Four Washington, D.C. residents, along with the immigration organization CASA, filed a class action suit
against the Trump administration on Thursday, alleging that federal agents have systematically arrested people in the city without warrants or probable cause.
“Over the past month and a half, plain-clothed, masked, and armed federal agents have flooded the streets of the nation’s capital, indiscriminately arresting without warrants and without probable cause District residents whom the agents perceive to be Latino,” says the complaint.
The complaint was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of D.C., the National Immigration Project, and others, on behalf of the plaintiffs.
In August, President Trump declared a crime emergency
in D.C., despite record-low rates of violent crime. During that press conference, Trump made numerous misleading statements about the prevalence of crime in the city, and announced that D.C.
will “no longer be a sanctuary for illegal alien criminals.”
“We will have full, seamless, integrated cooperation at all levels of law enforcement, and we’ll deploy officers across the District with an overwhelming presence,” he said.
A few days later, on August 15, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed D.C.’s mayor to use local resources to assist with “enforcement of federal immigration law,” including “locating, apprehending, and detaining aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
Between the time of the emergency declaration and September 9, more than 40 percent of the arrests in D.C. were for alleged civil immigration violations, more than any other cause for arrests, according to the suit. The complaint says that federal officers have indiscriminately targeted anyone who appears Latino, including one person who was taking the trash out and another who was walking out of a grocery store.
Agents abducted one resident when he was on his way to dialysis treatment, according to the groups’ press release
announcing the lawsuit. He was detained for over eight hours, without food or his medication.
“They ignored my U.S. driver’s license and left me without critical treatment that day, putting my health in immediate danger,” he said in a statement. “Since then, I have lived in fear that I could be torn from my family and deported to a place where I cannot get the medical care I need to survive.”
All four of the individual plaintiffs in the case were abducted by federal agents who did not have warrants for their arrest.
José Escobar Molina, who has had Temporary Protected Status (TPS) since 2001, was taken by federal agents as he was about to get into his truck and start his work day.
“The agents immediately handcuffed Mr. Escobar Molina, grabbed him by the arms and legs, and called him ‘illegal’ repeatedly,” the suit says. “When he responded that he has ‘papers’ (in other words, immigration status), they replied, ‘No you don’t. You are illegal.’”
After they put him in a vehicle, he told them again he had “papers.”
The driver reportedly yelled at him, “Shut up, bitch! You’re illegal.”
He was detained overnight and released the next day after a supervisor realized Molina had valid TPS.
Federal agents abducted another plaintiff, identified in the complaint as N.S., as he sat in his car in a Home Depot parking lot after he finished shopping.
“The agents pulled N.S. out of the driver’s seat, threw him against the car, handcuffed him, and provided him a clear bag in which to place his belongings, before placing him in the back of a van,” the complaint says.
N.S., who has a pending asylum application, was detained for almost four weeks in detention centers around the country until he was released on his own recognizance.
“His knee is swollen due to being shackled for several hours at a time and sitting on several long flights as he was repeatedly transferred while detained,” the complaint says. “He is unable to sleep through the night. He is scared to walk outside or drive and has stopped driving his grandchildren and youngest son to school.”
In another case, a plaintiff identified as R.S.M. and her husband were driving to work when federal agents surrounded their car. They detained R.S.M for about 10 hours, and released her with an ankle monitor. R.S.M. has a pending asylum application.
Trump’s emergency order expired on September 11, but “mass immigration stops and arrests in D.C. are continuing,” the complaint says.
After D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said
local police would stop cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) once the emergency declaration expired, Trump lashed out at the mayor, who he had previously praised for her cooperation.
“It has been a beautiful thing to watch but, now, under pressure from the Radical Left Democrats, Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has presided over this violent criminal takeover of our Capital for years, has informed the Federal Government that the Metropolitan Police Department will no longer cooperate with ICE in removing and relocating dangerous illegal aliens,” Trump posted
on Truth Social.
“If I allowed this to happen, CRIME would come roaring back. To the people and businesses of Washington, D.C., DON’T WORRY, I AM WITH YOU, AND WON’T ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN,” he continued. “I’ll call a National Emergency, and Federalize, if necessary!!!”
Most of the city’s residents, however, are opposed
to the president’s takeover. In August, D.C. resident Sean Dunn, who threw a sandwich at a federal agent, became a folk hero, and a grand jury refused to indict him
.
“Fuck you! You fucking facists!” he allegedly yelled before throwing the sandwich. “Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!”
We know things are extremely dark and heavy right now, but we wanted to share a little light with you—and to ask for your help. We were officially notified this morning that two of our premiere podcasts, The Marc Steiner Show
and Stories of Resistance
, are finalists for the prestigious Signal Awards!
The Signal Award Judging Academy is a large, esteemed body made up of media professionals, scholars, and practitioners across the industry. To get this recognition from our peers is humbling and motivating validation of the importance and quality of the work we do, and of the impact our unique brand of grassroots storytelling has on those who hear it. It is also a reminder that, with your help and support, our scrappy team of former prisoners, organizers, and low-wage workers turned journalists can go toe-to-toe with the best and biggest media organizations out there. (Move over, Jon Stewart. The Real News is here…)
But we don’t just want to be nominated—we want to win this thing! We need you to go to the Signal Award voting portals and vote for Marc and Mike to win in their respective categories! With your help, we can make that happen—please take a minute to register and vote for Marc and Mike!
How to vote for Marc:Click on this link
to see the finalists for Best Host of an Individual Episode, then click on The Marc Steiner Show logo. You will be asked to register with an email and password (this is to ensure spam voting does not occur). Once you register, your vote will be logged!
How to vote for Stories of Resistance:Click on this link
to see the finalists for Best Show – History, then click on the Stories of Resistance logo. You will be asked to register with an email and password (this is to ensure spam voting does not occur). Once you register, your vote will be logged!
And lastly, if you’re not already a regular listener to our unique slate of podcasts, be sure to subscribe to The Marc Steiner Show
, Stories of Resistance
, and The Real News Network
feeds wherever you listen to your podcasts. Take a moment to leave positive reviews of our shows on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, send us your feedback, and recommend our shows to your friends, family members, and coworkers. We will continue to put in the painstaking work of finding the stories and lifting up the essential voices from the front lines of struggle across the US and around the world,but we need your help to amplify these stories!
Solidarity,
Maximillian Alavarez Editor-in-Chief The Real News Network
The meager collection of congressional Democrats standing outside the Capitol last Thursday belied the gravity of the policy on the agenda: the pending elimination of Obamacare tax credits.
“This isn’t a small thing, this isn’t something that is only going to impact the people who claim those credits,” Nevada Congresswoman Kristen McDonald Rivett argued.
“What we are going to see is that this is going to affect the cost of insurance of every single American.”
This has all the makings of a crisis. Which is why McDonald – Rivett and two other members of Congress stood in a hot September sun pleading with Republicans to renew them as part of a deal to fund the government.
“When Republicans repealed the tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, Republicans basically said we don’t care about Americans losing their health insurance,” Nevada Representative Susie Lee said.
But there’s a big difference between this policy dispute and conflicts in the past. This time, Republicans need Democratic votes to pass a looming spending resolution. Democrats have leverage.
The question is, will they use it?
The biggest obstacle is in the Senate. Republicans hold just 53 seats, seven short of the number need to bypass the filibuster and pass legislation.
House Republicans did approve a bill that would fund the government through November, but it failed in the Senate. Congress has until the end of the month to pass legislation to keep the government open.
Still, when we asked if they were willing to support a shutdown to force Republicans to restore the credits, the elected officials on hand were circumspect, if not muted.
“That’s the Republicans’ choice,” explained Rep. Steven Horsford (D-7), another Nevada Democrat house member who attended the press conference. “They have the power.”
And therein lies the rub. Because truthfully, in this case, Democrats are not without power. They just seem reluctant to wield it.
“Look, it’s the Republicans shutting down the government,” Schumer told CNN anchor Dana Bash. “What we are asking very simply is bipartisan negotiation.”
It’s a cautious approach that has proven ineffective for Democrats in the past. While Trump has indiscriminately issued dozens of executive orders, wielding power like a king, the Democrats have done little to counter him.
