The Activists Urging Illegal Aliens to "Fight Back" Against ICE Deportations

Professional activists—and at least one congressional Democrat—are scheming to spoil Trump’s historic mass deportation mandate by helping illegal aliens escape Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and remain at large.

While hundreds of law firms offer "deportation defense" services, a network of fringe groups on the radical Left funded by George Soros and other mega-donors advise illegal aliens on how to avoid "ICE ruses," some with ties to Marxist groups and Communist China. Working alongside them is socialist Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who advised Muslim Somalis earlier this week on how to dodge ICE's questions about their immigration status.

"ICE tells lies. Don’t fall for them," blasts the Immigrant Defense Project in an "shareable infographic" on the supposed rights of illegal aliens. "ICE’s most common lie is pretending to be local policy so you think you are helping police instead of helping ICE."

"If you or a loved one could be at risk of an ICE arrest, speak to an attorney for individualized advice."

The project even dangerously encourages illegal aliens, including violent offenders, to "fight back" if "ICE comes to your door."

The Immigrant Defense Project is a front for the Fund for the City of New York, a nonprofit incubated by the Ford Foundation to bankroll left-wing groups in the Big Apple. Restoration News has traced 6-figure grants from the Ford and Soros-run Open Society Foundations to the project.

The Immigrant Defense Project works closely with the National Lawyers Guild, an extremist group that Congress identified as the "legal bulwark of the Communist Party" in the 20th century, to provide legal aid to illegal aliens and advocate for open borders. The guild blasts Trump’s executive order to seal the border as "racist, xenophobic, and hateful."

In January, the Immigrant Defense Project attacked the Laken Riley Act—named for a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student brutally murdered by a Venezuelan illegal alien helped into the country by the Biden administration—as "an attack on our rights to due process." The act, the first piece of legislation Trump has signed into law in his second term, mandates the detention of illegal migrants accused of violent crimes and theft.

The project calls the Laken Riley Act "one of the most extreme, anti-immigrant bills written into law in years." "ICE is looking to rip people from their families and communities," a spokeswoman blasted.

Infographics from Immigrant Defense Project

That apparently includes a 26-year-old Tren de Aragua ringleader in the Bronx, arrested last week for alleged armed home invasion as part of the ultraviolent Venezuelan gang. Dozens more criminals have been arrested in Trump’s ICE raids.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is currently under investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for his role in defying federal immigration law to shield illegal aliens from deportation. Yet the Immigrant Defense Project is pressuring city leaders to maintain New York’s sanctuary city policies and cease "conspiring with ICE in the detention and deportation of our communities."

Hiding Illegal Aliens

The Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network runs an anti-deportation hotline where illegal aliens can "text ‘ICE’ or ‘Migra’ [Immigration]" to get "notifications about ICE activity" in Spanish. On Feb. 3, the group organized a 500-person rally in Olympia to demand new "policies to help immigrants," including state-funded healthcare benefits.

The group describes itself as a "queer and transgender founded and led nonprofit" committed to "intersectional, multifaith, intergenerational, multi-lingual, multiracial, multiethnic immigrant-led effort." It’s received money from the Marguerite Casey Foundation, one of the top funders of the now-defunct ACORN agitation network using money from the UPS fortune.

The National Immigrant Solidarity Network, which agitates against ICE deportations, is even more extreme, comparing border enforcement to the Holocaust. "Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal," the group warns, quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. The network maintains close ties to Communist China through its China-US Solidarity Network, savaging U.S. efforts to block Chinese infiltration of the sciences as an effort to "suppress China."

The network is sponsored by the far-left Alliance for Global Justice, a "sham charity" sanctioned by the Biden Treasury Department for funneling cash to Palestinian terrorists. (The network demands the Communist May Day be renamed "Workers for Palestinian Resistance Day" as part of a "developing world revolt against U.S. imperialism.") The Alliance for Global Justice also sponsors radical anti-Israel student groups which called for a bloody revolution at a Los Angeles synagogue during last year’s anti-Israel riots. It later came under fire for failing to report lobbying, likely breaking the law.

Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network

Safeguarding Sanctuary Cities

One of the top national groups behind the anti-deportation campaign is the Vera Institute, a radical litigation group that attacks border security and policing measures as racist (hence its support for Black Lives Matter in 2020). The group is funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations, ex-Enron billionaire John Arnold, the Tides Foundation, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott.

