Deportation is an increasing fear in the immigrant community as the Trump administration cracks down on undocumented immigrants, particularly those with criminal records. As of May 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials had arrested more than 41,000 people, an almost 40% increase from the same period last year. ICE continues to surveil, target, and harass immigrant communities, often showing up at homes in nondescript clothing, identifying as police officers, or using fabricated stories to gain entry.
In this climate of escalating fear and uncertainty, WITNESS and Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) remain committed to protecting immigrant communities and supporting activists and organizers. Our first webinar, #EyesOnICE: Documenting ICE, covered rights and legal issues around filming ICE activity. You can view the webinar below. Also available in Spanish.
Filming these encounters on a cellphone or other device, if possible, can help expose illegal activity and human rights abuses committed by ICE officers, deter violence, substantiate reports and serve as evidence. However, if footage isn’t captured and/or shared safely and ethically, there can be unintended harm to both the person being filmed and the person filming.
Our second webinar, #EyesOnICE: Community Responses and Organizing Tactics, featured organizers from Make the Road New York, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), Equality for Flatbush, and Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). You can view the webinar below to learn more about their approaches, challenges, and vision for a way forward. As ICE expands the deportation system and priorities for deportation, communities and grassroots groups like these continue to lead the way – fighting back, challenging mainstream narratives, and documenting abuses. Also available in Spanish.
Both webinars are available to download in English and Spanish.
Below are responses to questions we weren’t able to answer during the webinars, as well as a resource roundup of immigration and filming-related materials. Thank you to The Center for Constitutional Rights for helping to answer some of the legal questions. More resources on ICE and filming here!
Questions are broken up into categories:
FILMING ICE
SHARING VIDEOS
DIGITAL SECURITY
SOCIAL MEDIA
LEGALITIES OF FILMING
ICE TACTICS
RESOURCE ROUNDUP
- #EyesOnICE Webinar 1:Documenting ICE slides available for download.
- Filming ICE tip sheet (Spanish translation) (WITNESS)
- Filming ICE animation
- Getting Started with Digital Security: Tips and Resources for Activists (WITNESS blog post)
- Community Advisory on Social Media, Criminalization and Immigration (NIP-NLG)
- Tip sheets for securing your phone, computer and communications (Equality Labs)
- What is video metadata? (WITNESS)
- Filming Video for Evidence Field Guide (WITNESS)
- Know Your Rights resources on encounters with ICE (Immigrant Defense Project and Center for Constitutional Rights)
- Defending Against ICE Raids toolkit, English and Spanish (Immigrant Defense Project and Center for Constitutional Rights)