How to Hold Federal Immigration Agents to Account

Using State Power to Hold Federal Immigration Agents to Account

April 26, 2026

The Cost of the Trump Administration’s Immigration Crackdown

Since 2025, the Trump administration has deployed mass immigration enforcement operations in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Maine, North Carolina, and beyond. Each time, federal agents followed the same aggressive playbook: militarized tactics, warrantless arrests, and a systematic refusal to answer for the consequences of agents’ use of force. There has been a nationwide pattern of abusive and unconstitutional practices by ICE and Border Patrol operating across nearly two dozen states, with those at risk of detention coming mostly from Latino communities.

Across these operations, government officials repeatedly used unprecedented interpretations of the law to conduct stops, detain people, and justify the use of force. This effort to shield federal officers from any consequences for their actions is even more concerning amid reports of ICE hiring recruits with questionable qualifications and reducing its training requirements. These shifts also come at time when severe cuts to the independent watchdogs that oversee DHS mean that hundreds of pending use-of-force complaints and record numbers of deaths in custody have not been investigated.

These policies, alongside the Trump administration’s demand for federal agents to reach ever-higher targets for detention, have had devastating consequences for communities across the country. To date, reporting has estimated that there have been at least 170 US citizens detained by ICE, including children and veterans, in operations where agents made no attempt to verify citizenship. In Los Angeles, 69% of the 722 people arrested by ICE in a single 10-day period had no criminal convictions, undermining the administration’s claim that they are only targeting “the worst of the worst.”

The administration’s focus on Chicago during “Operation Midway Blitz” in September 2025 has proved to be more of the same. Federal agents conducted warrantless arrests, used flashbang grenades and low-flying helicopters during raids, and detained families, including US citizens. These efforts to intimidate city residents turned deadly on September 12, when ICE agents fatally shot 38-year-old Silverio Villegas González, a father of two who had just dropped his children at school, during a traffic stop. The Cook County Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide and body camera footage contradicts DHS’ account of the incident. Like in other states, a federal judge also found that DHS made “widespread misrepresentations” about Operation Midway Blitz when issuing a preliminary injunction to restrict federal agents’ use of force.

When state officials demanded answers about the shooting of González, the federal government refused to share more information.

The Chicago Model

In response to the lack of transparency and oversight by the Trump administration, Illinois is fighting back with a model that other cities and states are adopting.

On October 23, 2025, Governor JB Pritzker signed an executive order to establish the Illinois Accountability Commission (ILAC). The goals of the commission are to create a public record of federal abuses during Operation Midway Blitz, document the impact on families, and recommend actions for justice and harm reduction.

The commission’s chair, former Chief Judge Rubén Castillo of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, announced the commission would investigate both the González shooting and the non-fatal shooting of 30-year-old Marimar Martinez by a Border Patrol agent in Brighton Park on October 4, 2025.

By April 2026, ILAC had moved from documentation to action. The commission sent formal letters to eight Trump administration officials, including Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, former Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, and ICE Director Todd Lyons, demanding they testify at public hearings in downtown Chicago. The administration has not indicated any officials will comply. That refusal, documented and public, is itself evidence that can be used in the future to hold the administration to account.

The ILAC operates alongside a parallel ecosystem of citizen-built tools to document the actions of federal immigration agents.

  • The ICE Accountability Project, launched in September 2025, is a secure platform for documenting federal agent misconduct across Chicagoland. Submissions are reviewed by legal advocates and are automatically redacted and encrypted.
  • The community group ICE Sightings—Chicagoland had 76,000 members on Facebook and served as a centralized hub to warn residents of ICE activity in the city and its suburbs. The Trump administration pressured Meta to remove the group in October 2025. The group’s creators are currently suing Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in federal court on First Amendment grounds.

Collecting information about how federal immigration agents abuse their power and flout the rule of law is an essential first step. And Chicago is showing the power of this information. In February 2026, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke also announced new policies that would allow her office to prosecute federal immigration agents on felony charges, making it the first of its kind in the country.

Using State Power to Fight Back

Under our federal system, state-level governments have a critical role to play in the resistance. States provide an extra layer of protection against the Trump administration by refusing to cooperate and pursuing lawsuits to fight against its policies. Communities can collect essential data on what’s happening on the ground to help states strategize and focus their efforts to push back against the federal government.

In fact, what we’re seeing in Chicago is being replicated across the country: everyday people have built tools to track federal abuses, then pushed their states to codify it. Grassroots documentation creates the evidentiary foundation that makes state-level legal action possible.

  • In Maine, the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition launched a statewide ICE watch hotline in October 2025. The organization trained over 100 volunteers as operators and field verifiers within days. When ICE launched Operation Catch of the Day in January 2026, the hotline logged nearly 650 sightings across 56 towns in seven days. That citizen record directly triggered state action: Maine’s attorney general opened an ICE abuse tip line and the state enacted legislation banning 287(g) agreements that turn local police into ICE agents.
  • In California, the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network—a coalition of over 25 organizations that focus on immigrant rights, legal assistance, labor issues, and faith—operates a national immigrant assistance hotline that provides real-time ICE reporting and legal referrals. A statewide rapid response directory also centralizes information on rapid response networks in every county. Such resources may soon have more bite: the passage of the No Kings Act by the California Senate in January 2026 is an important step to hold federal agents accountable in California. The act, which would allow individuals “to bring a lawsuit for monetary damages against any federal, state, and local officer who violates their constitutional rights,” now heads to the Assembly for approval.
  • In Massachusetts, community organizations have built rapid response tools that connect volunteers to individuals witnessing ICE activity or experiencing contact with federal immigration agents in real time. The state government is translating community demands into safe zone protections around courthouses, schools, and hospitals. Governor Healy also issued an executive order prohibiting any new 287(g) agreements, which allow state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE on immigration enforcement.

What You Can Do

In Chicago, the ILAC is only as powerful as the evidence it receives. The accountability ecosystem only works when people actively feed it. Here’s how to plug in.

Find your state’s rapid response network.

California’s statewide directory is a national hotline. Maine’s ICE watch is also a hotline. If your state does not have a network, CLINIC’s rapid response toolkit provides everything needed to build one.

Know your legal rights and share them.

The National Immigrant Justice Center and NILC publish free multilingual guides on what to do if ICE comes to your door, what a valid warrant must look like, and how to protect yourself during a stop.

Hold elected officials to account.

The ACLU’s Congressional Scorecard tracks every elected official’s votes on civil rights and immigration. Use it to hold your representatives accountable.

Build and demand this model in your state.

Contact your state legislators and push for an independent oversight commission, a prosecutorial protocol for charging federal agents, and a civil lawsuit pathway for rights violations.

If you live in Illinois…

Submit documentation to the ILAC or report incidents to the ICE Accountability Project. You can also join the ICIRR’s rapid response network, where volunteers monitor federal enforcement and alert communities in real time.

If you live in Colorado…

File misconduct complaints with the Colorado Attorney General’s office, which has received over 180 complaints and refers verified cases to oversight bodies. You can also join the Colorado Rapid Response Network, a 1,200-person statewide volunteer network with a 24/7 bilingual hotline.