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As federal immigration agents flooded the streets of Minneapolis, Chicago and Los Angeles over the past year, cities across the US have been at the frontlines of strategizing over how to protect their residents, should Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents come to their communities.
From Philadelphia to Oklahoma City and Oakland, California, many cities are developing new – and creative – tactics to prepare for and push back against ICE. Here’s a look at a few.
Creating ‘ICE-free’ zones
Several cities, counties and states across the country are creating “ICE-free zones” by restricting immigration agents’ access to government-owned and public spaces. Local officials say this makes it safer for residents to visit hospitals, courthouses, public parks and other critical spaces without fear of ICE. While these restrictions are unable to completely bar immigration agents from operating on government property, they make it easier for officials to potentially sue agents who do enter.
This strategy harkens back to the 1980s, when some cities designated themselves “sanctuary cities” to affirm that they would protect newly arrived migrants and refugees and not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. These sanctuary cities later played a key role during the first Trump administration in the movement against family separation and pushing back against ICE raids.
In October last year, amid the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, Brandon Johnson, the city’s mayor, created an “ICE-free zone” through an executive order. This year, similar actions have been taken in Oakland, San Jose and Richmond, California; Los Angeles county; Washtenaw county, Michigan; Providence, Rhode Island; New York City; and New Jersey.
Making it easier to sue ICE agents over misconduct
After an ICE agent shot and killed the Minneapolis resident Renee Good last month, JD Vance claimed that ICE agents have “absolute immunity”. While some legal experts have said this is not true, accountability has remained difficult to achieve. (Good’s killer has not been arrested, nor have the federal agents who shot and killed Alex Pretti, another Minneapolis resident, last month.)
To make it easier, officials in cities including Chicago and Philadelphia are proposing new ways to facilitate lawsuits against ICE agents.
In January, Chicago’s mayor commanded city police to document federal immigration agents “to set the groundwork to prosecute ICE and border patrol agents for criminal misconduct”. This kind of evidence could be used in cases when residents are injured or charged with a crime by immigration agents.
The case of Marimar Martinez, a teacher who was shot five times by ICE agents in Chicago, shows how this evidence could be useful. While agents claimed she drove into them and the Department of Justice pursued charges against her, body-camera footage contradicted the administration’s story. The charges were ultimately dropped, and Martinez successfully sued in federal court to have other evidence released.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, the district attorney, Larry Krasner, and a group of prosecutors from across the US have formed a coalition called the Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach (Fafo) to “share strategies and best practices” for prosecuting federal agents when they break state laws. Members of the Fafo coalition include district attorneys from cities such as Minneapolis; Austin and Dallas, Texas; Arlington, Virginia; and Pima county, Arizona.
Blocking ICE’s attempts to convert warehouses into jails
As part of the Trump administration’s plan for mass deportations, ICE has been attempting to buy a slew of warehouses across the US that it can transform into detention centers. Those warehouses have become the target of intense pushback.
Communities and city officials have protested – and successfully blocked – some of these purchases. In Ashland, Virginia, more than 100 protesters braved freezing temperatures to successfully lobby the local board of commissioners against an offer from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to buy a warehouse. Not long after, the warehouse’s billionaire Canadian owner announced he was rejecting the DHS’s offer.
In January, residents of Oklahoma City packed a city council meeting to express their displeasure that the DHS was interested in buying a local warehouse to turn into a detention center. The Republican mayor of Oklahoma City, David Holt, met with the owners of the facility and later announced that they had decided not to sell to the DHS.
A few hours away in Durant, Oklahoma, the Choctaw Nation issued an ordinance banning the sale of an empty distribution center near tribal lands to the DHS.
And in Kansas City, Missouri, the port authority moved to cut ties with a local company to discourage the city’s plans to sell a warehouse to the DHS. Joining the efforts to protest against the purchase, the city council passed a years-long moratorium on the creation of any new detention centers.
Targeting the contracts that provide ICE’s rental cars and parking
One common strategy for organizers over the past year has been to identify local contracts with ICE – and to push elected officials and institutions to cut them.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car has been a common target for its partnership with ICE. After the federal immigration enforcement agency swept into Los Angeles last summer, a local congregation of nuns heard that the agents were renting cars from the company, then canceled their own reservations for 18 cars (the nuns have taken a vow of poverty and do not own their own cars).
City and state officials are starting to pay attention to the company’s relationship with ICE as well. In December, after ICE agents were reported to be illegally swapping license plates on their rental cars to make tracking them more difficult, the Illinois secretary of state, Alexi Giannoulias, revoked an Enterprise license plate registered in the state.
Local officials are also targeting contracts for ICE’s office spaces and parking garages. In January, Josh Siegel, county executive of Lehigh county, Pennsylvania, canceled the county-owned lease on ICE’s office in Allentown, citing over $115,000 in unpaid rent.
“The department’s failure to pay rent, combined with DHS’s national reputation for recklessness, chaos and public disorder, warrants ending any relationship with the county,” Siegel said in a statement. “We will not accept their blood money.”
In New York City, elected officials are calling on a local park trust to immediately cancel a contract allowing ICE agents to park their cars in a Manhattan garage, after the trust stated it would not renew the contract when it expires this summer.
And Philadelphia, city councilors are pushing to end or restrict collaboration with the DHS in what they are calling their “ICE Out” package. The proposed legislation would prohibit the city from entering into those contracts with the DHS, as well as prohibit agents from entering into city-owned spaces, similar to several cities’ creation of “ICE-free zones”.
“The ICE Out legislation is bold and comprehensive, and that’s exactly the type of action we need in this moment,” said Aniqa Raihan, an organizer with the local No ICE Philly coalition. “It’s going to take all of us being brave and thinking creatively to keep ICE out of our city.”
The fight over ICE contracts has even come right to agents’ doors in Minneapolis, where the city council is withholding liquor license renewals to hotels that house ICE agents.
