we lifted the trophy so I was a bit confused.'