To be fair, Democrats might be playing their cards close to the vest. Openly threatening a shutdown now could be premature, and allow Republicans to portray them as obstructionists.
But Democrats have substance on their side, and the power to do something about it. The loss of ACA subsidies has real implications for real people
. Forcing a shutdown would provide a stage to make this clear to the public. At the very least, people would know who to blame for the increase in health premiums if Republicans refuse to budge.
That’s what’s at stake for the Democrats. Trump and his Republican cohorts have grown accustomed to winning. He’s so confident he’s willing to fight on any political stage to prove it.
To beat him, the Democrats have to be willing to do something he does all the time: take risks and be bold. The shutdown is a good place to start. The Democrats need to figure that out before it’s too late.
It’s clear that the Democratic Party, and the Liberal-Left more broadly, is in total disarray. As the Trump administration continues to erode liberal norms, worker protections, due process, free speech, and civil liberties, there’s a broad consensus that the most impactful way to push back against Trump’s unprecedented power grab is at the ballot box in 2026 and 2028. The stakes for these elections couldn’t be higher, and thus the approach Democrats take to do so couldn’t be any more salient. Attempting to get ahead of this narrative, and steer the party away from anything with even the vaguest whiff stench of Left populism, are a recent constellation of think tanks, PACs, and “movements” designed to keep the fundamentally neoliberal, billionaire-approved Democratic Party fundamentally neoliberal and billionaire-approved.
But simply appealing to the status quo wouldn’t be credible after the Democratic Party has fallen to their lowest point in over 40 years (if not 100). So these factions are creating pseudo-worldviews and political frameworks that are meant to appear bold and forward-looking, but are ultimately just a rebranded defense of the party establishment. And we know this because, to the person, they are funded by the same billionaire donors that have shaped democratic politics for decades and are working in concert with party leaders looking to deflect blame for their own repeated failures.
There have been several centrist efforts hatching in the marshes of DC this year, but for the purposes of this essay we will focus on three high-profile ones that launched in 2025: the so-called Abundance Movement, Majority Democrats PAC, and the Searchlight Institute. They differ somewhat in approach and branding but all operate under the same false premise: that Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump last November not because the party had become too centrist, or too inauthentic, or spent decades alienating labor, or campaigned too much with Liz Cheney, or threw too many constituencies under the bus, or was backing a horrific, generation-defining genocide
. Instead it was because Harris—and the party brand in general—had somehow gone too far to the Left. The evidence for this premise, as I will lay out, is wanting. But it’s become conventional wisdom in elite liberal circles, first and foremost, because it lets everyone in elite liberal circles off the hook.
Indeed, it’s an exceedingly convenient narrative for the billionaires backing these factions. Post-2024 loss, if I’m a Democratic consultant or “strategist” wanting to hoover up money to “rebuild the party” and polish my personal brand, I won’t find much funding by telling wealthy liberal donors that the problem with the party is that it sold out the working class and didn’t do nearly enough during the Biden years to win them back, or that it needs to embrace bold redistributive policies like Medicare for All or stronger labor unions, or that it needs to embrace Sanders-Mamdani-style politics of class conflict, less hawkish foreign policy, and unapologetically progressive stances on “social issues.” Obviously, this would not only prevent me from getting millions to start my own “institute” or “movement” and being featured in glossy puff pieces in the New York Times, it would actively upset these donors and effectively ice me out of funding networks.
Thus, the buyer’s market for supposedly new “thinkers” and “movements” that will repackage the existing power structure as edgy, bold, and new is hotter than ever. Enter: these three projects.
The Abundance Movement – Broad Network/Buzzword
Unlike the other two factions on this list, the Abundance faction isn’t a specific group, but a deliberately vague, supposedly post-ideological worldview that, its supporters claim, can include everyone from socialists to the far right. In practice, however, the movement is textbook neoliberalism. Primary boosters of this “movement” include Silicon Valley and Wall Street-funded organizations like the Niskanen Center, Arnold Ventures, Open Philanthropy, Emergent Ventures, increasingly many elements within the Koch Brothers network, the overtly rightwing American Enterprise Institute, and a smattering of other billionaire-backed organizations and passthroughs. Henry Burke of the Revolving Door Institute recently published a detailed report
laying out each blade in the sprawling carpet of astroturf.
