After Minnesota killing, NC immigrant rights group has new guidance for ‘ICE watchers’

Federal agents who swept into Charlotte and Raleigh in November to arrest undocumented immigrants were often met by protesters who used their mobile phone cameras to record the agents’ actions.

Since then, a federal agent fatally shot an “ICE watcher” in Minneapolis and hit those protesting the agents’ presence with blasts of tear gas and eye-irritant sprays.

Nonetheless, a North Carolina group is continuing to mobilize volunteers to monitor federal agents’ actions.

Andreina Malki, an organizer with Siembra NC, said her group has trained more than 5,000 people in North Carolina in how to monitor and respond to sweeps from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The group formed at the start of President Donald Trump’s first term in response to what its website calls “Trump’s war on immigrants, the gap in support and resources for the broader Latin community in North Carolina.” One of Siembra’s activities is to organize ICE watchers by areas of the state. It uses texts, a hotline and its Facebook page to have volunteers respond when federal agents attempt roundups of undocumented immigrants.

A federal agent’s fatal shooting of a woman who was participating in an ICE watch effort in Minneapolis has both frightened and motivated the group’s volunteers.

“We have volunteers with a lot of questions, like: ‘Can they get away with this?’ They are feeling scared, they are feeling heartbroken,” Malki said. But they’re also angered by what they’re seeing in the Twin Cities, she said, “and this makes them want to continue to work even more.”

Siembra has not altered how it instructs ICE watchers to capture scenes, but it has added more advice on how to stay safe.

“I don’t want to say we changed tactics because what we always did involved protected activities, such as recording and observing law enforcement. We don’t interfere, but we do record,” Malki said. But Siembra is providing more guidance to its volunteers on how they can minimize the risks to themselves.

Andrew Willis Garcés, a Siembra senior strategist who has monitored federal immigration agents in North Carolina for nine years, said volunteers are now being told not to use their vehicles to follow agents because “it greatly increases the likelihood of violence.” Volunteers should continue recording video even when told to stop, he said, to create as full a record as possible. And when told by agents to back up, volunteers should say, “I’m backing up. I’m complying,” in order to create a record if they are arrested for alleged interference, he said.

But volunteers are also being told that they will always be at risk of being roughed up, detained or arrested so long as federal agents keep taking an aggressive approach to protesters and people recording their actions.

President Trump and other top federal officials have condemned groups that train ICE watchers as interfering with law enforcement.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem called Renee Good, the ICE watcher shot in Minneapolis, “a domestic terrorist.” Vice President JD Vance said Good “was part of a broader left-wing network” that seeks “to attack, to dox, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.”

Malki said Seimbra is educating potential targets of ICE arrests about their rights and showing volunteers how to legally track and publicize the actions of militarized federal agents who are themselves breaking the law.

“It’s quite disturbing that we have just kind of accepted that there is this federal law enforcement that we have to follow around pretty much all the time because it is so commonplace for them to violate the rights of anyone they are encountering, including U.S. citizens,” she said.

It’s likely that Siembra will see more cause to train volunteers to monitor federal immigration agents. President Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” adds tens of billions of dollars for immigration law enforcement, including funding to hire 10,000 more ICE agents.

All those agents will have to go somewhere. With more than 450,000 undocumented immigrants living in North Carolina, it’s likely they will be coming here.

If the agents come for undocumented immigrants, North Carolina volunteers will try to protect them from arrest and deportation.

Malki said undocumented immigrants and those related to them are frightened by the federal crackdown, but “We’ve also heard that they feel safe knowing that there are literally thousands of people in North Carolina that are watching out for them.”

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com