Want to Protect your Community from ICE? Start Here.
As 2026 begins, the Trump Administration is doubling down on its campaign to terrorize our communities – starting with Minnesota, where ICE agents killed two legal observer and used a 5-year-old as “bait.” Our neighbors are scared to leave their homes. Local businesses are shuttering. And all of us are less safe with secret police scouring our neighborhoods.
With a Congress paralyzed by partisanship and ICE raids continuing to escalate, it’s fallen on local elected officials to stand up for their communities. Across the country, we’ve heard from local leaders who are eager to fight back against Trump’s campaign of terror, but need support ensuring their policies actually protect people on the ground. Today, Local Progress and the Local Progress Impact Lab is proud to share a playbook outlining how local leaders can continue to protect their communities.
Together with several national partners like the National Immigration Law Center and Indivisible, we’re launching the No Secret Police campaign – a coordinated effort to fight back against the surveillance, detainment, and deportation of our neighbors. The cornerstone of this campaign is our newly released No Secret Police Policy Toolkit, a call to action for local governments to use their regulatory, procurement, and legislative powers to counter the rise of authoritarian tactics used by the Trump administration and protect community members.
The toolkit is organized into six key sections, each intended to dismantle a different facet of the Trump Administration’s authoritarian regime:
✔️ No Data for Secret Police: The Trump Administration is using harmful surveillance technology to spy on our communities, track our whereabouts, and ultimately, detain and deport our neighbors. Local governments are the last line of defense for residents’ right to privacy and safety. This section includes local policy guidance to cancel Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) contracts.
✔️ No Collaboration with Secret Police: The Trump Administration heavily relies on local law enforcement to carry out its inhumane, illegal immigration enforcement agenda. Local governments must make sure its local law enforcement are not supporting this gross federal overreach. This section includes a recommended local sanctuary policy, and guidance for how to end 287(g) agreements, cancel federal detention contracts, and remove traffic enforcement from low-level traffic offenses.
✔️ No Public Funds for Secret Police: The Trump Administration is using all of our tax dollars to carry out these lawless kidnappings. Local governments have the power to make sure that our local tax dollars don’t go to anyone helping Trump’s secret police abduct our neighbors. This section includes guidance for using procurement power to ensure local contractors abide by local laws prohibiting contact with federal immigration enforcement officers.
✔️ No Public Space for Secret Police: The Trump Administration is sending masked secret police to kidnap our immigrant neighbors in public places like libraries, hospitals, schools, and parks. Local governments must make sure that all of our public spaces are safe for all of us. This section includes local policy guidance to prohibit federal immigration enforcement agencies from using municipal, county, or school-owned or controlled property for any purposes without a signed warrant, as well as recommendations to conduct inspections of ICE facilities and enforce local land-use and health and safety policies.
✔️ No Secret Police in Our Schools: Of all places, the Trump Administration is ordering masked secret police to scour our neighborhood schools – the very places where children and families should feel the most safe. Local governments must have comprehensive plans in place to protect students and families from secret police abduction. This section includes local guidance for how to keep students’ data and information safe and to ensure that the trusted adults in our school communities are trained to protect students in this dire moment.
✔️ No Impunity for Secret Police: The Trump Administration’s secret police are deliberately hiding behind masks, using unmarked vehicles, and refusing to display their names or badge numbers – allowing them to hide while they wreak havoc on our communities. When the government acts behind a mask, it breeds deep mistrust between local government and our community. Local governments can and must demand accountability. This section includes local policy guidance to require that Trump’s secret police self-identify and show their faces to the world.
The policy toolkit also includes corresponding messaging guidance, including talking points for each policy. This messaging guidance is intended to help you distill complex policies into language that is accessible, concise, and most importantly, resonant with your communities and the daily struggles they face.
“Local governments are the last line of defense for our communities’ right to safety in this era of rising authoritarianism. The No Secret Police campaign is a way for local leaders nationwide to answer that call together – in lock step – to protect our immigrant neighbors.” – Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez
Are you a local elected official interested in getting involved? Check out our local policy toolkit, corresponding messaging guidance, and email helpdesk@localprogress.org to let us know what policy/policies you’re committing to advancing in your community.
We cannot let the tragedies we’re seeing in Minnesota happen across the country. Without intervention, ICE will continue to harass and cause harm to our neighbors. Now is the time for local leaders to take action.
Photo retrieved from PBS News. Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters.