Defend Against ICE Raids and Community Arrests: A Toolkit to Prepare and Protect our Communities

This content of this toolkit was researched and written by the Immigrant Defense Project and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The primary authors at IDP are Mizue Aizeki, Genia Blaser and Michelle Parris, with support from Michael Velarde, Andrew Wachtenheim, and Alisa Wellek. The primary authors at CCR are Ian Head, Somalia Samuel, and Ghita Schwarz. 

PURPOSE OF TOOLKIT

This toolkit is a collaboration between the Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and a culmination of our collective work against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) home raids during the G.W. Bush and Obama administrations. It aims to help advocates prepare for fighting back against ICE raids under a Trump administration.

The infrastructure that has been created in recent decades will become the baseline for what Trump’s administration can execute in its quest to deport millions of people. The key elements include the constellation of a massive police force, a further militarized southern border, surveillance, expansive data-sharing between local police and ICE, and the maintenance of a sprawling network of prisons 4 for immigrants. The success of this apparatus relies on decades of extensive criminalization that impacts all communities of color — including racialized policing, discriminatory prosecution and harsh sentencing, and mass imprisonment. 

As we develop strategies to fight back against Trump’s promise to immediately deport millions of people, it is critical to draw lessons from the struggles against the system of mass deportation and criminalization that has expanded over the past decades. This toolkit will address the need for details about previous and ongoing tactics the federal government has used to deport people from their communities. It also proposes some possible strategies to prepare for what may come in the months and years ahead.