Since its two primary thought leaders, the New York Times’ Ezra Klein and the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson, published their book, Abundance in March 2025, the movement, such as it is, has received largely fawning, uncritical coverage in our media due in large part to the movement’s so-vague-as-to-be-unobjectionable premise. Their pitch goes something like this: The reason why liberalism is falling out of favor is because it “no longer builds” anymore. It’s a tempting solution and one that not only rejects class politics as a path out of the woods, but embraces its opposite: further enriching and empowering the wealthy through deregulation so they can “innovate” and “build” us back to prosperity. They will sometimes throw in “building state capacity” rhetoric as an appeal to left-leaning types to throw them off the neoliberal stench, but it’s—at best—an afterthought.
If this sounds like “the Good Things Plan”, a politics so generic and devoid of serious rigor that it can basically be anything to anyone, that’s because it is. This genericness, combined with its total lack of class politics and heavy emphasis on deregulation, is a major reason why it has sucked up so much billionaire money and elite media buy-in. Adding urgency to this dynamic, and a good explanation for the gobs of Silicon Valley cash backing it, is the rapidly increasing AI energy demands
that the US can, by its backers’ own admission, only meet by massively “streamlining” safety, climate, and environmental review for new energy production, including that of new fossil fuel extraction. Which, once again, worked out well for those in power.
Majority Democrats – PAC
A rebrand of previous centrist initiatives, Majority Democrats pins the blame for Democratic Party woes on “woke.” They vaguely gesture toward the Democrats shedding support in the working class, but largely chalk up this loss to “cultural” factors (see: changes that won’t offend billionaire donors) rather than the party takeover by corporate forces.
“These Younger Democrats Are Sick of Their Party’s Status Quo,
” reads the obligatory New York Times launch puff piece, framing the astroturf effort as an organic youth movement. “Majority Democrats, a new group of elected officials from all levels of government, has outsized ambitions to challenge political orthodoxies and remake the party,” the New York Times informs its readers.
How exciting! What bold new subversive project is Majority Democrats doing to win over working class and younger voters? Ending US support for genocide in Gaza? Medicare for All?
Again, when one needs to repackage More Of The Same donor-friendly politics but make it seem new and fresh and subversive (most often in opposition to a fictitious Woke Establishment), there’s really only one place to go: become more bigoted.
Alas, the New York Times piece is light on specifics. There’s a lot of “trading best practices” and “debating and developing ideas,” but little moral or political vision on offer. (“Majority Democrats has yet to issue policy prescriptions,” The Times notes, as if it’s an afterthought.) The group is said, however, to be embracing the advice of “Seth London, an adviser to major Democratic donors,” which is a somewhat incomplete biography in that it omits that Seth London is a multimillionaire venture capitalist
. But, we are told, he has access to donors, which is not seen as a conflict of interest that could, perhaps, undermine their nominal aim of “winning back working-class voters.” Instead, this access is presented as a mark of Seriousness.
In paragraph 19, the New York Times spells out what’s really going on:
“In some ways, the group’s structure resembles that of the Democratic Leadership Council, the once-influential group that successfully pushed the party to the middle in the Clinton era.
But while many of the officials involved in Majority Democrats similarly come from the center-left, organizers insist there is no ideological litmus test to join.”
Once again, they are aware of the branding problem of neoliberalism and its previous avatar, the Democratic Leadership Council. They want to gesture towards it to assure wealthy donors it’s a fundamentally centrist project, but throw in vague rhetoric about how they “don’t have an ideological litmus test” despite all its members being down-the-line pro-Israel centrists.
Again, when one needs to repackage More Of The Same donor-friendly politics but make it seem new and fresh and subversive (most often in opposition to a fictitious Woke Establishment), there’s really only one place to go: become more bigoted. There’s two general philosophies on how best Democrats can “win back working-class voters”: (1) what we can generally call the Bernie-Mamdani wing, becoming more aggressively Left, economically populist, and more anti-war (which the working class overwhelmingly is
); or (2) turn up the racism, transphobia, and anti-immigrant dial from 5 to 8 without any Left economic populism. Which one of these paths is more likely to appeal to wealthy donors? The answer, and thus the rhetoric and diagnosis of Democratic failures from these factions, is obvious.
