Philadelphia made news this year when, inexplicably, the city’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, County Sheriff Rochelle Bilal, and the City Council all took aggressive and radical positions against illegal immigration enforcement operations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Throughout 2026, Krasner called ICE officers “wannabe Nazis,” Bilal labeled them “fake, wannabe law enforcement,” and the City Council passed “ICE Out” legislation to supposedly limit ICE operations in Philadelphia. This was despite there being no controversial ICE incidents in the city.
Nevertheless, over the past two weeks, the anti-ICE rage has inexplicably risen again. Despite multiple high-profile killings in the past few months, including those of Billy Schmidt, a Penn State University student, and Philadelphia police officer Shane Seiber, two City Council members focused on matters that really have zero relevance to the city and organized two “ICE Out” activist training sessions. So I went undercover, using an alias, dressed up as a left-wing activist (or as close to one as I could envision, anyway), and infiltrated them both.
At the most recent training, I wore loafers, jeans, a gray tie-dyed long-sleeve shirt, a University of Pennsylvania zip-up fleece jacket (the locally preferred academic institution of left-wingers everywhere in Philadelphia and also my alma mater), thick black-framed glasses, and a black beanie hat. I completed the look with an ICE OUT poster. I used the alias Diego De La Vega (whom some may recognize as the alter ego of the comic book hero Zorro) in the recruitment email and on the sign-in sheet, and I entered the training. Below is a summary of my experience at the first event.
Moment of silence for victims of ICE — but not for Laken Riley and others
The first training began with a moment of silence… for victims of ICE violence, Alex Pretti and Renee Good. I was somewhat surprised this happened, given that the deaths of Pretti and Good occurred months ago. However, I realized that the Left never lets a good crisis go to waste, so, ultimately, their moment of silence made sense.
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That being said, although they addressed the deaths of people from months earlier, there was no moment of silence for the numerous victims of violence committed by illegal immigrants — the kind of dangerous criminals ICE officers seek to remove from the country. No moments of silence, honors, recognition, or acknowledgment were given to such innocent victims as Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, or Jocelyn Nungaray. This was unsurprising, obviously, but it was an early indicator of the radical ideological fanaticism and sheer hypocrisy I was walking into.
Five Ds of fighting ICE
There were three lecturers at the training who educated the group on how to confront ICE. One of the lecturers, an older gentleman, was bald, had a medium-length white beard, wore square teal earrings, and had his fingernails painted pink. He discussed the “Five D’s of Fighting ICE.” If I had to guess, he seemed like the kind of person who might be upset about my using the pronoun “his” to identify him, but that is pure speculation. Additionally, I found “fighting” an interesting choice of words, given that the group urged attendees not to get into any altercations with ICE. Nevertheless, that was the colloquialism they chose.
The five Ds were document, disseminate, direct, delay, and disrupt. They formed the core of the activist playbook for the training. All scenarios, lessons, and strategies stemmed from the five Ds. The attendees took the instruction very seriously, while I admittedly did my best not to chuckle.
As part of their resistance against ICE, the organizers expected the activists in attendance to document any encounters with ICE officers. This included photographing, filming, and noting any interactions to “gather intelligence and alert a broader rapid response network of verified and time-sensitive information.” They were creating and developing their own militia of watchers, not to hold criminal illegal immigrants accountable but to try to catch ICE officers doing something improper. It was evident they cared more about protecting illegal immigrants, who, by their very presence in the country, are breaking the law.
S.A.L.U.T.E.
The anti-ICE activist training sessions are big on using acronyms. One of their main strategies for “fighting ICE” involved the “S.A.L.U.T.E. tactic” for correspondence. It was a methodology described under the “disseminate” section of the five Ds. S.A.L.U.T.E. is a communication strategy for the network to use when reporting on alleged ICE threats. It stands for size/strength, actions/activity, location/direction, uniform/clothes, time and date of observation, and equipment and weapons.
Each activist was instructed to follow these guidelines when reporting about ICE sightings. Informants were to describe the number of ICE officers they witnessed, what they were doing and where they were located, what uniforms or clothing they were wearing during operations, the time and date of an incident, and what weapons and equipment officers were using.
The crux of this training focused on documenting techniques and methodologies. They encouraged their class of informants to document everything, using cameras, phones, and any other device possible. Attendees were instructed to “film, photo, and note” and to focus their photos and videos on “immigration officers, not the person being targeted.” They even showed attendees the best strategies for taking videos, including guidance to record videos on their phones “horizontally to capture more of the scene.”
‘ICE lies and tries to trick people’
Another important part of the training was the vilifying of ICE officers and claiming that “ICE lies and tries to trick people.” The deception the training refers to is a common law enforcement tactic used when apprehending people who are violating the law. The main difference with this categorization, however, is that the people funding this training, leading this training, and those in attendance do not view illegal immigrants as people breaking the law, even though they obviously are. So, in their warped perspectives, the good guys enforcing the law are the villains, and the people breaking the law are the good guys.
The lecturers at the training emphasized that ICE officers “do not identify themselves” and engage in duplicitous operations in which undercover officers “claim to be hiring day laborers, canvassing for religious groups, or attempting to return a lost ID.” No one specified how this information was known. It was just taken at its word. The trainers then urged those in attendance not to comply with suspected ICE officers and encouraged them to disrupt ICE officers if they witnessed such events.
Role-playing and practice makes perfect
An adage suggests that practice makes perfect, and the activist trainers took that advice very seriously. During our session, we participated in two role-playing scenarios. The first one involved a hypothetical situation in which the participants observed a looming ICE raid after eating a cheesesteak at Philadelphia’s famous Pat’s Steaks.
“You just finished a cheesesteak at Pat’s Steaks and are walking back to your car parked at 9th and Ellsworth,” read the role-playing practice scenario. “You encounter four uniformed ICE agents approaching Mexibike. What do you do?”
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Personally, I wanted to respond, “Go back for another cheesesteak and watch.” However, being the good left-wing, anti-ICE, Ivy League-educated activist-in-training, I played along. I figured that if I were the first person to volunteer, they would have no reason to think I was undercover. So I volunteered first and provided an acceptable answer to my anti-ICE training overlords, who praised my response.
There was another role-playing exercise involving a hypothetical ICE raid on a Home Depot parking lot in Philadelphia, with agents looking for illegal immigrants seeking jobs as day laborers. The entire group participated in this scenario, practicing what they would do. It was a silly exercise, but it showed how dedicated the Left is to resisting and disrupting ICE. They want people not only to engage in such activities but also to be well prepared when doing so.