How Pro-Immigrant Activism Turned Dangerous

Like countless others, I was shocked by the news of Renee Good’s shooting by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. But I was not surprised. I had warned months before that something like this would happen, having watched the troubling evolution of rapid response networks, a form of activism I helped pioneer during Donald Trump’s first term. Once focused on providing legal services to immigrants, rapid response networks now frequently promote a dangerous pattern of social-media-fueled confrontations with authorities.

For me, Trump’s victory in 2016 came as a shock. I was particularly worried about what his presidency would mean for immigrants. A first-year lawyer in New York City, I began working with immigration attorneys and community organizers to set up what would come to be known as rapid response networks. The goal was to confirm and document arrests, dispatch attorneys to detention centers, assist families, and raise funds to pay immigration bonds when possible. We channeled the energy of eager volunteers into concrete support for people detained by ICE. 

Over the course of two years, I trained a steady stream of volunteers. The groups they worked with varied in size and effectiveness. Some secured grants and built formal programs with dedicated legal staff. Others operated informally, arranging rides for immigrants to court or check-ins with ICE. But certain features were consistent. All relied on small bodies of trained volunteers and nonprofit coordinators. All focused on supporting immigrants after arrest. Most notably, throughout the years these networks operated, I did not encounter a single instance in which local police or ICE agents arrested observers for their presence at the scene of an operation. This reflected a simple fact: Our efforts were not aimed at interfering with authorities.

Another distinguishing feature of our work was its relative anonymity. Providing legal aid to migrants does not lend itself to dramatic scenes. No one has gone viral by posting bond for a detainee. In terms of its tactics and visibility, our work had little in common with the large-scale demonstrations that defined liberal protest during the first Trump administration, like the Women’s March in 2017 and the George Floyd summer protests of 2020.