Twelve years since the Ferguson uprising, police violence is still often discussed through numbers, cases, policies, and public arguments. At Campaign Zero, we know those things matter—but every number began with a person, and every person belonged to a family.

Lezley McSpadden-Head, Michael Brown’s mother, was never given the chance to grieve her son in private.

On August 9, 2014, eighteen-year-old Michael Orlandus Darrion Brown—“Mike Mike” to the people who loved him—was murdered by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer. Before his family could begin to process the loss, Michael’s body, his name, and his mother’s grief had become a national argument.

Most people remember what followed: the protests, the tear gas, more than 400 days of uprising, and a name that became a rallying cry from Ferguson to communities across the country.

Campaign Zero exists because of that moment. The demand that came out of Ferguson was not only to show us the data and change the policy, but to stop the killing. That is the demand we have spent the last decade trying to answer.

But the story did not end when the cameras moved on.

What Lezley Built—and Continues to Build

While grieving in public, Lezley refused to let her son’s name become only a symbol of loss. She founded the Michael O.D. Brown We Love Our Sons & Daughters Foundation and built it on Michael’s legacy.

Today, the St. Louis-based nonprofit works at the intersection of justice, health, education, and family. Through scholarships, student care packages, and community support, Lezley continues to build and expand what the Foundation can offer young people.

Meet the 2025-26 Scholarship Awardees

The Foundation’s flagship program is the Michael O.D. Brown Memorial Scholarship, which provides $3,000 awards to graduating high school seniors across the St. Louis region who demonstrate academic achievement, financial need, and a commitment to social justice, the performing arts, or the skilled trades.

Campaign Zero has worked alongside Lezley and the Foundation to strengthen this work: helping build the scholarship-selection process, co-hosting the annual scholarship dinner in St. Louis, coordinating dorm-ready care packages for recipients, and supporting the Foundation’s storytelling and fundraising.

For Campaign Zero, this partnership is part of the same work as our research and policy advocacy: supporting a future in which young people can live, learn, and thrive.

Across its first three award cycles, the program has awarded 63 scholarships.

Fifteen students received awards in 2024. Eighteen received them in 2025. For the 2026–27 school year, the Foundation expanded the class to 30 scholarship awardees in honor of what would have been Mike’s 30th birthday.

That is the number we want people to sit with today: 63 young people from Michael’s community pursuing degrees, certifications, careers in the trades and arts, and futures of their own—the kind of future Michael should have had the chance to build.

The support continues after the award ceremony. This August and September, the Foundation will send dorm-ready care packages directly to students at their schools, helping them begin the year with practical support and a reminder that their community is standing behind them.

At the beginning of the school year this fall, the Foundation will launch the 2027–28 scholarship cycle. It will mark the program’s fourth year, with a goal of expanding the scholarship class again.

63 Scholarships Across Three Award Cycles

• 15 in 2024

• 18 in 2025

• 30 for the 2026–27 school year

• Fourth scholarship cycle launching this fall

Lezley built the Foundation on Michael’s legacy, and she continues to expand what it can offer young people. Supporting this work means helping fund future scholarships, providing care packages to students beginning the school year, and strengthening the Foundation’s ability to sustain the work year-round.

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Still My Baby

Last year, Campaign Zero partnered with Lemonada Media to produce Still My Baby, an audio series that centers Lezley’s voice, honors Michael’s life, and tells their family’s story in her own words.

The series paints a family portrait through stories of Mike as a funny, big-hearted kid, Lezley as a young mother, the people who loved them, the life they shared before August 9, and the years the family has navigated since.

Episode 2, “They Shot Mike Mike,” is about August 9 itself—and what it costs to grieve while the world watches.

It’s the episode to listen to today.

You can find the full series wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at stillmybaby.org.

Listen to the Podcast

Why Michael Remains at the Center of This Work

At our core, we’re a data and policy organization. We publish the numbers on police violence because the data helps move us from outrage to policy—and policy is how we work to stop the next August 9.

But the numbers came from somewhere.

Every data point in every database was a person, and every person belonged to a family. This work began with one family in Ferguson that should never have had to become public about any of it.

So today: listen to Lezley. Fund a scholarship. Support a student care package. Invest in the Foundation’s future.

The 63 students supported so far—and the fourth scholarship cycle launching this fall—are part of the same fight behind every law we have helped change: the fight for young people to live, learn, and thrive.

Lezley built the Foundation on Michael’s legacy. Twelve years later, she is still building—and Campaign Zero continues to support the work alongside her.

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Campaign Zero has launched a first-of-its-kind website to share its report and review of racial disparities in police stops in Cincinnati.

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Twenty-five years after protests yielded a Collaborative Agreement between the City, police, and community, we analyzed over 400,000 discretionary police stops from 2009 - 2025 to answer the question: is policing in Cincinnati racially equitable? The answer is no.

Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) data shows in 2025:

• Cincinnati Police officers stopped Black people 3.4x more often than White people.

• Cincinnati Police officers stopped Black pedestrians 5.4x more often than White pedestrians.

• Cincinnati Police officers stopped Black people in vehicles 3.2x more often than White people.

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Disparities Explained By the Racial Composition of the Neighborhood, Not By Crime

Our review of 17 years of data found that crime levels are not a predictor of racial disparities in discretionary stop decisions made by Cincinnati police officers. The strongest predictor is the whiteness of a neighborhood.

In majority White neighborhoods:

• Black pedestrians are stopped by Cincinnati Police 4.5x more often than White people

• Black motorists experience discretionary traffic stops 5.5x more often than White motorists.

The more White the neighborhood is, the more likely it is for a Black person to be stopped there. Crime rates do not explain this trend.

This finding does not hold for White people in Black neighborhoods – the rate of stops for Black and White people in Black neighborhoods are nearly equal (a 1.1x disparity for motor vehicle stops and 1.3x for pedestrian stops).

How to Explore the Website

Our website has several interactive features to make this comprehensive dataset accessible and easy to understand.

1. Overview of our findings. We provide a high-level summary of our findings. See how much more often Black people are stopped, searched, experienced force, and arrested.

2. Download the data. Part of our commitment to the community is to always share the data. Public data should be public. Download the data to further explore the trends on your own.

3. Read the report and report addenda. The foundation of this project is our thorough review and analysis of police stops in Cincinnati. Read the report for detailed analyses of factors not featured elsewhere on the website, including a time of day analysis, initial reasons for stops, and stop outcomes. We’ve also included an addendum that features data findings resulting from community and city officials’ requests for additional analyses, an addendum on task forces, and a review of previous reports on contact card data before 2009.

4. Learn more about contact cards. Discover more about the history of contact cards in Cincinnati and how they were born from a Collaborative Agreement between the City, police, and community.

5. Use our interactive maps to view disparities at the neighborhood, census block, and street level. We’ve built a series of maps for users to view police stops across the city. View individual stops down to the street level or interact with disparity maps similar to those found in the report.

6. Engage with the police officer database and sort to see officers with the most racially disparate stops. Search the name of any officer who filled out a contact card in Cincinnati between 2009 and 2025 and view their stops, how often they use force, how often they arrest someone, etc.

7. Read our policy recommendations. We make nine recommendations for addressing racial disparities in police stops, improving contact card data collection, and driving policy change in Cincinnati.

8. Contact city officials and demand action to address racial disparities. Emails are provided for Mayor Pureval, City Manager Long, and members of City Council.