In 2017, Vera launched the Safety & Fairness for Everyone Network (SAFE) to lobby for taxpayer-funded lawyers to represent illegal aliens facing deportation. The group boasts that 43% of detained aliens avoid deportation owing to SAFE lawyers. 55 Democrat-run counties have joined the program, many of them sanctuary jurisdictions where law enforcement refuses to cooperate with ICE.

The program is backed by national Democrats, who introduced a House bill in 2023 establishing "a right to legal representation" at taxpayer expense for aliens facing deportation. The Vera Institute endorsed the bill.

Madison and Dane County, Wisconsin, are joint SAFE members and illegal alien sanctuaries, despite Republican efforts to outlaw it in the legislature. The Vera Institute estimates there are nearly 30,000 non-citizens "at risk of deportation" in Madison alone, and 155,000 statewide.

After Trump took office, Dane Co. Sheriff Kalvin Barrett quickly withdrew from a federal program that reimburses local jurisdictions for the cost of incarcerating illegal aliens accused of felonies with support from the ACLU. Open records requests revealed Barrett refused 90% of ICE requests to keep accused deportable aliens in the Dane County jail. The county refuses to cooperate with ICE.

In contrast, 8 Republican-run counties have ICE agreements to hold illegal aliens in jail until federal agents can take custody of them—something they say rarely happened under Biden.

In January, Wisconsin Democrats vowed new legislation to prohibit all law enforcement from aiding ICE deportations, including using state funds for detaining illegal aliens. One bill supporter urged the Trump administration to "have mercy" on those who "pick our crops and clean our office buildings."

"Being undocumented in the United States is not a crime, despite what is being repeated on the airwaves nightly, it’s a civil violation. It’s the same thing as if I had a parking ticket," one activist said in support of the bill.

In fact, crossing the border illegally is a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment up to two years—up to twenty years with a felony conviction. It’s also illegal for anyone in the U.S. to smuggle aliens into the country, encourage them to enter illegally, or "conceal, harbor, or shield an alien from detection" punishable up to ten years in federal prison.

Atlanta, Georgia, launched its own SAFE program in Nov. 2017 to block ICE deportations. Georgia outlawed sanctuary cities in 2010 and reaffirmed it with harsher legislation in 2016 and 2024, yet local Democrats have continually flaunted state law.

That includes the sanctuary city of Athens, where Laken Riley was murdered last year.

The Vera Institute estimates there are 436,000 non-citizens "at-risk of deportation" in Atlanta and 580,000 statewide. Federal raids are already underway, sparking foreign agitators to wave Mexican and Guatemalan flags in protest outside the city.

"Solidarity" with Immigrants Over Americans

In Arizona, the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (FIRRP) lobbied Arizona’s Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego to oppose the Laken Riley Act, saying it "would have devastating consequences for undocumented people . . . by subjecting immigrants to prolonged, indefinite detention without bond based on convictions or even just arrests for petty offenses like shoplifting."

On Feb. 3, FIRRP and the ACLU sued the Trump administration for closing the border to asylum applicants, accusing the President of "embrac[ing] racist conspiracy theories."

The Biden-Harris regime used those asylum laws to allow millions of non-citizens into the country indefinitely as they awaited years for a court hearing, effectively creating a permanent illegal alien underclass. Under Biden, Border Patrol agents launched an app to make it easier for aliens to "seek asylum" in America—95% of whom were let in, including tens of thousands of known violent criminals.

The FIRRP lawsuit targets Trump’s newly reinstated Remain in Mexico policy, which requires asylum-seekers to wait on the other side of the border while their application is processed.

FIRRP is heavily funded by the Vera Institute as well as Chicago Community Trust and Community Foundation of Southern Arizona, philanthropies created to fund local charity, not lobbying.

Despite this, polling reveals big majorities of Americans back Trump’s campaign promise to finish building the southern border wall and deport huge numbers of illegal aliens. Restoration News has also documented the President’s secret weapon for mass deportations, universal E-Verify.

(READ MORE: Violent Venezuelan Gangs Fueling Illegal Alien Crime Wave in Chicago Using Flood of Dark Money)