10 rules of resistance for #ICEOut

This article 10 rules of resistance for #ICEOut was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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It’s time to kick ICE out of all our cities, everywhere. 

This armed, violent, lawless agency has terrorized one city after another since the immigration crackdown started in early 2025. ICE agents and the federal agents assisting them have shot 17 people, killed at least four, injured countless more, allowed at least 37 immigrants to die in custody, fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, conducted midnight raids by helicopter, smashed car windows to haul passengers out, kicked in doors of private residences, snatched people off the streets and thrown them in unmarked vans, left children abandoned in cars and on sidewalks, detained teenagers for weeks, beaten and abused arrested individuals, splintered families, illegally deported detainees to gulags in El Salvador, set up a prison camp in tents in a swamp, arrested people at immigration courts, arrested elected officials for exercising their lawful right of oversight, and continuously misled and lied to the public about it all. 

The Trump administration refuses to hold any agents or officials accountable for these offenses. Instead, the White House is plastering its podiums and websites with white nationalist slogans and doubling down on racist rhetoric. With the Jan. 7 murder of Renee Nicole Good and the violence of the 3,000 armed agents occupying Minneapolis, this pattern of brutality is escalating.

It is time for all Americans — citizens and residents, political leaders and neighbors, left, right, center and independent — to take a clear and unequivocal stand. It is unconscionable to allow this to continue. 

 There is already a robust — and still growing — resistance to the abuses, lawlessness and immorality of ICE, Border Patrol and the other federal agents assisting them. Thousands of people are joining in, not only in defense of immigrants but also in support of a democratic society rather than a militarized police state. They see the abuses of immigration officials as the leading front of an authoritarian takeover. 

Many view ICE as the Gestapo of the Trump administration — and the analogy is not unfounded. In light of this, there is a tool of anti-Nazi resistance that can help us stop them. 

When the Nazis invaded and occupied Denmark in 1940, a 17-year-old named Arne Sejr printed a flier called “10 Commandments for Danes.” Circulated through the Danish resistance, it went viral. It served as a framework of resistance for Denmark’s populace as they withstood Nazi occupation. Despite severe repression, they rescued 7,800 Jews from certain death in concentration camps. They also denied their occupiers significant resources, such as preventing the construction of any new warships for the Germans. 

Here are Arne Sejr’s 10 Commandments for Danes: 

1. You must not go to work in Germany and Norway.
2. You shall do a bad job for the Germans.
3. You shall work slowly for the Germans.
4. You shall destroy important machines and tools.
5. You shall destroy everything which may be of benefit to the Germans.
6. You shall delay all transport.
7. You shall boycott German and Italian films and papers.
8. You must not shop at Nazis’ stores.
9. You shall treat traitors for what they are worth.
10. You shall protect anyone chased by the Germans.

These 10 guidelines showed people how to deny Nazis resources and cooperation. They encompassed economic resistance, stalling methods, social rejection and protection of targeted individuals. 

Today, after a year of rapid, large-scale mobilizing, resistance to rogue immigration agents is seeing its own set of commandments emerge. From compiling strategies from across the United States, 10 Rules of Resistance for #ICEOut can be identified. Taken as a whole, they offer all of us a robust approach to denying ICE the basic necessities of their operation.

10 Rules of Resistance for #ICEOut

1. No silence.
2. No selling.
3. No service.
4. No hotel rooms.
5. No entry.
6. No informing.
7. No looking away. 
8. No collaboration.
9. No transporting.
10. No detention centers.

(You can add to this list, of course. There’s no limit to the ways we can resist.) 

Nonviolent movements succeed by strategically pressuring the pillars of support for an injustice to withhold or withdraw things like information, cooperation, funding, labor and more. These 10 Rules of Resistance for #ICEOut offer ways to deny immigration agencies the key resources they need to function effectively. ICE cannot function without detention centers, transportation of detainees, access to businesses and properties, staging areas in parking lots, surveillance, telecommunication, recruitment ads, deliveries, or even quiet and uninterrupted sleep at hotels. 