Local to Cincinnati? Get Involved

Cincinnati community leaders are hosting upcoming community forums:

Tuesday, June 30, 6:00-8:00 PM ET
Truth and Destiny Covenant Center
2645 W North Bend Rd, Cincinnati, OH 45239

Tuesday, July 14, 6:00-8:00 PM ET
Holloman Center for Social Justice (Urban League)
3539 Reading Road Suite 100, Cincinnati, OH 45229

Share the Data

If you have friends or loved ones in Cincinnati, forward them this email or share the link! All data is available at contactcards.org.

Engage with our interactive maps, look up specific officers, and demand policy change from city officials.

Learn More About Contact Cards

If you’re unfamiliar with the City of Cincinnati’s use of contact cards and the history behind the requirement, check out these resources:

• City of Cincinnati: “Collaborative Agreement Refresh”

• Cincinnati Public Library: “20 Years Later: The Death of Timothy Thomas and the Uprising That Followed”

• Read the Collaborative Agreement

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On May 12th, Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed House Bill 467 / Senate Bill 822 into law.

Based on Campaign Zero's research on parole across the United States, and sponsored by Delegate Embry and Senator Smith, this bill is poised to be the most significant update to parole in Maryland in a generation, impacting every parole-eligible person in the state now and into the future.

Parole allows incarcerated people to be reviewed at a parole hearing, conducted by the Parole Commission (parole board), after serving a specified portion of their sentence in prison. If deemed ready by the Commission, rehabilitated individuals will transition to a period of “community supervision,” which allows them to return home to their families and jobs while formally remaining under the custody of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

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Maryland law does not currently specify how frequently a person should get parole hearings once they become eligible for parole. In this absence, the Maryland Parole Commission required people to apply for parole hearings and had the discretion to deny parole hearings to any incarcerated person. The legislature made their offense eligible for parole, the judge gave them a parole-eligible sentence, but the Commission could decide not to grant them a parole review. Some people waited decades for their next hearing, others never received a second one.

That changes on October 1st.

Because of this bill, a majority of people will now be guaranteed a parole hearing no later than every two years, and no one will wait longer than five years. These set cadences are based primarily upon the length of a person’s sentence, along with additional consideration for the nature of the offense type for longer sentences. The new schedule will allow all parties – the Parole Commission, incarcerated people, and victims – to know when parole hearings will occur and be able to plan and prepare in advance.

Sentence of 10 Years or Less: Parole hearings not later than every two years.

Sentence Over 10 Years: Parole hearings not later than every three years.

Sentence Over 20 Years for a Crime Against an Individual: Their second hearing will be not later than three years. All subsequent hearings will be not later than every five years.

Establishing a schedule for parole hearings is only the headliner — this bill does so much more, including:

• Enhanced Transparency: Current state law requires an annual report from the Parole Commission, but does not specify what information the report must include (Md. Code, Corr. Servs. § 7-208). This bill requires the Maryland Parole Commission to include specified hearing data in its annual reports, including parole grants and denials, disaggregated by race. This data will provide critical insight into decision-making patterns.

• Automatic Record Access: Until now, parole-eligible people and their representative had to request access to documents that would be reviewed by the Commission to make a parole release decision (Md. Code, Corr. Servs. § 7-303). This bill ensures these documents are provided automatically, reducing administrative barriers and delays.

• Clear Justifications for Parole Decisions: Current Maryland law requires the Commission’s votes to be made public (Md. Code, Corr. Servs. § 7-304), but this bill adds a mandate that the Commission’s justifications for its votes are also public record.

• Timely Notification of Parole Decisions: The wait time for people to be notified of parole hearing outcomes shortens from up to 30 days (Md. Code, Corr. Servs. § 7-307) to a maximum of 14 days.

• Extension of Time to Appeal: Today, incarcerated people only have five days to decide whether or not to appeal a parole decision (Md. Code, Corr. Servs. § 7-306). This bill increases the time allotted to the incarcerated person and the Parole Commission to file an exception (appeal) to a decision from five days to 30 days.

• Recording of Parole Hearings: A new section is added to state law requiring all parole hearings to be recorded, for the recordings to be provided to the incarcerated person at no cost, and for the recordings to be retained for at least three years after their incarceration, supervision, or appeals are exhausted (whichever happens last).

• Increased Victim Consideration: Requires the Parole Commission to consider all victim impact statements, not just the most recently updated (Md. Code, Corr. Servs. § 7-305), prior to deciding parole release.

This bill impacts almost every incarcerated person in Maryland — approximately 15,000 people — and will continue to help every person given a parole-eligible sentence into the future.

A healthy parole system provides regular, standardized opportunities for people to be reviewed for their readiness to return to community. Not everyone will be released, but everyone should be treated fairly throughout the process and given an opportunity for meaningful review.

With the signing of this bill, we’re moving closer to this goal, helping ensure the Maryland parole system continues to improve its standards and serve the public interest. But there’s more to be done — stay tuned for our future work at the next session in January 2027. We’re just getting started.

Read the bills

House Version

House Bill 467
Delegate Elizabeth Embry (D - Baltimore City)

Senate Version

Senate Bill 822
Senator William Smith, Jr. (D - Montgomery County)

Learn More About Parole

If you’re new to our parole work, check out our blog post: On the Issue of Parole. Our website with our full review of parole laws across the country is scheduled to be released later this year.

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When federal agents raided K. Lewis’s campus apartment in the middle of the night, he was 22 years old, asleep with his young son, and only a semester away from attaining his Master’s degree in Criminal Justice. He had no criminal record. He wasn’t accused of committing a specific crime. But he had grown up in the Bronx, and some of his childhood friends were people the police had been watching. That was enough. Lewis was swept into a federal gang indictment alongside 120 others—labeled a “gang member” based on social media posts, music videos, and wiretaps.

“I spent 22 months in jail with no criminal record and no evidence of a crime,” Lewis said. “I shouldn’t be in the same facility as El Chapo.”

A federal judge ultimately rejected the five-year plea agreement prosecutors had pressured Lewis to accept, but the damage was done–his educational pursuit was derailed, and employment has been hard to find since being released from jail. Of the 120 people indicted alongside him, 115 accepted plea deals rather than risk going to trial. Lewis’s story is not an exception. It is how the system is designed to work.

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What Are Gang Enhancements?

Gang enhancement laws allow prosecutors to add years—sometimes decades—to an individual’s criminal sentence based on who police claim they are, NOT on what they did. These ‘enhancements’ exist in 37 states, Washington D.C., and at the federal level, meaning people in virtually every state can be affected. Because federal enhancements apply nationwide, no state is truly exempt.

These laws rarely require proof of organized criminal activity. Instead, gang affiliation is typically established using subjective indicators—clothing, tattoos, social media activity, neighborhood ties, or simply associating with people police suspect of gang involvement.

In 28 states, these kinds of subjective identifiers are explicitly written into the law as permissible evidence of gang membership. For example, in South Dakota, the criteria used to establish gang membership are:

SDCL § 22-10A-1: Section 22-10A-1

(1) “Street gang,” any formal or informal ongoing organization, association, or group of three or more persons who have a common name or common identifying signs, colors, or symbols and have members or associates who, individually or collectively, engage in or have engaged in a pattern of street gang activity;

(2) “Street gang member,” any person who engages in a pattern of street gang activity and who meets two or more of the following criteria:

(a) Admits to gang membership;

(b) Is identified as a gang member by a documented reliable informant;

(c) Resides in or frequents a particular gang’s area and adopts its style of dress, its use of hand signs or its tattoos and associates with known gang members;

(d) Is identified as a gang member by an informant of previously untested reliability if such identification is corroborated by independent information;

(e) Has been arrested more than once in the company of identified gang members for offenses which are consistent with usual gang activity;

(f) Is identified as a gang member by physical evidence, such as photographs or other documentation; or

(g) Has been stopped in the company of known gang members four or more times;

Determinations are often made by police officers presented in court as “gang experts,” with no formal credentials beyond their law enforcement experience—a practice legal scholars have identified as a violation of defendants’ due process rights.