Searchlight Institute – Think Tank
What if Democrats’ brand is in the toilet not because wealthy donors, Silicon Valley, or Wall Street have outside influence on their policies and made them divorced from Labor, pro-“free trade,” and run by dead-eyed lawyers, but it was, instead, because far-Left activists were manipulating the party behind the curtain and forcing candidates into taking unpopular positions? This is the general theory being promoted by Sen. John Fetterman’s former Chief of Staff Adam Jentleson and his team of centrist operators, who last week launched the Searchlight Institute, a new “think tank” making a similar pitch to that of Majority Democrats PAC: that Democrats’ central problem is they have become too Woke. Specifically, Jentleson pins Harris’ loss on “the groups,” namely the ACLU, which asked Harris in 2019 if she supported healthcare for incarcerated trans people, which she did—a stance, it is now dogma in elite circles, that significantly contributed to her defeat by Trump, despite this claim having little to no empirical basis. But it vaguely feels true and, most essential of all, blames a fairly powerless constituency instead of the consulting class and their billionaire patrons.
This latest effort to rebrand neoliberalism, like Majority Democrats PAC, is clever enough to gesture towards populism, but does so in a superficial and class-flattening way. Indeed, the evercynical Jentleson keeps attempting
to take ideological credit for the success of New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, despite the fact that Jentleson never supported his candidacy and has been openly hostile
and smug
towards the pro-Palestine movement that made up the backbone of Mamdani’s early, evangelical volunteer core
.
In the New York Times obligatory launch puff piece for Searchlight
, published last week, they would, per usual, allow these centrist operators to advance the entirely unfounded idea that Mamdani’s primary win somehow proves their centrist theory of change works because something something “affordability.” (Abundance partisans use this gambit
as well, because Mamdani said he is open to market-rate housing, despite the fact they oppose basically everything else in his platform. But victory, as they say, has a thousand fathers.)
Since Ms. Harris’s loss, many in the party have adopted a more economic-focused message while avoiding social issues. Some prominent Democrats, like Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, have backtracked on prior support for transgender rights and open immigration policy. The most prominent liberal candidate to capture the party’s imagination this year, Zohran Mamdani, decisively won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York with an intense focus on the affordability of housing, groceries and child care.
Reading this, one would think Mamdani, like Newsom, also “avoided social issues,” but he very much did not. In addition to being openly combative with ICE
during the campaign, repeatedly pledging to defend trans New Yorkers
, and promising to defend abortion
, Mamdani put on fundraising events with Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia Gaza protest leader targeted by Trump. Indeed, Mamdani is exhibit A on how one marries robust Left economic populism and progressive “cultural” stances seamlessly, without needing to throw either under the bus. But the New York Times, without any basis, accepts Jentleson’s dishonest narrative and presents Mamdani as the opposite.
This is a popular sleight of hand, and one also advanced by influential centrist pollster David Shor
: the conflation of “focusing on affordability” grounded in clear class-oriented left populist politics—in Mamdani’s case born out of the Democratic Socialist of America—and what Jentleson and Shor are doing when they say Democrats need to “focus on affordability,” which is mainly a rhetorical box-checking exercise untethered from broader class politics. Neither Jentleson nor Shor push for renewing labor, bringing union leaders into the fold, or pushing for major redistributive policies that would meaningfully empower the working class such as Medicare for All—all of which Mamdani does. They instead act as if the working class can be tricked into voting Democrat with tweaks around the margins, more acceptance of bigotry, and better “messaging” that uses the right “affordability”-adjacent language.
In paragraph six, the New York Times casually mentions the rub with Jentleson’s Searchlight Institute: “The organization is subsidized by a roster of billionaire donors highlighted by Stephen Mandel, a hedge fund manager, and Eric Laufer, a real estate investor.”
The use of “roster” and “highlighted” implies there are several more billionaire donors. TRNN emailed Searchlight to find out who these other billionaire donors were. Searchlight did not reply to our request for comment.