There are already efforts being made on each of these rules. Here are more details and examples.

1. No silence. 

Blow those whistles when you see ICE agents around. Speak out against ICE raids and abuses. Demand that public officials and institutions take action. Hold vigils, rallies, marches and protests. If you are in a position to reveal important information, do it. 

Groups nationwide are handing out whistles, training in the whistle signals developed by Protect Rogers Park and using rapid response to drive ICE out of neighborhoods. Some sound the alarm from cars like the famed Angie the ICE Chaser. In Perris, California, the mayor issued a public safety alert to shelter in place while ICE was in town. 

A whistleblower revealed the identities of 4,500 ICE agents. A Minneapolis church put a message on its marquee: blessed are the whistle blowers for they play the music of salvation. In Charlotte, North Carolina, 30,000 high school students walked out of class in protest. Activists in Chicago and around the country make music or noise outside detention centers so detainees know they’re not abandoned.  

2. No selling. 

Do not do commerce with ICE agents or sign business contracts with ICE. Pressure corporate collaborators to cancel their contracts. Stop shopping at businesses like Amazon, which provides the digital infrastructure for ICE; or use USPS instead of FedEx and UPS, which are delivering packages for ICE.

After a boycott mobilized people to #CancelSpotify, the music platform stopped running ICE recruitment advertisements. #NoTechForICE is trying to get tech giants like Amazon and Palantir to stop facilitating immigration crackdowns.

3. No service. 

Restaurants and other stores can reserve the right to refuse service. No one should serve a burrito, sandwich or even a cup of coffee to agents who have routinely abused their power.

At a Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis, diners protested loudly until immigration agents left. In Memphis, a local sandwich shop refused to serve federal agents. Businesses in the Twin Cities and Chicago even banned ICE from their premises. 

4. No hotel rooms. 

Hotels, Airbnb and other hospitality services should refuse to host ICE agents.

The Hampton Inn Lakeville in Minnesota refused to let ICE agents stay, sparking its parent company, Hilton Hotel, to first try to reverse the decision, and then ultimately cut ties with the franchisee. Marriott and Extended Stay America are hotel chains commonly used by ICE. When hotels do rent rooms to immigration agents, people sometimes show up and make loud noises outside all night long, like in Pasadena. No rest for the wicked.

5. No entry. 

You have the right to refuse to let ICE enter private property, including houses, churches and private areas of businesses, unless ICE shows a judicial warrant (not an administrative warrant).

With Know Your Rights training, people are standing firm at doors of homes and not letting ICE enter. Businesses can put up Signs of Solidarity, create private areas that ICE can’t enter and keep agents out. In Los Angeles, bus drivers vowed to shut the doors of their buses against ICE to shield their riders from arrest. The Los Angeles School District set up protective perimeters and patrols at all schools to help families stay safe. Some colleges switched to online learning during immigration raids. Bernalillo County made hospitals, schools, courthouses, churches and worksites off-limits. Minneapolis schools shut down for a week to protect teachers, students and families. Dodger Stadium kicked ICE out of its parking lot. Chicago banned ICE from all city properties to create ICE Free Zones, as did Santa Clara County, California. 

6. No informing. 

Do not tell ICE where immigrants are located. 

Many refuse to use tip lines for reporting immigrants, and some people are even flooding them with mock reports. In Minneapolis, ICE asked locals where their Hmong and Asian neighbors lived, but people refused to answer. 

At the institutional level, cities can cancel license-plate reader contracts that might provide data to ICE, as they did in Austin and San Marcos, Texas and six other states. They can also restrict ICE from receiving surveillance data, as Montana, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts and others have done. Telecommunications companies like AT&T and Motorola are also facing pressure campaigns to stop giving immigration agencies access to sensitive phone data. 

7. No looking away. 

You have a right to observe, witness, document and record. Use it. 