The definition of a “gang” is also strikingly broad. In 31 states, a gang is legally defined as a group of three or more people. In Arizona, Maryland, and Nevada, the threshold is only two or more people. That means a pair of friends can qualify. Once a label is applied, the consequences are severe.

Enhancements can add anywhere from 1 to 99 additional years to a sentence, depending on the state. Twenty-one states allow enhancements of 20 years or more, and seven states permit life without parole via enhancement alone. Nationally, the average maximum enhancement adds roughly 23 years to a prison sentence.

In most states, enhancements can be applied to any criminal offense—not just violent felonies. Only Ohio limits its use to violent felony offenses.

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How the Label Shapes the Entire Legal Process

Gang enhancements don’t just affect sentencing; they reshape every stage of the legal process.

Prosecutors typically introduce enhancement allegations at the charging stage, using the threat of decades of additional prison time as leverage to pressure defendants into accepting plea deals. This tactic works. Because most enhancements are deployed at the charging stage rather than at trial, the true scope of how often they are used is almost certainly underreported — many cases disappear into plea agreements before they ever reach a courtroom.

For those who do go to trial, research shows, the “gang” label itself becomes a liability. Multiple peer-reviewed studies have found that informing jurors of an alleged gang affiliation significantly increases the likelihood of a guilty verdict—even when reasonable doubt has been clearly established (Eisen 2014, Howell 2010).1 This is because the word “gang” triggers associations with premeditated, senseless violence that can override the evidence actually presented. As one public defender put it, these cases become “a trial of the gang rather than a trial of the individual” (Galvin-Almanza 2019).2 Prosecutors introduce evidence about other alleged gang members — people the defendant may barely know — and the person on trial gets lost in the narrative.

Who These Laws Target

The racial disparities in gang-enhancement enforcement are stark and consistent. In California, 92% of gang enhancement convictions involve Black or Brown defendants. Approximately 6% of all people serving time in California prisons carry a gang enhancement conviction—and the overwhelming majority are people of color.

This is not coincidental. The disparities reflect the origins of these laws. Gang enhancements trace back to California’s Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention (STEP) Act of 1988, passed at the height of the tough-on-crime era. From the start, the targeting was explicit: that same year, the California Attorney General circulated a handbook describing Black men between the ages of 13 and 40 as likely gang members based on personality traits and style of dress. California’s law became the national template, and the racial logic embedded in it traveled with it.

And the harms of these laws don’t end with harsh sentencing enhancements. Underlying the entire system is an infrastructure most people don’t know exists: gang databases. Law enforcement agencies across the country maintain lists of people designated as suspected gang members or associates, and the criteria for inclusion are as loose as those used for sentencing enhancements. People can be added to gang databases based on where they live, what they wear, who they spend time with, or what they post online — without committing a crime, without being notified, and without any meaningful way to challenge the designation.

The scale of these databases is significant. In the Los Angeles County gang database alone, approximately half of all Black men between the ages of 16 and 24 are listed as gang members or associates. Chicago’s database contains over 128,000 adults and tens of thousands of children, some as young as nine, with Black individuals comprising 70% of those listed. A 2023 Inspector General’s report found that New York City’s database is 99% Black and Hispanic—despite research showing that gang membership is substantially more common among white youth than law enforcement statistics suggest.

Once someone is included in a database, the consequences extend far beyond the courtroom. Gang designations affect employment, housing, and immigration status — often for life. In recent years, federal immigration authorities have increasingly relied on these databases to identify people for detention and deportation. A label applied without due process by a local police officer can result in someone being removed from the country entirely.

Walter Ramirez, a Chicago resident, was targeted by ICE after being entered into the city’s gang database twice—listed as a member of two rival gangs based on two minor, unrelated police encounters. He was released only after the city admitted the error.

Do These Laws Actually Work?

Supporters argue that gang enhancements deter crime and disrupt dangerous organizations. However, emerging scholarship finds that gang enhancements do not reduce violent crime and have no deterrent impact in general (Yoshino 2008, Marston 2019, Kennedy 2009).3 Research has consistently found no clear relationship between gang enhancement laws and reductions in crime or gang activity (Van Hofwegen 2009).4

Some studies suggest the opposite may be true: harsher sentences can strengthen gang ties inside prison and increase recidivism, as people are forced to rely on those networks to survive incarceration (Van Hofwegen 2009). A 2004 study of incarcerated gang members in Illinois, found that incarceration actually increased the likelihood of reoffending by reducing the chance that individuals would age out of gang involvement on their own (Olson, Dooley, Kane, 2004).5

Meanwhile, researchers note that traditional gang structures have been deteriorating since the 1990s, and that law enforcement strategies built around conspiracy-style prosecutions of hierarchical organizations are increasingly out of step with how urban social networks actually operate today (Marston 2019).6

What these laws demonstrably accomplish is diverting resources away from strategies proven to reduce violence: community investment, violence interruption programs, and youth opportunity initiatives. Rather than addressing the conditions that give rise to harm, gang enhancements criminalize social networks and punish identity.

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What We’re Doing About It

Today, Campaign Zero is launching Labeled for Life—a national campaign to end gang enhancement laws and dismantle the databases that sustain them, beginning in California, Illinois, Georgia, Maryland, and Washington state, where some of the country’s harshest laws remain on the books.

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At the center of the campaign is the Harm Index, an interactive tool that scores every state’s gang enhancement laws across three dimensions: the severity of sentencing enhancements, the breadth of gang membership definitions, and the extent to which due process protections are afforded to defendants. The goal is to make the hidden consequences of these laws visible—and to give advocates, policymakers, and everyday people the information they need to push for change.

Use the Harm Index

A justice system that enforces consequences based on who people are rather than what they did is not justice. It is racial profiling with an enhanced sentence attached.

At the same time, new threats are emerging, as federal agencies expand into unaccountable paramilitary forces and increasingly employ excessive and unconstitutional uses of force and officials roll back successful reforms, such as restrictions on vehicle pursuits. In the face of these challenges, activism is more essential than ever to defend hard-won progress and keep pushing forward.

Police killings declined 5% in 2025 compared with 2024, the first year-over-year decline since 2019. Still, more than 1,300 people were killed in 2025, and several states and federal agencies are rolling back reforms.

From 2013 to 2020, the rate of police killings per 100,000 residents hovered around 0.345 per 100,000, increased slightly in 2021, and rose more sharply beginning in 2022. Even after adjusting for population growth, the rate declined by 5.6% from 2024 to 2025.

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States and DC

Largest Increases in Police Violence

• In 2025, the District of Columbia saw the largest increase in police killings—a 98% increase compared to the average of the previous 12 years.

• Over the prior 12 years, DC ranked 10th highest on average, with 0.58 police killings per 100,000 people.

• In 2025, DC rose to the third-highest rate, with 1.15 police killings per 100,000 people.

• 2025 was Washington DC’s worst year since records began in 2013.

Highest Rates in 2025

• In 2025, New Mexico had the highest rate of police killings among all states, with 1.36 police killings per 100,000 people.

• New Mexico also had the highest average rate over the previous 12 years, at 1.12 police killings per 100,000 people.