But this is the buyer’s market right now: DC operators and careerists seeking support from a handful of mega-donors to “remake the Democratic Party” into an equally zionist, slightly more populist-sounding, exceedingly more racist and transphobic version of its 2024 self. And our media, ever indifferent to the broader structural forces backing these overnight “groups” and “movements,” treats all of this as largely organic, with no class interests, much less conflicts of interest. Everything is presented as good faith, simply Concerned With Pragmatic Necessities of Winning, and neoliberalism is rebranded as something novel and grassroots. And everyone in party leadership, big donor circles, and the wealthy consultancy class in power gets to, once again, remain in power.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Sep. 09, 2025
. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Pro-Palestinian protesters gathered
at the Port of Sidi Bou Said in Tunis, Tunisia early Tuesday morning after the international group organizing a humanitarian aid mission to Gaza
said one of its boats had been struck by what was believed to be a drone.
The Global Sumud Flotilla said one of the main vessels of its fleet of 50 boats was struck while it was anchored in the harbor. The boat was carrying the group’s steering committee, which includes climate leader Greta Thunberg
, human rights activist Yasemin Acar, and Brazilian organizer Thiago Ávila.
Footage taken from a boat docked near the “Family Boat” showed the moment an object appeared to drop onto the vessel, triggering an explosion.
Footage from another boat across from the “Family” – the principal vessel of the Global Sumud Flotilla – shows an object dropping from above onto the ship, triggering an explosion on contact. https://t.co/7TtpIRPzVQpic.twitter.com/RKBDnTugt6
The Global Sumud Flotilla said
no one was injured in the apparent attack and said that “acts of aggression aimed at intimidating and derailing our mission will not deter us.”
“Our peaceful mission to break the siege on Gaza and stand in solidarity with its people continues with determination and resolve,” said the group in a statement.
Political commentator Brian Allen posted another video taken aboard the Family Boat.
🚨 BREAKING: Greta Thunberg was aboard a Gaza aid ship hit by a suspected drone strike off the coast of Tunisia.
The vessel, carrying activists and humanitarian supplies, was set ablaze mid-mission.
The flotilla is the latest fleet of boats headed for Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid and break the siege Israel
has imposed since October 2023 as it has relentlessly attacked the exclave, killing more than 64,000 Palestinians so far, and said it is planning
a complete takeover of Gaza.
Nearly 400 people, including at least 140 children, have died of starvation caused by Israel’s near-total blockade on humanitarian aid. More than 1,000 people have been killed while trying to access food, including at hubs set up by the privatized, US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said
in late July that parts of Gaza are facing famine, with one in three people going days without consuming any food.
Israel has stopped several aid boats from reaching Gaza in recent months, including the Madleen
and the Handala, and detained organizers. The Conscience, another boat operated by the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, was reportedly bombed by Israel in May off the coast of Malta, forcing organizers to turn back.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has threatened
to designate humanitarian aid organizers trying to reach Gaza by boat as “terrorists” and to detain them.
On Tuesday, Francesca Albanese
, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said the reports of a drone attack have to be verified but noted Israel’s “history” of attacking aid vessels bound for Gaza.
Tunisian officials have said
the vessel was not attacked by a drone and blamed the fire that broke out on a cigarette butt or lighter.
“There is no other state protecting this boat other than Tunisia creating a safe port,” said Albanese. “The question is, if it’s confirmed that this is a drone attack, it will be an assault, an aggression against Tunisia and against Tunisian sovereignty.”
“We cannot keep on tolerating this,” she added, “and normalizing the illegal.”
This story originally appeared in Jacobin
on Sept. 09, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
On June 17, 2025, New York City comptroller Brad Lander, at that time a mayoral candidate, was arrested
by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Lander was engaged in the process of immigrant accompaniment, which is when humanitarian supporters accompany immigrants to their court proceedings. Their presence can throw sand in the system’s gears and slow down deportations. Donald Trump’s second administration is criminalizing this practice precisely because they know it works.
In researching my book The Politics of Sanctuary
, I spent years during Trump’s first term observing activists who practice immigrant accompaniment, trying to understand its mechanics and effectiveness. “We can stop or slow down the deportation process,” said one volunteer with the New Sanctuary Coalition (NSC), an organization dedicated to assisting migrants and asylum seekers. The Trump administration has moved to punish
nonprofits and faith-based groups that engage in sanctuary practices like accompaniment, alleging that they promote and facilitate immigration law violations.
