Thousands Flock to ICE Watch Training as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz Encourages Residents to Track Agents

As Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) was making a rare announcement Wednesday night encouraging Minnesotans to “create a database” of local ICE activity, national ICE Watch organizers saw a boom of interest from individuals who want to be trained on how to track agents.

Over 2,000 participants signed up for an ICE Watch and Community Defense Training seminar hosted Wednesday night by the nonprofit States at the Core (SATC) — a large uptick from the number of participants the ICE trainings usually attract, organizers said on the call, which National Review joined. Describing ICE Watch as a “tool to keep each other safe” during the training, organizers instructed individuals looking to get involved in local ICE Watch groups to zero in on three goals: Document “what they’re doing in our neighborhoods”; support community members who are being targeted; and de-escalate to prevent violence from law-enforcement.

SATC is sponsored by the Hopewell Fund, a non-profit that is part of the sprawling Democratic dark-money network Arabella Advisors. Hopewell directs “domestic and international initiatives aimed at advancing public good and achieving equity for all people.” It supports, among other left-wing causes, abortion services, social action, and advocacy.

ICE Watch members are taught the acrostic “SALUTE” as a guiding principle of monitoring ICE. The first person to see an ICE raid, or spot an ICE agent, is instructed to “S,” assess the size and strength of the group of agents, “A,” analyze ICE’s actions, “L,” document the location of the sighting, “U,” take notice of an agent’s uniform, “T,” write down the time and date of observation, and “E,” report the equipment, weapons, and vehicles agents have.

Once individuals have confirmed “SALUTE” information, they then send all information to their local ICE Watch groups, and “ask others to help confirm the sighting, get folks to the scene, and provide guidance to targeted neighbors.” After that, individuals are supposed to communicate with an immigrant rights hotline.

SATC told participants what to look out for during ICE Watch shifts, noting that members should inspect if law enforcement are in tactical gear, jeans and khakis, or other uniforms, to distinguish between federal agents and local law enforcement, as well as notify other ICE Watchers if law enforcement appears to be wearing gas masks. Activists also instructed people on how to spot an ICE vehicle.

“What’s going to happen is, if this is your first ICE watch training, and you’ve never really engaged in this ICE Watch observation, is you’re going to walk out the door and you’re going to be like, ‘I see ICE vehicles everywhere’ — it I think it happens to everybody,” Jill Garvey, director of SATC, said. “I like, clocked half the vehicles on my block, you know, many months ago as ICE. None of them were ICE.”

“So they drive around in these sort of, like, non-descript SUVs, bigger cars, Ford Explorers, Chevy Tahoes, sometimes minivans, right?” she continued. “And a lot of them have regular passenger plates, right, like pedestrian plates on them. So it can be really confusing. They’re not marked as government vehicles, and so you’re going to be looking for the things that disqualify them from being an ICE vehicle.”

Such disqualifiers include bumper stickers, customized vehicles, age of the vehicle, and municipal license plates.

“Fleet plate doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ICE. Lots of ICE vehicles have the FP on them, lots of other people are driving around or something. It just means it’s a car that’s part of a fleet,” Garvey added. “So, you know, don’t necessarily go and harass somebody who’s driving around a car with an FP on it, just like do a little more investigating if you see something like that, to determine whether it’s ICE or not.”

The biggest responsibility ICE Watch agents have is to get other people on-scene with them through making noise or posting locations in encrypted ICE Watch chats, Garvey said. From there, they can record and monitor ICE’s activity, and give illegal immigrants being detained a “Know your Rights” card, or contact an immigration hotline with details of the arrest.

“The thing you want to happen if you encounter ICE activity is to get more people to the scene, right? You want more people there to help confirm what you’re seeing, to help document it, to help provide support and to help with any de-escalation that’s needed, right?”

Garvey called the plastic whistles activists use to alert other members of the community to an ICE sighting the “cheapest” but “most expensive” tool in their toolbox.

“Three long blows on the whistles tells you that ICE is detaining someone. It also tells plays this very important role, right?” she said. “So if you get enough people in the community blowing on their whistles, it is telling other vulnerable people around there that they may be in danger and they should move away from that sound, okay? And it is telling other people who are like you and want to respond and document ICE, that they should come forward.”

During the training ICE Watch said physically confronting ICE agents was not “recommended” and provided resources for further training in de-escalation tactics.

“Remain calm, maintain distance, walk away when you need to walk away, move away when you need to move away.”

Although activists are discouraged in some trainings from physically interfering with law-enforcement operations, certain ICE Watch chapters tell members to try to disrupt ICE raids. Minnesota’s ICE Watch, for example, published an education primer that told members to block ICE vehicles, form a circle around detainees, and “de-arrest” individuals being taken into custody. Minnesota’s ICE Watch also told members in a “legal resources” post to Instagram to let detainees in their cars, ask nearby businesses to lock a detainee in a safe room, block ICE cars with multiple activist cars, and “ask white witnesses to put their bodies in front of the person that’s being kidnapped.”

Renee Nicole Good and her partner Rebecca were involved in Minnesota’s ICE Watch community, and a local ICE Watch member confirmed to USA Today this week that Rebecca was “part of the Powderhorn/Phillips [ICE Watch] neighborhood chat.”

Haley Strack is a staff writer at National Review.

Reprinted with Permission from National Review – By Haley Strack

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.