Largest Decreases in Police Violence

• In 2025, Rhode Island was the only state to record zero police killings.

• Its average rate over the prior 12 years was 0.08 police killings per 100,000 people, the lowest average in the country.

• New Jersey had the second-lowest rate in 2025, with 0.08 police killings per 100,000 people, representing a 48% decrease compared to its 12-year average.

Cities (Population 250,000+)

Largest Increases in Police Violence

Among cities with at least 250,000 residents, Orlando, FL had the highest per capita rate of police killings in 2025 with 2.81 police killings per 100,000 people.

Largest Decreases in Police Violence

In 2025, 12 cities with populations over 250,000 recorded zero police killings, up from 10 cities in 2024—despite having recorded police killings within the previous 12 years.

Among them, Long Beach, CA experienced the most significant drop. In 2025, Long Beach recorded zero police killings, after having 39 deaths over the previous 12 years—an average of:

• 3.3 deaths per year, or

• 0.71 police killings per 100,000 people per year

Deadliest Agencies

Per-capita rates can fluctuate widely in small populations. To strike a balance between inclusion and interpretability, this analysis includes only agencies serving jurisdictions with populations of 250,000 or greater.

Law enforcement agencies that killed only Black people

In 2025, at least 156 law enforcement agencies killed only Black people. Because of the large number of cases where the victim’s race is unknown, this number could be as high as 273. In 141 of these 156 agencies, that was the sole police killing in 2025. These 156 agencies are in 117 counties across the US.

There were at least 129 cities and towns across the US that killed only Black people. In 115 of these 129 cities, that was the sole police killing in 2025.

Among all states (including DC) tracked, Washington DC saw the largest increase in police killings, relative to the average of the 12 years prior, and it was also the largest city to kill only Black people.

Case study: Jacksonville, FL

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office saw more than a 400% increase in fatal police encounters in 2025. One of the victims was 14 years old.

This dramatic increase follows a public push by the Sheriff (elected in late 2022) to recruit 80 more sheriff’s deputies. Local Florida journalists have highlighted the excessive number of officer-involved killings stemming from a particularly vague use-of-force policy. Permitless concealed carry also became legal in mid-2023, likely increasing the number of people carrying weapons. Our own research shows that there is a positive association between state levels of gun ownership and police killings.

In April 2025, the department approved the use of personal handguns instead of department-issued Glocks, referencing the opinion of a safety analyst that officers could show improvements in “effectiveness” and “confidence.” This confidence could also increase the likelihood of using a gun during an encounter because of comfort and familiarity with some tactical equipment over less lethal options (taser, baton). Of the 14 killings, two fatal incidents occurred in March, with the remaining 12 occurring after the new rule was implemented in May.

Victim Information

Victim data reveal persistent race and age disparities in fatal police violence. MPV data is evaluated for patterns by race, age, gender, and armed status to identify who is most impacted.

Relative to 2024, police violence decreased across all races/ethnicities in 2025, though this decrease was most pronounced for Native Hawaiians & Pacific Islanders and Black victims. Despite these drops, NHPI, AIAN, Black and Hispanic people were all still significantly more likely to be killed by police.

Groups experiencing the highest rates of police killings were also the youngest on average. More than 50% of NHPI, Black, and AIAN victims of police violence were ages 0–34, compared with White victims, whose majority were age 35 or older. Research in psychology and criminology has consistently found that children of color, particularly Black boys, are more likely to be perceived as older, less innocent, and more blameworthy, and stopped more frequently and aggressively by police than their White peers. Our data suggest these disparities persist in the use of deadly force, reflecting ongoing racial inequities in policing outcomes.

Looking Ahead

Budget cuts affecting behavioral health services, community services, and alternative crisis response units in 2025 could increase police interactions with the public and subsequent violence in the coming years.

To sustain the downward trend of police killings observed in 2025, social services must maintain prior funding levels. The majority of police killings follow a call for service; the more emergency calls that can be diverted to non-law-enforcement bodies, the more we can reduce tense interactions between police and civilians, lowering the chances of police using fatal force against members of the public.

Cuts to services risk losing progress we’ve made on police violence reduction.

What Can I Do?

• Donate to support our work: Tracking every police killing in America takes resources—your contribution keeps this data free and accessible

• Support local journalism: Subscribe or donate to local outlets that report on public safety and police accountability—and support organizations that offer programming and training for independent journalists

• Support independent civilian oversight: Engage with or advocate for civilian review boards in your community

• Advocate for behavioral health services and alternate crisis response programming: Support funding for these evidence-backed initiatives during local and state budget processes

• Demand transparency from law enforcement agencies: Including making use of force data, policies, and training public

• Share this data: Share our work with local officials, journalists, and community organizations

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About Mapping Police Violence

Law enforcement agencies across the country fail to provide basic information about the lives they take. Mapping Police Violence exists to fill that gap by collecting, analyzing, and making accessible accurate data on people killed by law enforcement in the United States.

Every year, Campaign Zero works to make data on police violence accessible and understandable to the public via Mapping Police Violence, a platform tracking when U.S. law enforcement kills civilians. This report aims to provide key takeaways concerning incidents in 2025 of police killing civilians.

Local journalism is the foundation of the Mapping Police Violence project. News articles are automatically ingested into our system, which collects, filters, and cleans the data before it is passed to human qualitative researchers. While we employ official sources from local and state government agencies to complement our information-gathering process, we believe it is important to continue collecting data from publicly accessible media sources. This allows us to identify gaps in government data dissemination and further triangulate and validate the incidents we track.

Per our methodology, all incidents go through a multi-layered review process. The current total number of incidents in 2025 may increase in the coming months because some police killings and their circumstances are not reported until weeks or months later.

As ICE terrorizes American cities, Congress is only offering hollow gestures and symbolic reforms.

Public support for dismantling ICE has never been higher—46% of Americans support abolition. Yet Congress is offering symbolic gestures designed to calm outrage while leaving ICE’s power intact.

On February 4, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer sent a joint letter to Republican leadership outlining ten “common sense reforms” for ICE. They’re threatening to block Homeland Security funding unless these reforms pass.

The letter came after ICE and CBP killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month—deaths that sparked nationwide protests and demands for accountability.

But it’s clear the Democratic Party is not yet listening to the public outrage. The New York Times featured Campaign Zero’s critique of Democratic proposals, which recycled policies that are more symbolic than impactful and designed merely to quell public outrage.

We evaluated each proposal against what we’re calling the “5 A’s,” our framework for assessing whether reforms genuinely constrain ICE’s power or are largely symbolic.

While the package addresses real harms and reflects legitimate public concern, there’s a fundamental problem: all of the proposals fail to do the one thing that actually matters—reduce ICE’s power.

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The Framework: The 5 A’s

When assessing any proposal related to ICE, we ask five questions:

1. Does it reduce (and not increase) the number of ICE agents?

2. Does it reduce (and not increase) ICE’s authority and funding?

3. Does it create actual accountability for ICE without depending on the DOJ or US Attorney’s Office?

4. Does it advance a new law or policy that is not already in place?

5. Is it actionable and not merely symbolic?

Here’s the critical part: any proposed policy package must answer YES to questions 1 and 2. If a package fails either, it should not be supported.

For individual policy demands, if the answer to 3, 4, or 5 is NO, the recommendation is not an effective proposal.

Based on this framework, none of Congress’s proposals are effective.

Proposal 1: Targeted Enforcement (Warrant Requirements)

The Pitch: DHS officers cannot enter private property without a judicial warrant. End indiscriminate arrests and improve warrant procedures and standards. Require verification that a person is not a U.S. citizen before holding them in immigration detention.

