Anti-ICE activism in the United States has morphed from sporadic protest into a sophisticated web of resistance networks that systematically surveil, harass, and obstruct federal immigration enforcement.
According to The Gateway Pundit, these networks now train activists in specialized resistance tactics, deploy mobile apps and crowdsourced databases to track Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and orchestrate campaigns aimed at disrupting lawful operations. What once resembled traditional protest has evolved into coordinated interference, with activists openly strategizing how to frustrate arrests, block vehicles, and undermine the rule of law in the name of community defense.
Central to this effort is an aggressive propaganda ecosystem that relies heavily on manipulated or context-stripped video. Activists and their media allies circulate clips of ICE agents breaking windows without explaining that occupants refused to open the door, or claim agents chased suspects while omitting that those individuals were fleeing to evade arrest.
Footage of agents wrestling with arrestees is shared widely, but the fact that the subjects resisted arrest is often ignored. Outrage is stoked when a U.S. citizen is taken into custody, while key factssuch as the citizen having assaulted or interfered with federal officersare conveniently left out of the narrative.
These same activists routinely insist that there is no due process in immigration enforcement, despite the reality that a large share of deportees already have outstanding final orders of removal that were simply never executed. They argue that people are being denied access to the courts, even though many of those arrested are already in the country illegally and are detained after attempting to legalize their status through a green card application or marriage to a citizen.
Once apprehended, such individuals are then portrayed as victims who merely showed up for a regular immigration hearing or were trying to do it the right way. This framing ignores a basic legal reality: once someone has entered or remained in the United States unlawfully, there is generally no straightforward legal path to adjust status, and attempts to do so do not erase prior violations.
To further demonize ICE and normalize resistance, sympathetic media figures, activist groups, and officials in sanctuary jurisdictions deploy emotionally charged language designed to equate enforcement with kidnapping. They describe illegal aliens as being abducted rather than arrested and whisked away instead of detained, while local politicians theatrically vow to protect their constituents from ICE, even though ICE targets illegal aliens, not lawful residents or citizens.
The rhetoric is calibrated to inflame, not inform, and it has predictable consequences on the ground. There would be no confrontationslet alone violenceif activists and local officials stopped encouraging people to interfere with lawful federal enforcement actions and instead urged compliance with the law or voluntary departure.
Against this backdrop of deliberate mischaracterization and escalating hostility, several activist organizations have moved beyond rhetoric into active coordination of interference with ICE operations. These efforts are not spontaneous; they are structured, trained, and increasingly well-funded, raising the risk of unnecessary violence for both officers and civilians.
One prominent example is the Minneapolis ICE Watch network, which has attracted national attention and outside activists. According to federal sources and news reports, Renee Nicole Good relocated from Missouri to Minneapolis specifically to participate in this ICE Watch effort, a group that monitors and attempts to observe or document federal immigration enforcement operations and trains its members to track and interfere with ICE activities.
ICE Watch Minneapolis provides activists with instructions on when to blow whistles to alert neighborhoods and how to document and resist federal actions. Training sessions reportedly go beyond observation, teaching participants how to shadow agents, disrupt operations, and create conditions that make routine enforcement more dangerous and chaotic.
The tragic consequences of this climate were captured in body camera footage involving Good herself. The video shows her harassing ICE agents and then hitting the accelerator of her vehicle as her wife shouted, Drive, baby, drive, striking an ICE agent and triggering a chain of events that ultimately resulted in Goods death.
From a law-and-order perspective, the lesson is stark. The violence in these encounters does not originate with ICE agents performing their lawful duties but with activists who choose to escalate, obstruct, and physically interfere with operations, all while a broader political culture refuses to encourage illegal aliens to self-deport or comply with final removal orders.
Compounding the problem, a range of anti-ICE organizations are not merely tolerating this disorder but actively encouraging it. Several of these groups receive funding from a mix of federal grants, George Soroslinked Open Society entities, and other private donors, creating a troubling picture of taxpayer and philanthropic dollars underwriting campaigns that undermine federal law.
In some instances, pass-through funding has been traced to organizations later linked to designated terrorist groups. Even more disturbing, certain outfits that openly train activists to interfere with ICE operations are themselves beneficiaries of federal funding, raising serious questions about oversight and accountability.
ICE Watch Minneapolis, in particular, engages in organized tactics that go well beyond peaceful protest and into direct obstruction of law enforcement. Training materials explicitly instruct activists on how to block police vehicles, and members have used their own cars to barricade streets, impede ICE convoys, and create physical obstacles to enforcement.
Activists affiliated with the group patrol neighborhoods for hours at a time, tailing suspected ICE vehicles, following agents to restaurants and hotels, and monitoring their downtime in an effort to intimidate and disrupt. This is not passive observation; it is targeted surveillance of federal officers by ideologically motivated opponents.
The group has also circulated a de-arrest primer on Instagram that openly describes how to physically interfere with an arrest. The document outlines tactics such as encircling (forming a human wall around an officer and detainee), un-grabbing (pulling the arrestee out of an officers grip), and swarming (flooding the area with people to create confusion or obstruction so the officer is forced to let go).
The same primer instructs followers on how to open doors of law enforcement vehicles and use crowd pressure to force officers to release detainees. These materials reportedly reassure activists that such actions are often treated as misdemeanor offenses and may result in catch and release, language that appears in posts associated with the groups training content and seems designed to minimize perceived legal risk.