“The judges know us, ICE knows us. They fear us,” the NSC volunteer continued. “They have blocked us [from accompaniments], but we will keep going. We show up to doctors’ appointments, to family court, to lawyers’ appointments, [and] to Varick Street,” where New York City’s immigration court is located.
The volunteer was not bluffing about the effectiveness of the accompaniment strategy. I observed numerous cases where NSC volunteers accompanying immigrants slowed down the deportation process. The volunteers I observed were mostly native-born, white, female New Yorkers, ranging from middle-aged to senior citizens. Their presence was critical for the success of migrants’ cases. At times they were a silent presence at ICE check-ins and case hearings, while at other times they were vocal in their advocacy. “We are literally standing at that line and making sure that we hold that line and enforce rights,” one volunteer told me.
During Trump’s first term, migrant advocates sought to counter the administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric with evidence that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates
than native-born Americans. These efforts did not completely reverse public opinion
, which carried Trump to a second victory on an even more anti-immigrant platform in 2024. However, activism during the first Trump term did bring citizens and noncitizens together at demonstrations and protests, strengthening the movement for migrant rights. Many citizens developed political consciousness during this period and dedicated themselves to sanctuary practices like accompaniment — practices that continue to this day, often led by faith-based organizations.
These citizen activists didn’t just sympathize with immigrants but felt they had a duty to defend them. This sense of responsibility led many to 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan to support migrants attending ICE appointments. Living near immigrant neighborhoods, having immigrant friends, and believing that New York City’s institutions could be pushed to protect migrants all contributed to their support. The immigrants involved in these networks, meanwhile, saw themselves not as criminals but as tentative residents whose rights were being violated — a perspective that grew stronger through their participation in sanctuary practices. Their own activism challenged the idea that migrants are simply victims of an exploitative economic system.
Cities as Battlegrounds for Citizenship
Sanctuary practices in cities create space for undocumented people, asylum seekers, and refugees to engage in political struggle. But they can’t do it alone: their effectiveness depends on building alliances with citizens and permanent residents who join these struggles with practices like accompaniment and acts of civil disobedience
. It is precisely this solidarity that the Trump administration is seeking to criminalize.
Nor can migrants claim rights without the dedicated assistance of sympathetic political leaders. Many of them lack the right to vote; the New York Court of Appeals ruled six to one
in March 2025 that the state constitution requires citizenship for voting. Systematically barred from the formal representational political process, they must rely instead on voluntary action from political figures — actions like Lander’s arrest as a mayoral candidate during an accompaniment action.
Trump has made outright threats
to defund sanctuary cities (though only small percentages of budgets would actually be affected). He has also threatened to expand
the criminalization of immigrants, which city administrations have resisted by refusing police cooperation
with ICE. These words have turned into violent acts against protesters and political representatives
seen as obstructing ICE enforcement.
Trump’s threats against grassroots sanctuary efforts serve to heighten racial hostilities, scapegoat immigrants, manufacture emergencies, and instill fear in immigrants to keep them from using social and health services. Meanwhile, urban disinvestment and austerity programs
are creating a false sense of scarcity for which immigrants are held responsible. Amid urban inequality, blaming immigrants can mask the lack of real solutions for urban problems like affordable housing, high-functioning social services, accessible transit, and so on.
Trump’s executive orders
earlier this year intensified threats to sanctuary jurisdictions by calling to cut federal funding, penalize the granting of public benefits, and target local officials for prosecution. Federal courts largely blocked these measures as unconstitutional, and cities continue to fight the policy in court. They must continue to put up a fight, as sanctuary practices represent an essential part of the struggle for migrant rights and indeed all human rights.
The sanctuary movement offers migrants more than simply hope that they won’t be deported. It provides concrete assistance toward the goal of avoiding deportation. Of course, getting migrants to participate in sanctuary practices becomes difficult in a climate of heightened fear amid stepped-up deportations. This makes the participation of native-born activists all the more necessary to create conditions of safety and solidarity. Only when migrants and nonmigrants stand together can they thwart Trump’s anti-migrant agenda.