The Problem: ICE has used administrative warrants for decades. A 2025 memo expanded their use to justify forcible home entry in ways that depart from past guidance, a move constitutional scholars and members of Congress say violates the Fourth Amendment. Federal legislation could close this loophole, but only with strong enforcement mechanisms that actually constrain day-to-day practice.

The Democratic proposal bars DHS officers from entering private property without a judicial warrant and requires verification of non-citizenship before detention. But the language is too vague to guarantee change. Under 8 U.S. Code § 1357, DHS can still arrest people suspected of violating immigration law. A new verification requirement raises more questions than it answers: What would verification entail? Could ICE use facial recognition tools that already misidentify people? How long can someone be temporarily held in detention awaiting “verification” of their immigration status?

The proposal attempts to clarify federal limits on DHS search, arrest, and detention powers. With precise standards, meaningful remedies, and clear accountability mechanisms, it could prevent abuses. As drafted, however, its vague language and lack of defined safeguards make it unlikely to change how immigration enforcement actually operates.

Our Assessment:

• Reduces ICE agents? No.

• Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.

• Creates actual accountability? No. Lacks enforcement tools.

• Advances a new law? Unclear. Mostly reiterates existing standards ICE already violates.

• Actionable? No. Vague language, no implementation plan.

Proposal 2: No Masks

The Pitch: Prohibit ICE and immigration enforcement agents from wearing face coverings.

The Problem: Without enforcement mechanisms, this policy is unenforceable. Internal accountability initiatives, which involve ICE investigating itself, have a track record of clearing agents despite their documented patterns of abuse. As long as the agency tasked with enforcing the policy is the same agency breaking it, the policy exists only on paper.

This is a symbolic policy.

Our Assessment:

• Reduces ICE agents? No.

• Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.

• Creates actual accountability? No. No enforceable standards.

• Advances a new law? Yes.

• Actionable? No. No consequences outlined for violations.

Proposal 3: Require ID

The Pitch: Require DHS officers to display their agency, ID number, and last name. Require them to verbalize this information if asked.

The Problem: This proposal sounds tough but lacks enforcement mechanisms.

Federal regulations already require immigration officers to identify themselves during arrests “as soon as it is practical and safe to do so.” Legal experts note that an officer who refuses to identify themselves during an arrest would almost certainly flunk the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness test, and many argue that current stop‑and‑seize practices already push beyond what Terry‑style brief stops were supposed to allow.

In other words, the real problem isn’t a gap in the law; it’s DHS and ICE failing to enforce their own rules. This proposal doesn’t create a clear, enforceable new duty—it mostly re‑packages obligations that already exist on paper.

Our Assessment:

• Reduces ICE agents? No.

• Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.

• Creates actual accountability? No.

• Advances a new law? No. Mostly restates existing requirements.

• Actionable? No. No new enforcement mechanism.

Proposal 4: Protect Sensitive Locations

The Pitch: Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near medical facilities, schools, churches, polling places, courts, etc.

The Problem: This proposal restricts immigration enforcement at certain locations but lacks the specificity required for enforcement. “Near” remains undefined, as does “enforcement” itself—leaving unclear whether agents can conduct surveillance, invoke exigent circumstances, or exploit other loopholes. Without clear definitions, the geographic limitations are unenforceable. There is no mechanism to prevent ICE from using funds to conduct enforcement at these restricted locations anyway.

The proposal also fails to reduce ICE’s operational capacity (staffing and budget). It creates a patchwork of restricted locations that agents can circumvent rather than constraining the agency’s ability to conduct enforcement overall.

Our Assessment:

• Reduces ICE agents? No.

• Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.

• Creates actual accountability? No.

• Advances a new law? Yes. Though weakly defined.

• Actionable? No. Vague terms, no enforcement mechanism.

Proposal 5: Stop Racial Profiling

The Pitch: Prohibit stops, questioning, and searches based on race, ethnicity, spoken language, accent, or presence at certain locations.

The Problem: This policy is aimed at responding to Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo, a 2025 Supreme Court order that lifted limits on immigration stops based on factors including apparent race or ethnicity, language, location, and type of work, allowing DHS to resume these practices while litigation continues.

Although ICE is formally prohibited from relying on race alone, officers can cite pretextual violations—a broken taillight, improper lane change, “suspicious behaviour”—while race functions as the actual basis for the stop. Scholars and advocates note that this makes racial profiling difficult to detect and even harder to prove under existing Fourth Amendment and Equal Protection doctrine. As a result, such policies are largely symbolic and unlikely to meaningfully curtail race-based targeting in immigration enforcement.

Our Assessment:

• Reduces ICE agents? No.

• Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.

• Creates actual accountability? No.

• Advances a new law? No. Doesn’t create new enforceable standards.

• Actionable? No. Racial profiling can continue with artful justification.

Proposal 6: Uphold Use of Force Standards

The Pitch: Place into law a reasonable use of force policy, expand training, require officer certification, and remove officers from the field during investigations.

The Problem: Internal use-of-force rules already prohibit much of what this proposal addresses. DOJ and DHS policies on paper restrict firing at moving vehicles and are designed to prevent excessive force, yet incidents like the shooting of Renee Good occurred despite these existing rules, not because they were absent. Many of the worst incidents happened in violation of policy that was already in place.

Simply issuing another set of standards will not address the underlying problem. Rules only matter if enforcement and accountability mechanisms exist to ensure compliance. Without them, policy becomes cover for the same practices it purports to prohibit.

This proposal assumes that more training will produce better behavior and less violence, but research on standard law‑enforcement training shows weak and mixed results on reducing excessive force or misconduct. Other researchers have argued that extensive training programs actually produce a culture of violence among law enforcement. Simply adding training hours or modules has not been shown to reliably change officer behavior, especially in the absence of real oversight.

Shortening ICE’s academy training from months to 47 days is alarming, but veteran officers—not just rookies—were involved in recent killings, despite their extensive experience. Expanding training without restructuring its content risks hardening the paramilitary mindset that produced these abuses.

Meaningful reform requires enforcement and accountability, not additional hours in a classroom.

Our Assessment:

• Reduces ICE agents? No.

• Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.

• Creates actual accountability? No.

• Advances a new law? Yes. Updates internal policies.

• Actionable? No. ICE already has use of force standards it ignores.

Proposal 7: State and Local Coordination

The Pitch: Preserve the ability of states and localities to investigate excessive force incidents. Require evidence sharing. Require state/local consent for large-scale operations.

The Problem: State “consent” sounds powerful here, but it’s mostly theater. The policy’s promise to “preserve the ability” of state and local governments to investigate federal officers admits that such power already exists; it doesn’t create new tools or remedies. In Minneapolis, federal officials actually did the opposite of what their policy required: they pushed the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension off the ICE shooting case, walled off evidence, and claimed Minnesota had no jurisdiction in the case, even as an FBI agent reportedly resigned after being pressured to stop investigating the ICE shooter and focus on investigating the victim instead. Without mandatory evidence‑sharing, penalties for noncooperation, a private right of action, or any real path to court enforcement, “consent” from states is just a talking point, not a binding constraint on federal raids.

Our Assessment:

• Reduces ICE agents? No.

• Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.

• Creates actual accountability? No.

• Advances a new law? No. Mostly restates existing state authority.

• Actionable? No. No concrete enforcement tools.

Proposal 8: Detention Standards and Congressional Visits

The Pitch: Make clear that all detained people have access to attorneys. Allow states to sue DHS for violations. Prohibit limitations on Congressional visits to ICE facilities.

