Putting the Freeze on ICE: Communities Across the Nation Creatively Resist Trump's Cruel Immigration Policies.

• Author: Goodman, James
• Position: Immigration and Customs Enforcement's implementation of President Donald Trump's policies

Enrique Balcazar Sanchez and Zully Palacios Rodriguez had every reason to believe they were under surveillance by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. They even knew that an informant had infiltrated their organization, Migrant Justice, in Burlington, Vermont.

On March 17, 2017, ICE agents in three unmarked cars surrounded their vehicle and arrested them on immigration charges. Balcazar and Palacios say the agents--in mocking familiarity--referred to them by their nicknames, "Kike" (pronounced Kee-Kay) and "Vicki." Later, in an internal ICE document, agents described them as "high-profile cases."

But Balcazar and Palacios, now in deportation proceedings, are fighting back. They have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Burlington against the United States government, along with top officials in the Department of Homeland Security and the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles. Migrant Justice and another of its activists facing deportation, Victor Garcia Diaz, are also plaintiffs.

The lawsuit claims all plaintiffs were singled out because of their political activism. As a result, First Amendment guarantees and Fourteenth Amendment protections against discriminatory treatment were violated. "We ought not be a police state," says Marc Cohan, director of litigation for the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, one of several groups representing the plaintiffs.

As Cohan puts it, "The machinery of government is being used to silence freedom of speech and freedom to petition the government."

Another challenge to ICE's disregard for Constitutional rights surfaced in Tennessee in February. Seven Latinx employees of the Southeastern Provision meatpacking plant, in an eastern corner of the state, filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in Knoxville against ICE and other Homeland Security officials who conducted a raid on the plant in April 2018.

"Honestly, I don't know why this has happened to us," says Martha Pulido, speaking to reporters as one of the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, which seeks monetary damages for illegal searches and seizures, excessive use of force, and violations of equal protection guarantees. The warrant for the raid was only to look at financial records of the plant's owners.

Pulido was one of about 100 Latinx workers confronted by armed ICE agents, who stormed the plant. She tells of having a gun pointed in her face and seeing her co-workers punched in the face and shoved to the ground. Only Latinx workers were taken to a National Guard Armory for questioning. There she was detained, she said, for almost fourteen hours.

These lawsuits are part of the growing resistance to President Donald Trumps deportation apparatus. Not only are activists mounting legal challenges to immigration arrests, but also localities are taking stands against the Big Brotherism of ICE and Customs and Border Protection. And communities have rallied in support of those detained.

One major prong of resistance to Trump's immigration policies is the sanctuary movement, in which local officials are limited or sometimes prohibited from cooperating with ICE. The effort has been successful--but only to a point.

While there is no set definition for "sanctuary," it typically entails noncompliance with ICE at some level. A 2018 report by the Migration Policy Institute, "Revving Up the Deportation Machinery: Enforcement Under Trump and the Pushback," shows that California, which was unwelcoming to ICE, did not initially bear the brunt of Trump's immigration crackdown and that limitations on cooperation with ICE by municipalities such as New York City and Chicago had an effect.

More than 300 jurisdictions throughout the United States, according to the report, have restrictions on cooperating with ICE--usually limiting agents' access to questioning people in state or local custody.

The Trump Administration has doubled down by singling out sanctuary cities for heightened enforcement. But that has prompted pushback, as when...