Following ICE Is Illegal, No Matter What Judge Menendez Claims

The modern immigration debate increasingly turns on a simple but dangerous confusion. Many activists now insist that they are free to follow federal agents wherever they go, to track them from hotels and offices, to relay their movements in real time, and to interfere physically when arrests are imminent. This confusion is not accidental. It is taught. Groups such as ICE Watch have trained activists to treat federal law enforcement as quarry rather than as officers executing lawful duties. Minnesota has become the clearest case study. The law does not permit this conduct. It never has. And recent judicial efforts to normalize it threaten both enforcement and human life.

Consider the structure of the tactic. An activist waits outside a hotel or office known to house immigration officers. When agents depart, the activist follows in a vehicle. Locations are relayed to others so that illegal aliens can be warned and flee. If agents stop the activist, they issue a warning. The activist resumes following anyway. At some point the activist blocks an operation, interferes with a stop, or escalates into a physical confrontation. This is not protest. It is obstruction. It is surveillance in service of evasion. And under both Minnesota and federal law, it is illegal.

The Renee Good incident demonstrates the point with tragic clarity. After receiving ICE Watch training, Good used her vehicle to stalk ICE agents during an operation. She ultimately attempted to block their movement. When officers tried to detain her, she attempted to flee and struck an agent. The agent fired in self-defense. The loss of life was tragic. But the cause was not lawful enforcement. The cause was deliberate obstruction using a vehicle as a weapon. This is not an anomaly. It is the predictable end point of teaching civilians that tailing federal agents is protected conduct.

Minnesota law draws a sharp line here. Minn Stat §609.50 makes it a crime to intentionally obstruct, hinder, or prevent the lawful execution of legal process or the apprehension of another. The statute focuses on acts, not opinions. Following undercover officers after being ordered to stop is an intentional act. Blocking vehicles is an intentional act. Warning targets so they can flee is an intentional act. When such conduct creates a risk of serious harm, the offense escalates to a felony. That escalation is not theoretical. Using a car to box in or pursue officers is inherently dangerous. Minnesota courts have never treated this kind of conduct as protected expression.

Minnesota also criminalizes aiding offenders after the fact. Minn Stat §609.495 covers anyone who assists another, by word or act, with intent to help them avoid arrest. When activists relay real time locations of ICE agents so that illegal aliens can escape apprehension, they are doing exactly that. The fact that the assistance is informational does not immunize it. A lookout who shouts a warning is still a lookout. The law looks to intent and effect, not to rhetorical framing.

Federal law is even clearer. Congress anticipated this precise problem. Under 18 USC §2232(c), it is a felony to give advance notice of a federal arrest or seizure in order to prevent it. This statute exists because law enforcement cannot function if civilians are permitted to shadow agents and tip off targets. It does not require physical force. It requires knowledge and purpose. When activists lie in wait, follow agents, and broadcast their movements so that enforcement fails, those elements are met.

Another federal statute, 18 USC §111, criminalizes forcibly impeding or interfering with federal officers. Force in this context includes the use of vehicles to block, wedge, or pursue officers. Courts have consistently held that physical acts creating danger or restraint satisfy this requirement. The Minneapolis incidents, where activists used cars to trap unmarked ICE vehicles, fall squarely within this statute. These are felony offenses, not misunderstandings.

Immigration specific statutes reinforce the same conclusion. Under 8 USC §1324, it is a felony to harbor or shield illegal aliens from detection. While the statute is often applied to hiding or transporting individuals, courts recognize that coordinated warnings designed to help specific targets evade arrest can qualify. The distinction is intent. General political speech is protected. Coordinated evasion is not. ICE Watch training collapses that distinction by instructing activists to engage in targeted, real time interference.

Recent prosecutions confirm that federal authorities view this conduct as criminal. In Los Angeles, activists who followed an undercover ICE agent to his home, livestreamed the pursuit, and publicized his address were indicted for conspiracy and related offenses. The government did not treat their conduct as journalism or protest. It treated it as a coordinated campaign to intimidate and obstruct. The evidence was their own footage and communications. The lesson is simple. Following agents with the purpose of interference is a crime.

Against this legal backdrop, Judge Katherine Menendez’s recent order is deeply flawed. By asserting that safely following federal agents at an appropriate distance does not create reasonable suspicion for a stop, the order abstracts conduct from context. Reasonable suspicion is not evaluated in a vacuum. It turns on the totality of the circumstances. When activists wait at known locations, follow agents engaged in enforcement, relay movements to others, ignore warnings, and persist despite clear identification, suspicion is not only reasonable. It is unavoidable.

Courts have long recognized that repeated following, combined with knowledge of law enforcement activity, supports reasonable suspicion of obstruction or conspiracy. An officer need not wait until a suspect completes the crime. The Fourth Amendment permits stops to prevent imminent interference with lawful duties. To hold otherwise is to require officers to tolerate surveillance that predictably escalates into danger.

The order also misunderstands the role of warnings. When agents stop an activist and explain that following is unlawful, they are not conceding legality. They are establishing notice. That notice matters. Once given, continued following demonstrates intent. Intent transforms ambiguous conduct into criminal conduct. Judge Menendez’s reasoning strips warnings of their legal significance and encourages activists to persist until violence occurs.

There is a further irony. By insulating this behavior from enforcement, the order endangers the very activists it purports to protect. Minnesota has one of the broadest stalking statutes in the country. A person commits stalking if they engage in a course of conduct they know or should know would cause a specific person to feel frightened, threatened, oppressed, persecuted, or intimidated. If one private citizen lay in wait outside another citizen’s hotel, followed them throughout the day, tracked their movements by car, and refused to disengage after being warned, no court would hesitate to call that unlawful stalking. NGOs that train civilians to do exactly this to undercover federal officers lie to them about the law. They promise immunity where none exists. Doing this to law enforcement officers engaged in dangerous immigration enforcement work is not a closer case, it is more obviously illegal. When confrontations escalate, activists bear the physical risk. Enforcement of obstruction and stalking laws is not punitive for its own sake. It is preventative. Early intervention saves lives.

Federal immigration agents should therefore step up enforcement. Activists who follow agents should be warned once. If they refuse to stop, they should be arrested. Vehicles used in obstruction should be seized as evidence. Charges should be brought under both state and federal law where applicable. It will not take many cases for the public to understand that tailing federal agents is not a protected pastime.

The law here is not novel. It is settled. What is new is the organized effort by ICE Watch to blur the line between protest and interference. That effort has been described as relying on judicial confusion and selective enforcement. But given the clarity of the law, it is obvious that it relies on judicial collusion, the willing participation of Democrat-appointed judges in insulating unlawful conduct from consequence. Both must end. Judge Menendez’s order should be overturned on appeal, both as a rebuke to dissent, and as a reaffirmation of the basic principle that law enforcement cannot function if civilians are permitted to shadow, signal, and sabotage officers in the field.

If the rule of law is to mean anything, it must apply before tragedy, not after it. Following federal agents to obstruct arrests is illegal in Minnesota. It is illegal under federal law. Courts should say so clearly. And enforcement agencies should act accordingly.

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