As ICE Operations Expand, How Are Immigrant Allies Responding?

As Julia Meltzer drove to work through Los Angeles’ Koreatown one Friday morning in June, she spotted two trucks with Arizona license plates parked in the middle of the street, facing oncoming traffic. Standing nearby were three men wearing bulletproof vests.

“I thought, ‘ICE raid — happening now,’” she said.

It had been just a week since Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began raiding multiple immigrant communities in downtown L.A., and tensions between residents and federal immigration agents remained high. From her car, Meltzer watched as the men — one wearing a vest labeled “HSI,” or Homeland Security Investigations — handcuffed another man.

Meltzer, the founder of L.A. arts nonprofit Clockshop, said her instinct was to intervene, but questioned, “What is even allowed? How do I insert myself into this situation?”

Despite feeling “very freaked out,” she got out of her car and began filming as agents put the detained man into one of the vehicles.

As the trucks pulled off, Meltzer saw a woman crying on the sidewalk — the sister of the man taken away.

“I hugged her,” Meltzer said. “I just said, ‘I’m sorry.’”

Responding to ICE activity in the moment

While Meltzer did not feel prepared for what took place that morning, she said the experience prompted her to further educate herself about how to be an effective ally for her undocumented immigrant neighbors.

“It’s our duty to inquire, step up and recognize that a lot of what’s happening is not legal,” she said. “This is the point when people who aren’t being taken away need to step in — especially white people, because it’s brown people who are being taken.”

President Donald Trump’s administration shows no sign of slowing down its immigration enforcement nationwide, with a stated goal of arresting 3,000 people per day. ICE agents are detaining immigrants — both undocumented and those with temporary legal status — at their homes, in their cars, at workplaces and even at the courthouses where folks go for their immigration proceedings.

And as more U.S. citizens are witnessing these operations, many — like Meltzer — are now wondering how to engage, whether in the moment or afterward.

In the moment: Alerting a rapid response network

There’s one kind of social media post that organizer Socorro Montaño is very familiar with: a photo — usually of an SUV or law enforcement officer — with little context, but with a stark warning: “ICE is here.”

“It only takes one person to upload a photo and say, ‘Oh, I saw immigration agents over here,’ and this photo will be [circulating] for the rest of the week,” Montaño said.

Montaño is a codirector for the San José-based Latinos United for a New America and helps lead the Santa Clara County Rapid Response Network — a group of trained volunteers who verify community alerts about possible ICE sightings.

The group’s motto, “Power, not panic,” reflects its focus on the importance of verified information for people living in daily fear of encountering ICE agents. 

“It’s very difficult to handle rumors on social media,” Montaño explained, not least because in their experience, immigration operations can end as suddenly as they’ve begun. “If people tell us that they saw a post from hours or days before, agents are not going to be there anymore.”

Montaño’s advice to anyone who sees a post or a text claiming ICE is in a specific location: ask the sender if they have already checked in with their local rapid response network. 

“Once you call, volunteers will activate and see if this is true,” Montaño said, noting that people frequently report apparent sightings of ICE agents that turn out to be local police officers.

“Because if it’s not true, your post is causing panic,” they said.

Getting involved

“Everybody has a role in our network,” Montaño said. “But the No. 1 need we have for allies right now is folks who are ready to be trained and go verify if ICE presence is legitimate in a neighborhood, or if it is local police.”

Responders are trained to observe ICE operations, they stressed — not to interfere. “Our goal is to make sure that ICE can’t work in the shadows and that they know they know they’re being watched,” Montaño said.

Across California, volunteers have established dozens of different rapid response networks. And to galvanize folks who live in a place where a network hasn’t been set up yet, Montaño shared that their own team started off in 2016 as a much smaller group.

“First, figure out what the demand is in your community,” they said. “For us, our goal was having a hotline, finding volunteers to staff the hotline and then training these folks on the basics of knowing your rights.”

“And then from there, it really depends on the level of involvement you want to have,” Montaño said. “Is your goal to send observers every time? Then you certainly need somebody to train allies on how to do that work.”