The Problem: These rights already exist. DHS facilities are already subject to constitutional protections and binding detention standards. States already have paths to sue. Members of Congress already have broad oversight authority.

This proposal reiterates existing rights without adding strong enforcement tools. It won’t change federal compliance.

Our Assessment:

• Reduces ICE agents? No.

• Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.

• Creates actual accountability? No.

• Advances a new law? No. Restates existing protections.

• Actionable? No. No new enforcement mechanisms.

Proposal 9: Body Cameras

The Pitch: Require body-worn cameras during public interactions. Mandate storage and access requirements. Prohibit tracking First Amendment activity, such as freedom of speech and assembly.

The Problem: Body cameras are a popular but weak accountability mechanism—especially without guaranteed public access to footage or clear consequences for misconduct.

More importantly: DHS already adopted a department-wide body camera policy in 2023. ICE followed with Directive 19010.3 in 2025. Secretary Noem has already pledged to issue cameras to every DHS officer and expand the program nationwide.

The congressional proposal largely mirrors what’s already happening. It’s not clearly a new, enforceable statutory regime. And even if it were, it misunderstands the real threat: ICE and CBP’s surveillance and data exploitation systems, which have expanded rapidly in recent years. Cameras won’t address that.

Our Assessment:

• Reduces ICE agents? No.

• Reduces ICE authority/funding? No. It likely requires additional funding.

• Creates actual accountability? No. No clarity on footage access or enforcement.

• Advances a new law? Unclear. Mostly mirrors current DHS policy.

• Actionable? No. Relies on proactive DHS cooperation.

Proposal 10: No Paramilitary Police

The Pitch: Regulate and standardize uniforms and equipment to bring DHS in line with civil law enforcement.

The Problem: DHS’s promise to dress “like civilian police” sets a low bar when local police forces are already heavily militarized. The policy establishes no concrete limits and lacks enforcement mechanisms. It also prioritizes uniform standards while ignoring ICE and CBP’s actual sources of power: surveillance tools, databases, and software. CBP already wears uniforms; uniform standards have not constrained their operational practices. This proposal amounts to branding rather than meaningful restraint, and it does not address the most consequential tools these agencies employ.

Our Assessment:

• Reduces ICE agents? No.

• Reduces ICE authority/funding? No.

• Creates actual accountability? No.

• Advances a new law? Unclear. The standard is vague, CBP is already required to wear uniforms.

• Actionable? No. Vague language that ignores ICE/CBP’s core power—surveillance systems.

The Pattern

The proposals fail on core measures: none reduce ICE agents or budget, none strip away ICE’s authority, and none create meaningful accountability mechanisms independent of the executive branch.

While some proposals, like requiring a judicial warrant to enter private property, could amount to meaningful change, they restate existing rights that ICE already violates and are vague enough that enforcement would be largely impossible.

We have a real political moment.

Democratic leadership must match public demand with actual solutions—not half-measured proposals that leave ICE’s dangerous impunity unchanged.

Our Roadmap: 10 to End ICE

We need demands that actually dismantle ICE. These are the 10 to End ICE:

1. Reduce ICE staffing to 1,100 officers (a 95% reduction) and cut the budget to match

2. Shrink CBP’s jurisdiction to 10 air miles from any external boundary and end warrantless searches

3. Cancel ICE surveillance contracts with companies like Palantir and Clearview AI

4. Create independent immigration courts insulated from political interference

5. Guarantee the right to a lawyer in immigration court for all people facing immigration proceedings

6. Prohibit ICE from buying or renting property to stop detention warehouses

7. End all federal contracts with any private entity that owns, manages, provides, or supplies detention facilities

8. Make any arrest made by a masked ICE officer unlawful

9. End harmful hiring protocols: prohibit accelerated training programs, require comprehensive background checks, ban hiring of individuals affiliated with hate groups, and require all current officers to meet these standards retroactively

10. Allow civil lawsuits against federal law enforcement by ending qualified immunity for ICE officers and passing the Bivens Act

These demands actually reduce ICE’s power and scope. They’re concrete, measurable, and enforceable, and they shift resources away from mass detention and deportation toward due process and legal representation.

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What We Need

Real reform means reducing ICE’s power. Proposals that sound good but leave the system intact are not enough.

Right now, Democrats have a real bargaining chip: DHS funding expires in mid-February, and party leaders are openly conditioning their votes for a full-year Homeland Security bill on ICE reforms and tighter guardrails on enforcement. We recognize these are 10 ambitious demands, but anything else leaves ICE fundamentally intact.

Congress will not adopt these changes willingly—only sustained pressure can force lawmakers to choose between dismantling ICE’s worst abuses or paying a growing political price for defending the status quo.

The choice is Congress’s. The power belongs to us.

Learn more and take action at 10toendICE.org.

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Introducing 10 to End ICE—a list of demands Congress can make right now in response to the harms of ICE.

In our last post, we discussed what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does and how the agency’s continued existence is untenable. We promised in our next post we’d discuss the actions necessary to end ICE.

Today, we’re introducing actionable, achievable policies that move us toward abolition. They’re the floor, not the ceiling.

First, we believe ICE should, and can, be immediately abolished.

We know, however, that achieving this goal may require several steps and that the political will may not exist for immediate abolition. With that in mind, we’ve prepared 10 demands Congress can pursue now to dismantle ICE and address the harms it has inflicted on our nation and communities.

Why not just call to abolish ICE and stop there? Without clear demands upfront, policies get watered down and support for substantive change erodes. We’ve seen it happen.

What’s our approach? This roadmap targets ICE’s core structures—funding, due process, agency scope, and redress—with the highest-impact demands that are achievable today. Read more about our approach and the assumptions guiding our demands in the roadmap.

Is there support for this? Public support for ending ICE has grown steadily. As of January 28, 2026, 80% of Democrats, 46% of Independents, and 15% of Republicans support abolishing ICE. And 11% of people are undecided. Importantly, when given further options in another poll, 42% of Republicans support “making significant changes to ICE to put more checks on its power.”

We want to hear from you! If you have ideas or constructive feedback, please email us at ice@campaignzero.org.

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The Demands

Federal

Reducing and ultimately abolishing ICE must happen at the federal level. These 10 demands are our floor—actionable, achievable, non-negotiable first steps to end ICE.

1. Cap ICE Staffing Levels.

Even though the Trump administration claims it is targeting “violent criminals” with ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), only about 5% of ICE detainees have convictions for violent offenses. The surge in funding and personnel for ICE, and the excessive deployment of CBP in coordination with ICE, is about power and intimidation, not the enforcement of immigration laws.

The change:

• Reduce ICE to a force of 1,100 officers—costing roughly $200 million annually—which would be sufficient for genuine public safety needs. All other ICE employees must be non-enforcement, meaning they cannot carry a firearm, have no power to arrest or investigate, and have no power to conduct searches.

• Cap CBP at current levels and prohibit them from being deployed to support any other agency operation, including ICE.

Why it matters: These changes force ICE to prioritize operational capacity over large-scale terror and redirect resources toward rights-based alternatives. Any future staffing increase would require explicit legislative approval, public hearings and community input. Limiting CBP's staffing and restricting its deployment prevents the administration from simply transferring ICE operations to another agency.

CBP is already acting far beyond its border-security mandate—militarized deployments to cities, collaboration with ICE, and broad interpretations of federal-property-protection statutes have transformed it into a domestic enforcement tool. Legal restrictions would rein in this mission creep and prevent it from becoming a de facto replacement for a capped ICE.

