In Los Angeles, Francisco “Chavo” Romero and a dozen other immigration activists were out before dawn on a recent summer morning, gathering near an ICE staging area so they could tail the immigration agents’ vehicles and send alerts over social media on the officers’ whereabouts.
In Austin, a technology worker created an app to report sightings of agents – it has over 1 million users. On Long Island, New York, another activist developed a similar app to report immigration enforcement raids in local areas.
As President Donald Trump ramps up his mass deportation efforts with $75 billion in new funding through 2029 to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, civilian surveillance of federal immigration agents is becoming increasingly assertive, according to interviews with a dozen activists, legal experts, and historians.
“With minimal resources, we’ve been able to confront, challenge and expose a billion-dollar repressive state apparatus that is attacking and kidnapping our people,” said Romero, 50, an activist with Union del Barrio, an immigrant rights group, in Los Angeles.