ICE Watch programs and groups have sprung up all over the country, such as Fuerza and LUCE in Massachusetts, or the car patrols in Minneapolis. Some of these sound the alarm, and many of them observe, witness and document incidents. Such documentation has proved crucial; it was activists’ videos that disproved Department of Homeland Security lies about the murder of Renee Good. California, New Orleans and New York state have opened official portals to report ICE misconduct, and there are also activist groups compiling reports. 

Others, like clergy members in San Diego, accompany immigrants to hearings to try to prevent arrests in court buildings. 

8. No collaboration. 

Law enforcement and public officials should refuse to cooperate with ICE raids.

A growing number of cities are taking measures to end cooperation with ICE, joining the list of sanctuary cities and states. Numerous municipalities are refusing to allow local law enforcement to work with ICE; the Minneapolis police chief even warned officers to stop helping ICE or they’d lose their jobs. Richmond, California, passed a comprehensive ordinance prohibiting law enforcement collaboration and limiting information sharing, use of city resources, and more. Virginia’s Gov. Abigail Spanberger also ended the state police and local law enforcement’s cooperation with immigration crackdowns. 

There are other ways to refuse cooperation; for example, six top DOJ officials resigned rather than participate in a perversion of justice over Renee Good’s murder. The Chief of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville also resigned rather than work on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s highly politicized grand jury case. 

9. No transporting. 

Do not let airplanes or rental vehicles be used by ICE for arresting, detaining or deporting immigrants.

The Avelo Airlines boycott successfully ended the company’s deportation flights by getting customers to cancel flights. Forced to close one regional hub after another, Avelo finally threw in the towel and said it would end deportation flights. But GlobalX Air, Eastern Air Express and Denver Air Connection are also being used by ICE, and Signature Aviation provides stairs and tarmac services. ICE also has other transportation needs too: the Sisters of Social Service stopped using Enterprise cars due to the company’s involvement in ICE.  

10. No detention centers. 

Do not allow immigrant detention centers to be built or remain open in your town. 

With the Department of Homeland Security seeking to massively expand detention and deportation, limiting the ability to incarcerate immigrants is crucial. Detention Watch Network and other groups are working to halt the construction of new detention centers and campaign for the closure of existing ones. There have been several successes, including Newport, Oregon, which halted the development of a new detention center, and Kansas City, Missouri, which recently placed a five-year moratorium on non-municipal detention centers.

Spreading the 10 Rules for #ICEOut

Arne Sejr’s 10 Commandments for Danes worked because people shared them widely — printing more copies, passing them hand to hand and talking about them with trusted friends. Each person did what they could from the list, often braving severe risks and sacrifices to do so. 

These 10 Rules of Resistance for #ICEOut can be adopted by local groups in part or in whole. You can also add to these strategies — they are certainly not the only ways to resist. The rules of thumb are: Don’t help ICE, don’t sell to them and don’t let anyone work with them. 

Pairing these guidelines for defiance with constructive actions is also powerful. A crucial part of the immigrant rights movement are the mutual aid networks that provide a wide range of solidarity and support services to communities targeted by ICE and other rogue federal agencies. These efforts include delivering food, picking up prescriptions, arranging home visits by medical professionals, pooling funds for workers who can’t risk showing up for their jobs and more. The scale of this work is immense; a church in Minnesota has delivered 12,000 boxes of food in six weeks to immigrant families in hiding. Participating in these efforts helps our communities endure as resistance works to end ICE abuses, raids, crackdowns and occupations. 

By stripping ICE of as many resources as we can, we make their work infinitely harder, even impossible. When they have no assistance from local police, no planes for deportation, no detention centers to put immigrants in, no hotel rooms to sleep in, no access to city property or private homes or staff areas of businesses; when they can’t so much as order a sandwich or turn around without someone speaking out against their abuses, then ICE will melt down entirely.

This article 10 rules of resistance for #ICEOut was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2026/01/10-rules-of-resistance-for-iceout/