2. End Warrantless Searches and Shrink CBP’s Jurisdiction

CBP currently has jurisdiction to operate throughout the United States, assisting ICE in immigration enforcement (6 USC 211(c)(8)).

CBP also has legal authority to conduct warrantless searches of any vessel (8 USC § 1357) within a “reasonable distance” from any external boundary of the US (defined as 100 air miles per 8 CFR 287.1(a)(2)). Two-thirds of all Americans live within this zone, effectively creating a Fourth Amendment-free area.

The change:

• Limit CBP jurisdiction to 10 air miles from any external boundary, ensuring the agency’s focus is on the border.

• Remove the legal authority for warrantless searches from federal law—the Constitution should apply everywhere within our land.

Why it matters: CBP should focus on ports of entry and external boundaries, not areas throughout our nation’s interior.

3. Protect Immigration Judges from Political Purges

The Trump administration has fired over 100 immigration judges since 2025—nearly 15% of the bench. With three million pending cases, the system is being intentionally clogged to justify bypassing due process. Congress has tried repeatedly to increase the number of immigration judges to reduce the backlog of pending cases, and it’s been blocked.

The change: Establish the following legal protections:

• The immigration court system should be a standalone, independent entity, similar to all other federal judges

• Judicial tenure with mid-term removal only “for cause”

• Merit-based standards for hiring and removal

• Statutory minimum bench size to prevent wholesale gutting

Why it matters: Independent judges require proper evidence and meaningful hearings, which slow mass deportations and force ICE to document its actions.

4. Cancel Surveillance Contracts and Require Judicial Warrants for Data Collection or Usage

ICE has long abused surveillance technologies and personal data, but its recent funding surge has given it a virtual blank check to expand these capacities and experiment with new technologies with little to no oversight. Many of these technologies were designed for warfare and counterterrorism but are now used to violate Fourth Amendment protections, target neighborhoods, and intimidate protesters.

The change:

• Immediately cancel all ICE and CBP contracts with Palantir, Clearview AI, NEC, Paragon Solutions, and L3Harris.

• Pass legislation requiring a judicial search warrant to obtain or utilize personal data via direct surveillance, purchases from third-party brokers, or inter-agency cooperation.

Why it matters: The solution to this problem lies with Congress to modernize Fourth Amendment protections to safeguard personal and biometric data. In the immediate term, we must end any federal contracts with known bad actors who enable ICE and CBP.

5. Guarantee the Right to a Lawyer in Immigration Court

56% of people facing deportation in Immigration Court lack legal representation, including many children, who are forced to navigate proceedings alone. Given the life-altering consequences, legal representation must be guaranteed.

The change: Amend 8 USC § 1362 to guarantee government-funded representation and case management for all people in immigration proceedings.

Why it matters: Free legal representation is a basic right that should be extended to everyone in our country, not a privilege for those who can afford it.

6. Prohibit ICE From Obtaining New Properties for Immigration Detention

ICE wants to build a massive detention infrastructure capable of detaining 80,000+ individuals. To do so, they have been purchasing warehouses and other facilities throughout the country. ICE’s acting director openly stated his detainment goals and compared the process to Amazon: “Like Prime, but with human beings.”

The change: Prevent ICE from obtaining any new properties for immigration detention or temporary detainment, and roll back its recent expansion.

• To effectuate this change, implement a prohibition on any federal agency purchasing or leasing new properties to be used by ICE for immigration detention or detainment.

• Federal agencies must also sell any property purchased for ICE detainment after January 20, 2025, with cities having the right of first refusal before it is opened to the broader market. Any leases on property must end immediately.

• Prohibit DHS or any other federal agency from purchasing or leasing aircraft or other vessels for deportation or detention purposes related to immigration enforcement.

Why it matters: Studies on alternatives to detention (ATD) programs for immigrants show that 95% of people on full-service ATD appeared for final hearings, with other studies showing even higher rates of compliance. People comply when they are treated as human beings, not prisoners.

7. Ban Private Prison and Detention Contracts

80 to 90% percent of detained immigrants are held in facilities operated by private companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic. These companies lobbied for expanded immigration enforcement and profit significantly from guaranteed minimum payments and bed quotas—they get paid whether beds are filled or not.

The change:

• End all federal contracts with any company or private organization that manages, provides, or supplies any “detention” facility.

• Prohibit private prison and detention contracts in the future.

Why it matters: Private companies reap the benefits of expanded immigration detention. Despite having a track record of administering facilities with abusive conditions, these companies lobbied effectively for the recent surge. Private companies should not drive public policy, especially as it pertains to the imprisonment of human beings.

8. Unmask or Release: Any Arrest Made by a Masked ICE Agent is Unlawful

Masked ICE and CBP agents are routinely carrying out operations with their faces covered and refusing to identify themselves. Masked federal agents are unacceptable in a democratic society, both symbolically and because they prevent transparency and accountability. The majority of Americans disapprove of these agents wearing face coverings, which serve no practical purpose for lawful immigration enforcement.

The change: An arrest conducted by an ICE or CBP agent who conceals their face, fails to visibly identify their agency, or fails to display proper identification shall be unlawful.

Why it matters: Accountability requires identification. No more anonymous raids. We already demand that of our local police officers, and we should demand it of federal law enforcement agents, too.

9. End Harmful Hiring and Onboarding Protocols

Recently, a Slate journalist was offered an ICE agent position without providing any paperwork, drug test, or background check. New ICE officers now complete only about 42 days of training, a downgrade from the more rigorous training program, which lasted five months. Folks with prior law enforcement experience can even skip the abbreviated version and take online courses instead.

The change: Immediately pass legislation with the following requirements and prohibitions:

• Prohibit accelerated training programs

• Prohibit conditional or provisional appointments before completing all required background checks, hiring requirements, and training

• Ban hiring of individuals affiliated with hate groups

• Require all current officers to meet these standards retroactively

Why it matters: Rapid hiring with reduced standards has created a cohort of overwhelmed, underprepared officers more prone to escalation. Training should never be sacrificed.

10. Allow Civil Lawsuits Against Federal Law Enforcement

Victims of federal law enforcement abuse—including by ICE and CBP—have essentially no recourse. In 1971, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents established that people could sue federal officers for constitutional violations. But decades of court rulings have gutted this protection, and qualified immunity blocks 99% of cases before trial by shielding officers unless they violated a “clearly established” law. The result: federal agents operate with near-total civil impunity.

The change: Pass the Bivens Act (HR 6091) to create a federal statute allowing civilians to sue federal law enforcement for constitutional violations, and eliminate qualified immunity for federal officers. This strips away the legal shields that currently protect ICE and CBP agents from accountability.

Why it matters: Federal officers must face personal consequences for rights violations. Without accountability, abuse continues unchecked. The Bivens Act makes this right enforceable through statute rather than relying on weakened judicial precedent, while eliminating qualified immunity ensures that victims can actually reach court and receive justice.

State / Local

In the absence of federal action, local jurisdictions can implement safeguards to impede ICE and slow down the deportation machine.

A. Prohibit 287(g) Agreements

287(g) programs empower ICE to “deputize” state and local law enforcement officers as ICE agents, authorizing them to perform immigration officer functions under ICE’s oversight. Under these agreements, sheriffs can screen people in custody and flag them for immigration arrest. ICE can also utilize local jails (run by sheriffs) to detain undocumented people before transfer / deportation. In 2025, nearly half (about 48%) of ICE’s 1,000+ daily arrests occurred in local jails.

