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 and build 45 new detention facilities, increasing official detention capacity to 60,000, and have issued requests for proposals for millions of dollars to expand and extend the wall on the U.S. Mexico border. ICE is now the largest law enforcement agency in the U.S., and Congress is poised to continue to fund it with tens of billions of dollars that could be going to provide health care, childcare, food and income support, and environmental protections.
They can't build and enact their violent detention and deportation agenda 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 to build the biggest detention and deportation machine in U.S. history — or to start your own, or take action wherever and however you can! Be sure to check back often, as the toolkit is live and regularly updated with new resources and avenues for action!
Feel free to use this beautiful “Block It!” graphic created by movement artist and migrant justice organizer Monica Trinidad to invite people into action!
You can use this graphic to:
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
Check out this interactive map of ICE contractors!
Read more on boycotting companies collaborating with ICE
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!
Email program@detentionwatchnetwork.org, and Detention Watch Network will connect you to local campaigns leading shut down efforts
Stop ICE from converting facilities into new processing centers!
Join a local campaign to shut down facilities / stop the conversion of private, military and prison facilities into ICE detention centers!
Central Louisiana ICE Detention Center (Louisiana)
South Louisiana ICE Detention Center (Louisiana)
North Lake (Michigan) - No Detention Centers in Michigan
Delaney Hall Detention Center (New Jersey)
Torrance Detention Center (New Mexico)
Revoke the ICE Permit PDX (Portland): Campaign to revoke the local permit of the Portland ICE facility
Fort Bliss (Texas)
End ICE’s Williston Spying Center (Vermont)
Farmville detention center (Virginia)
Northwest Detention Center (Washington)
Here are just a few campaigns for inspiration!
Etowah County Detention Center (Alabama)
Adelanto Detention Center (California)
CA City Correctional Center (California)
FCI Dublin Prison (California)
Guantanamo Detention Center (Cuba)
"Alligator Alcatraz" (Florida)
Krome Detention Center (Florida)
Folkston Detention Center (Georgia)
Stewart Detention Center (Georgia)
Miami Correctional Facility and Camp Atterbury (Indiana) - Communities Not Cages Indiana Coalition
Leavenworth Detention Center (Kansas)
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:
Call on your city or municipality to create ICE free zones!
Chicago (IL)
Evanston (IL)
Los Angeles County (CA)
Alameda County (CA)
Santa Clara County (CA)
Washtenaw County (MI)
Protest and resist ICE recruitment efforts at your school and community!
Check out this open letter to the Minnesota National Guard from About Face Veterans Against the War
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
Protesting ICE Recruitment Efforts on College Campuses:
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!
Monitor, document, and call attention to federal, state, and local police informal cooperation with ICE through PolICE watch efforts!
Block any measures that delegate power to private bounty hunters to track and kidnap community members!
Learn more about ICE’s program to contract with private surveillance companies to hunt migrants
Check out federal legislation that would block this practice
See Mississippi legislation that would authorize private individuals to act as bounty hunters for migrants
Find out where and how ICE is transporting people abducted from our community! For example:
Target rental companies renting vehicles to ICE, let them know it’s a violation of their contract terms
Document and share ICE license plate numbers:
Learn about Defend & Recruit’s successful #BoycottAvelo campaign!
Learn more about ICE flights through the ICE flight monitor
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
Detroit residents protest ICE flights out of Willow Run airport
Denver airport rejects lease for deportation flight contract Key Lime Air after protests. Protests of Key Lime Air continue at nearby Pueblo Airport, organizers are concerned deportation flights from Denver will be rerouted to Pueblo
Project Keep Away (California): Preventing prison to immigration detention transfers
Find ways to organize with transportation workers and unions, from bus drivers to flight attendants, to refuse to participate in transporting ICE detainees
Build a rapid response network to document, interrupt, and offer resources for people targeted by abductions! Check out these Defend & Recruit toolkits!
Start an ICE patrol/Migra Watch using Defend & Recruit’s toolkit, or join an existing one in your area!
Check out Defend & Recruit’s latest toolkit on resisting CBP invasion of North Carolina!
Watch Chicago organizers share how they resisted the CBP surge!
Learn about how Minneapolis organizers have updated Rapid Response Models
Siembra NC hotline (North Carolina)
Minnesota ICE watch, Immigrant Defense Network; Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (doing hotspot patrol stations) ; Unidos MN; Monarca Rapid Response Line
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)
Unión 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
ICE out of MN noise demonstrations outside hotels (Minnesota)
Break the ICE Machine — target hotels that do business with ICE for boycotts and protests
Develop community-facing resources and posters that can be utilized by community members (see: Muslims for Just Futures Community Defense Hub)
Blow the whistle on ICE!
3-D whistle printing and distribution (Chicago)
Create a sanctuary campus or school:
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
Block ICE from entering farms by putting up fences, gates, and blocking road access (United Farm Workers)
Participate in courtwatch and court accompaniment
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.
Help people stay out of ICE’s sights!
Buy out street vendors so they can go home and stay off the street
Cycling x Solidarity (Chicago)
Los Angeles:
Mar Vista Voice (street vendor buyout)
LA Street Vendor Solidarity Fund (mutual aid for street vendors)
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
Community Defense Centers / Centro de Defensa Comunitaria (LA)
Immigrant Worker Safety Net Fund, Garment Worker's Center (LA)
No More Deaths/No Mas Muertas (Arizona): Providing aid to migrants crossing through Southern Arizona
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 government and enforcement agencies
Demanding that your city and state immediately stop contracting with any company collaborating or contracting with ICE
Check out this interactive map of ICE contractors!
Boycotting corporations that are fueling the ICE detention/deportation machine!
Read more on boycotting companies collaborating with ICE
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
Opposing license-plate readers and other surveillance technology being used to kidnap our neighbors!
The Plate Privacy Project: Opposing local government contracting with Flock Safety for the use of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs).
DeFlock: Reporting and tracking ALPRs on open-source mapping
Pressuring local government to stop flock surveillance
Consumer boycott of ICE-complicit corporations:
Not With My Dollars: ICE Out of My Wallet (Home Depot, Target, Amazon, Whole Foods, Spotify, Microsoft, Dell)
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