At the courthouse: The moral support that accompaniment brings

During the second Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security — which oversees ICE — has adopted a new strategy to detain individuals: arresting them, or fast-tracking their removal, at their own immigration court hearings.

California lawmakers and civil rights groups have spoken out against the practice. In a letter to ICE, U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, said that “many individuals who need to use these courts are already living in fear,” and that “we should be encouraging immigrants to attend court as instructed, not making them even more afraid to appear.”

In response, community groups have ramped up efforts to accompany immigrants to court hearings and scheduled check-ins with ICE, offering both logistical and emotional support.

One of those groups is NorCal Resist, a nonprofit that organizes a rapid response network, bail funds and legal aid workshops. Its accompaniment program has existed for years, helping refugees and asylum seekers settle into their new lives in the U.S., but “this need has grown so much now that we have ICE stalking people at immigration courts,” said Autumn Gonzalez, a volunteer with NorCal Resist.

The increase in ICE activity at courthouses — and the protests it has sparked — has turned these buildings into tense, volatile spaces, as recent videos showing ICE officers driving through protesters outside a San Francisco courthouse show.

“If someone is detained by ICE, we immediately contact their family, let them know what’s going on and get them plugged in with legal resources,” Gonzalez said. “So that we can hopefully help get their loved one out — or at least help them fight their case from inside of detention.”

She added: “What we want to make sure never happens is that ICE detains someone, this person disappears and no one knows what happened to them or where they went.”

Getting involved

Allies doing this work should acknowledge the risk they themselves may face, Gonzalez said. “We’re in the courts every day watching ICE, and they threaten to arrest our volunteers,” she said. Still, she added, these individuals “have made peace with that possibility, and they know that the organization will support them if it does happen.”

You don’t even need a large organization like NorCal Resist to form an accompaniment group in your community, Gonzalez said.

“Start small and think about: ‘Who are the impacted people I know?’ Maybe you have impacted people in your own family,” she said. “Tap into those networks that we already have in our lives and make sure that nobody is going to any of these appointments alone.”

Read more about the work advocates are doing in California immigration court.

Creating — and using — new online tools: Apps like ICEBlock

After the 2024 election, Austin, Texas-based programmer Joshua Aaron started thinking about what he could personally do to protect communities he believed the incoming Trump administration would target.

On April 2, Aaron launched ICEBlock, a free crowd-sourced app to report ICE sightings in public. The app allows users to report and geo-tag apparent sightings of ICE agents on a map, sending notifications to all other ICEBlock users within a 5-mile radius.

“When we are subverting the Constitution, taking away habeas corpus or the rights of due process of our immigrant friends and neighbors, that cannot stand,” Aaron said. He added that recent events remind him of the stories he’d hear growing up from older Jewish relatives and friends about the Gestapo’s activities in Nazi Germany.

As of early July, the ICEBlock app had over 240,000 users — and had drawn the ire of the White House. In an interview with Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi accused Aaron of “giving a message to criminals where our federal officers are” and said the Department of Justice was “looking at him, and he better watch out, because that’s not protected speech.”

Aaron said he consulted multiple constitutional and criminal law attorneys during development and maintains that the app is legal. It is, he said, “for informational purposes only.”

“We are not asking anybody to incite violence or obstruct law enforcement,” he said.

Some community groups have expressed concerns that apps like ICEBlock could make it easier for users to spread false sightings. Aaron acknowledged the risk of inaccurate reports but said the app includes safeguards, such as limiting how many reports a user can submit within five minutes and automatically removing all reports every four hours.

Aaron also stressed that the app does not collect user data by design. Creating a tool that immigrants and their allies feel safe using is crucial, he said, and reflects his belief that technology has an obligation to social justice.

“You have to do something,” he said. “When you see the atrocities that are happening in this country, you’ve got to know in your heart that you should be doing something to help fight back.”

This story includes reporting from KQED’s Nisa Khan, Samantha Lim and Brian Krans.