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    Home»Opinions»Opinion | How to Train Citizens to Observe ICE
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    Opinion | How to Train Citizens to Observe ICE

    Team_Benjamin Franklin InstituteBy Team_Benjamin Franklin InstituteJanuary 17, 2026No Comments4 Mins Read
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    It’s not that we are teaching people to protest, although protesting peacefully is a right that we all have. But it was about: How do we teach people their rights? How do we ask people who are not impacted by immigration issues to participate? So that was the core of this work that we do. And so eventually we created the Immigrant Defense Network. So protesting is not the way that we frame it. It is: Know your rights and use them to do what the Constitution allows you to do. And do you use the term “constitutional observer“? Yes. So what is a constitutional observer? So the constitutional observer became a tool for people who wanted to document the actions of ICE. And documenting that — not interfering with the obstructing an ICE action but documenting — was a tool that we have been using and relaying that information to either lawyers or anyone else who can follow up on behalf of the person that has been arrested. So let’s say I call you up or I come to your offices and I say: I’m concerned about ICE’s presence in Minneapolis. I want to become a constitutional observer, or I want to be trained in how to be present at ICE actions. Just give me a précis of what kind of training or instructions you would give. So first, I will thank you for expressing your interest, and then I will suggest that to show up to the next training that we have. And so it is a 90-minute training where you go through various presentations. One is: What is a constitutional observer? What is it that we do and don’t do? The importance of documenting. When ICE asks you to step back, step back; do not obstruct. When ICE tells you to turn your camera off, you don’t have to obey that because it’s your right to video record what your government is doing. Do not point to the face of the person who is being arrested. Pay attention to details, like actions of ICE, which division of the D.H.S. are they representing, the process and the procedures in which they do their work. And so, once the raid has happened, submit that information to our network, the Immigrant Defense Network, with all the documentation that you did. And then the next step is to support the family that was impacted. Let’s go back to something you said at the very start. You talked about the scenes in Minnesota, and you talked about people blowing whistles, running around, warning businesses that ICE is coming. Is that part of the training? Is that something that you tell people to do or urge people to do? Actually, we don’t. We don’t. But we provide whistles, and we provide vests, and we have a booklet that is the constitutional observer booklet. You can find that online in our website. And so we provide copies of those books. And so that’s part of the training. The whistle is part of that. For instance, if you, as a citizen, observe the presence of ICE in your neighborhood, you can call the help line and say: I have witnessed this. That information come to us. We assess the fact, and then we activate constitutional observers. So if you become a constitutional observer, we may say: Ross, there is ICE presence in your neighborhood. Will you show up to do your constitutional observer duty? And so that’s how we activate you. And so then the expectation, if you’re giving me a whistle, the expectation is I will be out. I will be documenting in some way with a camera, but I will also be doing things to alert the neighborhood. That’s you don’t insist on it, but it’s clearly part of what people are doing. Because most people are using, I mean, all we have are whistles. They have guns.



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