For real-time coordination, ICE Watch Minneapolis relies on encrypted Signal group chats and shared spreadsheets. Members log locations, times, numbers of officers, and details of enforcement activity, while mobile apps and social media are used to track ICE vehicle movements and report license plates and sightings across the city.
This level of organization has already been linked to multiple incidents and arrests. Each episode underscores how a loosely regulated network of activists, armed with digital tools and emboldened by political rhetoric, can rapidly mobilize to confront federal officers in the field.
Operating alongside ICE Watch is Twin Cities Ungovernables, a more openly confrontational wing of the anti-ICE movement. This anarchist-leaning collective, based in the MinneapolisSt. Paul area, describes itself on platforms such as Threads and Instagram as focusing on graffiti, banner drops, protests, and other signs and steps being taken towards becoming ungovernable, often pairing that message with slogans like The city is yours, take it back, anarchist symbols, and explicit calls for direct action.
Multiple outlets, including the New York Post, have reported that local ICE Watch groups have recently aligned with more radical organizations, including Twin Cities Ungovernables. The group has urged supporters to block vehicles, confront agents, barricade streets, and bring materials that can be set on fire, writing in one post referencing arson, Even in the most topical forms of American mythology we have plenty of structures that need burning. Its easy work, it aint nothing to us.
Their rhetoric has grown increasingly menacing. A January 11 post showed a large crowd following an ICE vehicle in Minneapolis, accompanied by the message, Welcome to the jungle motherrs. Wrong city. Wrong state. Wrong country. F outta here.
Though not a formal organization with membership rolls or public leadership, Twin Cities Ungovernables functions as a loose, anonymous collective within the broader anarchist milieu. Its alignment with ICE Watch and similar groups signals a convergence between mainstream progressive activism and more extreme anti-state currents.
Another key player is Indivisible Twin Cities, the Minnesota branch of the national Indivisible Project, which has been central in organizing protests against ICE operations in Minneapolis. Following the Minneapolis shooting involving Good, the group helped coordinate and promote protests nationwide, mobilizing hundreds of demonstrations across all 50 states, including in Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, and Florida.
The national Indivisible Project was created in direct response to Donald Trumps 2016 election and remains one of the most prominent anti-Trump activist networks in the country. Public grant records and IRS filings show that Indivisibles 501(c)(4) advocacy arm has received between $7.6 million and $9.5 million from George Soros Open Societyaffiliated organizations, underscoring the scale of progressive funding behind anti-enforcement activism.
Beyond direct Open Society support, Indivisible has benefited from more than $3 million in pass-through funding from the Tides Nexus. The Tides network itself has received extensive backing from Open Society Foundations, including approximately $17.8 million during the 20222023 period alone, making it a central hub in the progressive funding ecosystem.
Tides operates as a fiscal sponsor and pass-through entity for more than 1,400 social ventures worldwide. Tides Canada Foundation has previously served as a conduit for U.S. donor funds into Canadian political and advocacy campaigns, with an estimated $300 million routed to Canadian environmental groups between 2000 and 2012 to oppose energy projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline.
Tides has also funded Alliance for Global Justice, providing approximately $286,000 in 2023. Alliance for Global Justice serves as the fiscal sponsor for Samidoun, which in October 2024 was designated by the U.S. Treasury as a sham charity operating as an international fundraising arm for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designation mirrored by Canada, which listed Samidoun as a terrorist entity.
Samidoun leaders Charlotte Kates and Khaled Barakat have been identified as PFLP operatives. The group has raised funds for the PFLP, which participated in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, and in August 2024 Kates traveled to Iran to accept an award alongside Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad Nakhaleh, publicly praising the October 7 attacks as heroic and brave.
Other organizations supported through the Tides network include Students for Justice in Palestine, WESPAC, the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild. These groups have been associated with campaigns promoting boycotts of Israel, legal warfare against Israeli institutions, or public praise for terrorist organizations including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP.
The funding links have drawn scrutiny from lawmakers concerned about the intersection of progressive philanthropy, anti-Israel agitation, and potential material support for extremism. In 2024, Representative Jason Smith warned that the Tides Foundation was at the center of antisemitic incidents on college campuses and led a congressional letter to the IRS urging a review and possible revocation of Tides tax-exempt status.
While these national networks shape the ideological and financial environment, other organizations focus more narrowly on immigration enforcement itself. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), for example, operates extensive Migra Watch training programs designed to monitor and respond to federal immigration activity, and the organization is primarily funded by government sources.
In fiscal year 2023 alone, ICIRR received $77.7 million in government grants. Its trainings instruct participants on how to identify federal agents such as ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), safely document enforcement activity, support immigrants during operations, follow whistle protocols, and use the S.A.L.U.T.E. reporting method to record ICE sightings.
Between September and October 2025, more than 6,700 people were trained through weekly sessions offered in multiple languages, including English and Spanish. ICIRR-led trainings are conducted through a network of partner organizations such as PUO, ONE Northside, We Can Lead Change, Indivisible Chicago Alliance, Mano a Mano Family Resource Center, and the Westside Queer Resource Center, embedding anti-enforcement practices across a broad activist infrastructure.
Taken together, these developments reveal a sprawling, well-resourced movement that seeks not merely to advocate for immigration reform but to actively frustrate the enforcement of existing law. From Minneapolis street barricades to national funding pipelines, the pattern is consistent: progressive and anarchist groups, often backed by major left-wing donors and in some cases by taxpayer dollars, are working to delegitimize ICE, obstruct federal officers, and erode the principle that immigration lawslike all lawsmust be enforced if they are to mean anything at all.
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