📎 Federal Resource Round-Up

Over the past month, the federal government has escalated its authoritarian tactics to further consolidate power and control. Executive orders to threaten civil society and our movements. Unprecedented occupation of our cities, with more than 35,000 troops now deployed across D.C., California, Texas, and elsewhere. Over the weekend, Portland became the latest target, where federal law enforcement has been deployed to suppress local organizing and intimidate local leaders. The Trump administration has also sent federal agents to patrol Chicago and Memphis – and it has threatened to increase this patrol in other cities that have a history of defying its anti-immigrant agenda.

We are clear-eyed about what this administration is doing:

• Through escalating, violent ICE raids, they are disappearing immigrants en masse, now locking up more than 60,000 people in detention facilities.
• They also continue to further criminalize and villainize Black youth, unhoused people, and trans communities under the pretext of fighting crime.
• And they are cracking down on progressive local electeds, Black-led cities, movement organizations, and anyone else who opposes their agenda. 
• Behind it all, corporations are cashing in – raking in government contracts to expand surveillance tech that entrenches this repression. 

But, in the face of this crackdown, resistance is mounting. Now is the time to build organizing infrastructure and deepen networks of community care, push for impactful disentanglement policies, and apply local power to the fullest extent.

Our goal for these round-ups is to help you connect with key, timely information and resources from Local Progress and partners—and to help you focus on where local power can be effectively leveraged in this moment.

🏫 Keeping Our Students Safe During Back To School  

As the school year begins, many young people, families, and educators are entering classrooms under heightened uncertainty and fear. But communities are preparing, organizing, and sharing tools to keep each other safe.

Here are resources for your district and families:

• Emergency planning: Work with families in your district to gather key documents (passports, birth certificates, Social Security cards, school and medical records), identify at least two willing caregivers and their contact information, and set aside funds for legal fees. See resources from the National Immigration Law Center for more guidance.
• Policy shifts: Take steps to decriminalize offenses that target youth. For example, this summer Chicago Mayor vetoed a youth curfew ordinance that would have expanded local law enforcement’s ability to stop and detain young people.  
• Learn from the Chicago Teachers Union and Los Angeles United School District, who are training educators and neighborhoods to respond to raids, detentions, and threats.
• Toolkits for action:
  • Chicago Teachers Union’s Sanctuary Toolkit – guidance and templates for developing Sanctuary Teams for local schools.
  • Siembra NC’s Campus Defense Toolkit strategies to defend college students, including visa holders, faculty, and staff.
  • Indivisible’s Safe Schools for Every Student: A Comprehensive Guide for Action – legal insights, model policies, and outreach resources that keep schools safe for all students.

🤝 Building Mutual Aid and Community Safety

Thousands of residents in D.C., Chicago, L.A., and elsewhere are protecting their families, friends, and neighbors through regular cop and ICE watches along with mutual aid efforts. These actions are developing hyper-local infrastructure needed to withstand authoritarian attacks.

Here are some ways you can strengthen mutual aid networks and build power locally:

• Create safe routes and protect public spaces: Build care infrastructure by adopting a corner, a school, or a transit stop. Organize “walking schoolbuses” and use Free DC’s 2025 Back To School Community Safety Toolkit to assemble safe routes to and from schools and build rapid response networks.
• Join trainings: Participate in these upcoming ICE Watch trainings to expand community monitoring and defense capacity.
• Plan for safety: Engage in safety and scenario planning at the individual, organizational, and community level.  Join Vision Change Win’s Organizational Safety Training Series, and use Interrupting Criminalization’s Digital Security & Doxxing Prevention Checklist. 
• Strengthen communication: Build your information infrastructure to create secure, trusted channels for communication and information-sharing in your community.

🧊 Escalating ICE Operations

The recently passed budget gives federal agencies $170 billion for anti-immigrant enforcement, detention, and deportation. That level of funding makes U.S. immigration enforcement agencies richer than the entire military forces of many countries. And it gives the federal government the power to intensify its attacks on immigrant communities. 

We’ll have more forthcoming on leveraging local power maximally to protect immigrant communities. In the meantime, here’s what you need to know about this expansion of this anti-immigrant apparatus and some resources to push back:

• Understand the funding: Review NILC’s New Funding Increases Immigration Enforcement for a breakdown of how this money will be spent.
• Use local authority: Enforce land-use and other permits (see Portland, OR and Chicago area examples) and demand inspections of ICE facilities, as local electeds have done across the country (see Burlington, VT, Sacramento, CA, New York, NY examples). 
• Fund legal counsel for immigrants in active removal proceedings, especially for those in immigration detention. Use this toolkit from the Vera Institute of Justice, Center for Popular Democracy, and National Immigration Law Center for strategies, best practices, and examples from other municipalities.
• Share Know Your Rights resources:
  
  • Distribute Know Your Rights resources to everyone in your jurisdiction regardless of immigration status.
  • Incorporating material that specifically addresses National Guard deployment.
  • National Immigration Law Center’s Know Your Rights cards.
  • Muslims for Just Futures’ Know Your Rights posters and information.
  • National Immigration Law Center’s education-specific Know Your Rights resources.
  • NLG Federal Defense Hotline.

Photo credit: Chicago Teachers Union