The Growing Rural Resistance to ICE Detention Expansion

You may not see it on the news, but brave rural Americans are resisting ICE - Here's how you can join in

Rural people across the country are organizing to stop the expansion of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities and coming together to protect their neighbors. In fact, taking action to support our immigrant neighbors has been one of the most galvanizing topics for our rural members that we’ve seen in our decade of organizing on a wide range of economic and civil rights issues. In just a week we’ve convened, trained, and facilitated information sharing with hundreds of rural leaders across the country in strategically important and underserved locations. It shouldn’t be surprising — immigrants ARE rural America. Immigrants are our friends, neighbors, and co-workers — in fact international immigration accounted for 87% of nationwide population growth over the past year.

You may not see it on the news, but brave rural Americans in the very strongholds MAGA Republicans take for granted are standing up and taking action against Stephen Miller and the Trump administration’s deportation machine. These massive facilities designed to warehouse people are extremely controversial and invoke many negative connotations. In fact, experts in the subject, like author Andrea Pitzer, refer to them as “concentration camps.”

Over 700,000 rural people from across the country have taken action online with RuralOrganizing.org over the years, which means we’re connected to rural people in every state, in every Congressional district, and in so many rural places without organizing infrastructure or resources.

When we saw that DHS was suddenly buying up warehouses across the country to convert into ICE detention centers — mostly in small towns and rural areas — we reached out to folks on our list. We found that we had 14,000 contacts living within an hour of 23 proposed detention facilities. We reached out and got an enthusiastic response on a short turnaround with 40 people from across the country in over a dozen proposed locations joining a Zoom meeting on February 11, resulting in a nationwide information sharing network. The MAGA Republicans thought they could dump these detention centers in rural places and rural people wouldn’t put up resistance — but these folks are proving them wrong.

On the call, neighbors who hadn’t met each other connected, shared contact information and are forming collaborations. Those who were just starting asked questions from more experienced people, and those who had already organized town halls and done legal research shared their knowledge and advice. We were able to help weave together local, like-minded people in multiple locations and also facilitate knowledge sharing across geographies. And it’s only the beginning as we plan follow-up calls and location-based conversations.

A week later, on February 19, we hosted another national meeting with our friends and partners at States at the Core and over 530 rural people registered. The training focused on building a strong local community defense network capable of responding quickly to ICE surges and developments. The inspiring tactics we’re seeing in bigger cities like Minneapolis and Chicago won’t work in our small towns and rural areas, so we talked about how to adapt what we’re learning to the specific conditions of rural places. People joined that zoom call from all 50 states. This is easily one of the most popular trainings we’ve ever done, and we only sent the invitation to our most active contacts, less than 20% of our total list – there is so much potential to build on.

The demand for this training was so high that we immediately set a second date for an encore! We will host our second Community Defense Network for ICE Watch training on Saturday, March 7, at 12 pm EST.

We recognize the demand for rural-specific ways to counter ICE and protect our immigrant neighbors, so we’re collecting feedback from our members and actively developing the following resources. We invite you to join the movement of rural people who are standing up for our immigrant neighbors:

• Office Hours on Monday, February 23 at 2 pm EST where attendees can ask any information relevant to the development of these warehouses, ICE surges, or building a strong community defense network.

• A second Stop ICE Concentration Camps Meeting, where we will come together to share updates and developments. Thursday, February 26, at 7 pm EST

• A second Community Defense Network for ICE Watch training on Saturday, March 7, at 12 pm EST

• An ICE Warehouse Information Sharing Network, rooted in state based cohorts. Please fill this out if you live near a proposed detention facility and would like to join our network.

• A Community Defense Network, also rooted in state-based or regional cohorts. Please fill this out if you’d like to join this network.

• These tactics that could help you slow down or delay the development of a proposed concentration camp near you: Stopping the Development of ICE Detention Warehouses.

• 2026 Community Immigration Enforcement Surge Response Plan from RuralOrganizing.org, which anyone is welcome to make a copy of and utilize however fits their current needs.

• Continued updates and analysis through our Substack! Stay tuned!

Thank you for following along. We’ll put out additional updates as the situation develops and as we have additional information to share.