Don’t Build It.
Don’t Fill It.
Don’t Fuel It.
Block it!
A Mini Toolkit to Take Action to Disrupt the ICE Kidnapping, Detention, and Deportation Machine
The administration passed a $45 BILLION budget in 2025 to build the largest detention and deportation machine in U.S. history.
They have already moved to hire over 10,000 thousand ICE agents & build 45 new detention facilities increasing official detention capacity to 60,000, and have issued requests for proposals for $XMILLION to expand and extend the wall on the U.S. Mexico border.
BUT they can't do it without our money, labor, transportation infrastructure, permits, approvals, technology, data, collaboration, and complicity!
This toolkit is an invitation to join efforts already in motion in your community and across the country to protect our families, neighbors, and community members and make sure that the administration is not able to continue kidnapping our families and neighbors from our streets, workplaces, health care facilities, and schools and build the biggest detention and deportation machine in U.S. history — or to start your own, or take action wherever and however you can!
Feel free to use this beautiful graphic created by movement artist and migrant justice organizer Monica Trinidad to invite people into action! You can:
Print & Display
Print posters and put them up them throughout your community!
Share on Social Media
Use this graphic on social media as part of a deck highlighting your work!
Don’t Build It!
TAKE ACTION to stop, interrupt, slow down, or otherwise interfere with building new detention facilities or capacity, reactivating old facilities, or repurposing jails and prisons for ICE detention, using tactics such as:
organizing against and boycotting contractors and companies building and servicing ICE facilities
organizing around land use and building permits for ICE facilities
organizing elected officials to conduct inspections of ICE facilities (including temporary detention facilities) and shut them down if they are in violation of local codes or occupancy conditions
protesting and disrupting functions at ICE facilities
organizing and protesting against the repurposing of government and private spaces/buildings to turn them into detention prisons
For example:
Join Detention Watch Network's Communities Not Cages campaign blocking the expansion of ICE detention centers nationwide!
Join a local campaign to shut down facilities / stop the conversion of military and prison facilities into ICE detention centers!
Check out Detention Watch Network’s ICE Immigration Detention Expansion Map below to see if there is a facility near you.
Are you nearby one of these facilities? Want to learn more about local organizing? Email program@detentionwatchnetwork.org, and Detention Watch Network will connect you to local campaigns leading shut down efforts.
Revoke the ICE Permit PDX (Portland): Campaign to revoke the local permit of the Portland ICE facility
Don’t Fill It!
TAKE ACTION to interrupt ICE’s ability to abduct people into the detention deportation machine, including:
ICE and CBP counter recruitment
Protesting and boycotting transportation infrastructure
ICE Watch/Migra Patrol
Court accompaniment
Recruiting businesses to support migrant community members
For example:
Protest and resist ICE recruitment efforts at your school and community!
Learn more about counter-recruitment strategies from the War Resisters League (including their Beyond Border Patrol pamphlet!)
Check out Seattle’s “Police Jobs Suck” billboard and poster campaign
Block 287(g) agreements and collaboration between sheriffs and ICE that increase the detention and deportation force by deputizing local law enforcement to do ICE’s dirty work!
Block any measures that delegate power to private bounty hunters to track and kidnap community members!
Monitor, document, and call attention to federal, state, and local police informal cooperation with ICE through PolICE watch efforts!
Document, interrupt, and offer resources for people targeted by abductions! Check out these Defend & Recruit toolkits!
Start an ICE patrol/Migra Watch, or join one in your area:
ICIRR (Chicago): Rapid response networks across the city
OC Rapid Response Network (California): Rapid response in Orange County, California.
Pilsen Defense & Access (Chicago): ICE patrol groups
Norcal Resist (Northern California)
Union del Barrio (Los Angeles)
People’s Assembly (Detroit)
Adopt A Corner: Organizing and outreach with day laborers nationally
No Sleep for ICE (LA): Noise demonstrations of hotels where ICE agents are staying
Develop community-facing resources and posters that can be utilized by community members (see: Muslims for Just Futures Community Defense Hub)
Learn more about International Campus Worker Protections Campaign (Higher Ed Labor United), coordinating campus organizers nationally to block visa revocations for international students, staff, and faculty and to block university cooperation with ICE
Organize local businesses to create sanctuary and conduct KYR/informational sessions
Break the ICE Machine — target hotels that do business with ICE for boycotts and protests
Participate in courtwatch and court accompaniment
Find out where and how ICE is transporting people abducted from our community! For example:
La Resistencia (Washington State): Documents and tracks ICE deportation flights out of King County Airport
Burlington Airport (Vermont): Monitoring deportation flights, rapid response to prevent deportation at airports, and protesting Burlington Airport and Airport Commission
Project Keep Away (California): Preventing prison to immigration detention transfers
#BoycottAvelo by Defend & Recruit: Stopping Avelo Airlines from contracting with ICE
Target rental companies renting vehicles to ICE, let them know it’s a violation of their contract terms
Find ways to organize with transportation workers and unions, from bus drivers to flight attendants, to refuse to participate in transporting ICE detainees
Support people targeted by the detention and deportation machine!
Deportation Support & Defense: Providing material and legal support to those in detention and their families
Deportation Defense Toolkit from Mijente and Just Futures Law
National Immigration Detention Hotline: Connecting immigrants to resources and support, and documenting ICE abuse
No More Deaths/No Mas Muertas (Arizona): Providing aid to migrants crossing through Southern Arizona
When ICE is Watching: Know Your Fight: This resource was created to provide information to people under ICE surveillance about the risks for arrest and detention and how to reduce them through knowledge and planning ahead
Don’t Fuel It!
TAKE ACTION to interrupt the flow of money, data, and technology that fuels the detention & deportation machine, including by:
Contacting your representative to demand NO more money for ICE!
Demanding that your city and state immediately stop sharing data (including DMV data, license-plate reader data, and other information) with federal enforcement
Demanding that your city and state immediately stop contracting with any company collaborating or contracting with ICE
Boycotting corporations that are fueling the ICE detention/deportation machine!
Working with city government officials to ensure local businesses and landlords aren't leasing spaces or contracting with ICE. This includes ensuring local economies aren't dependent upon ICE detention facilities and that economic investment is made into projects that center needs of community members.
For example:
#NoTechForICE: Students organizing against ICE-allied tech companies' campus recruitment efforts
Purge Palantir: Disrupting Palantir operations and pushing for public divestment from Palantir
Just Futures Law: Opposing Clearview AI's facial recognition technology
Local Progress: Organizing local elected officials against the use of AI technologies and data sharing with ICE
The Plate Privacy Project: Opposing local government contracting with Flock Safety for the use of Automated Lincense Plate Readers (ALPRs)
Amazon Labor Union (ALU-IBT Local 1): Labor organizing to protect immigrant workers and against Amazon-ICE collaboration
Tech Workers Coalition: Organizing tech workers against corporate collaboration with ICE in tech contracting and against warehouse and logistics workers.
No Azure for Apartheid: Organizing Microsoft employees to oppose the contracting of Microsoft's Azure technology to ICE and the Israeli military