The change: Pass state laws prohibiting local law enforcement from joining 287(g) agreements. Note: Eight states (CA, CT, DE, IL, ME, NJ, OR, WA) have already prohibited 287(g) agreements.

Why it matters: Ending 287(g) agreements cuts a major arrest and detainment pipeline for ICE. Without these agreements, ICE loses its pre-screening arm inside local jails and can no longer automatically pull people into immigration custody simply for being arrested (without convictions).

States and counties that have prohibited 287(g) agreements have much lower rates of ICE arrests. At the same time, research shows that these jurisdictions do not experience higher crime rates, indicating that scaling back 287(g) does not undermine public safety. This combination of lower ICE arrests and stable crime levels supports the argument that communities can protect immigrant residents without sacrificing community safety.

B. Increase the Number of Sanctuary Cities and Strengthen City Response

Sanctuary city ordinances limit or prohibit the sharing of information / assistance between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement (ICE).

Contrary to a common misconception, sanctuary city laws do not prohibit federal law enforcement from operating in those cities. They only limit the level of assistance from the local governments.

The change: Similar to prohibiting 287(g) at the state level, local jurisdictions can explicitly ban the sharing of staffing, resources, or local government-owned facilities for ICE operations and detention.

Why it matters: Sanctuary city policies help ensure that minorities and undocumented people feel safe going to local police / law enforcement when in danger, to report crimes, etc., without fear of being passed along to immigration authorities. In doing so, they make cities safer.

These policies also ensure that local law enforcement focuses on local issues.

C. Disrupt ICE’s Purchasing, Leasing, and Usage of Detention Facilities

ICE is using a variety of mechanisms to establish immigration detention facilities around the country, often against the will of the people in those communities. States, counties, and cities have proposed and enacted laws to block these facilities. Although these laws have and will face legal challenges, they are an essential tool for disrupting inhumane ICE detention and overreach by federal immigration enforcement.

The change: Pass state legislation and city ordinances that block ICE from using local facilities for immigration detention using the following methods:

• Prohibit public entities from contracting for federal detention

• Prohibit local law enforcement from detaining people on behalf of ICE

• Establish a moratorium on approvals for permitting for detention facilities

• Enact steep financial penalties or tax rates on all entities that participate in immigration detention

Why it matters: States and local governments have a right to prevent federal immigration enforcement from exploiting their communities. Each local fight will take on a different shape and use different tactics, and will likely result in long legal battles. These fights are worth it. Local governments must stand up to overreach of ICE, CBP, and immigration enforcement more broadly.

What You Can Do

Contact your Congresspeople: Contact your representatives and demand they support these 10 policies. These changes can be enacted within 15 business days of a vote.

Contact your State Representatives: Push for laws prohibiting 287(g) agreements that deputize local police as ICE agents. Eight states (CA, CT, DE, IL, ME, NJ, OR, WA) have already done this.

Contact your Mayor or Town Council: Support sanctuary city policies that limit cooperation with ICE. Almost 400 jurisdictions already have such policies—yours can too.

Help your Community: Spread the word. Public conversation about these policy changes strengthens our position and moves the line.

Evaluate Other Policy Demands with Diligence: Use our 5A framework found toward the beginning of the roadmap to assess all other proposals relating to ICE.

Download the Roadmap

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Together, We Will Win

Even when ICE is abolished, the federal government may replace it with or reassign its work to other agencies. We acknowledge this likelihood. The work will continue.

But these 10 demands create immediate barriers to mass deportation, protect due process, and build the foundation for a rights-based immigration system.

Lives are at stake. This is our pathway to ending ICE.

#AbolishICE #10ToEndICE

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ICE Isn’t Old.

My elementary school is older than ICE.

The Bush administration created ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in the aftermath of 9/11, one of the many agencies born under the newly created Department of Homeland Security, like TSA, that promised to keep us “safer.” They exploited the fear and chaos following the attacks to push through their plans with minimal resistance and built a system of militarized immigration enforcement that had nothing to do with the attacks, all in the name of counterterrorism. Over two decades, “terrorism” has been defined and redefined to mean anything and everything that preyed on the public’s fears.

ICE only exists because we abolished two other agencies: US Customs Service (previously housed in the Treasury Department) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (initially housed in the Department of Justice). New is always sold as better, until we remember that new is sometimes simply a worse product with shinier packaging. That’s the case with ICE.

Institutions create an illusion of permanence, seducing us into believing that because they exist today, they have always existed, and should exist, forever. But institutions come and go over time, as needs and political pressures change.

The Trump administration itself recently abolished USAID—cutting its budget and firing its staff overnight, even scrubbing its website. And USAID isn’t alone: Trump has administratively abolished the US Agency for Global Media, the Minority Business Development Agency, the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, and several others. He’s even called for the abolition of the Social Security Administration, which millions of Americans depend on daily.

This is not an argument that disbanding USAID was the right call—ending USAID was destructive to global development and humanitarian work. But it does expose the fundamental dishonesty in the claim that federal agencies are immutable. When Republicans insist ICE must persist because it exists, they’re selectively arguing for institutional permanence only when it serves their interests.

ICE is a new, unproven agency—newer than The Sims, newer than PlayStation 2—yet it is sold to us as though it is foundational to American security. In fact, most people reading this are older than ICE.

When ICE was created in 2003, I was 18 years old, about to head off to college. I had been a youth organizer in Baltimore, but didn’t yet understand the sheer scope of the violence of the police and the systems that enable it. But August 2014 in Ferguson changed my life and changed this country. I lived it, saw it, fought against it. And I did so alongside thousands of others who were looking underneath the hood of policing with fresh eyes.

America turns 250 this year. ICE hasn’t even been around for 25 of them. But, as young as ICE is, it has been around long enough for us to ask: does it do what officials told us it was going to do? Does its work make us safer?

Does Ice Work?

The data is clear. The answer is no.

Even before the ramp up of violent ICE tactics over the past year, the agency had a track record of abuse. Reports on inhumane detention facilities and criminal behavior by agents have long circulated. With few guardrails and no oversight, the Trump administration identified ICE as an agency that it could weaponize against not only immigrants, but against American cities more broadly. This strategy has rested on a set of lies about what ICE is and what it does.

The central lie that Trump’s team has repeatedly made, was that immigrants without official, approved paperwork (i.e. undocumented) were committing heinous crimes in communities. Study after study have proven this to be a lie. If anything, the consensus of the studies confirms the opposite is true—undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.

Then Trump’s team told us ICE was deployed to Minneapolis, Miami, Chicago, and other cities to uproot gang violence and that swaths of undocumented immigrants engaged in serious crime. The data is clear here, too: this was a lie.

Even in taking the remarkable step of deporting 238 Venezuelans to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador in March 2025, the administration could produce no evidence that they posed a threat to public safety. At least 75% of those who were illegally deported had no criminal record in the United States or abroad.

Overall, only 5% of people detained by ICE have been convicted of a violent crime, and nearly three-quarters of people detained by ICE, 73%, have no convictions. Perhaps most shockingly, about 75,000 people arrested by ICE have no criminal record at all. And ICE is even arresting non-immigrant citizens and simply explaining it away as a cost of enforcement.

On September 30, 2025, ICE used a Black Hawk helicopter to descend on a large apartment complex in Chicago in the middle of the night, arresting scores of people. A full 300 ICE agents raided this apartment building in the name of fighting “terrorism.” They arrested 37 people. And exactly 0 people were charged with a crime as a result of the arrests.

This nighttime, military-style apartment raid was part of Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago that has been ongoing for months. Astoundingly, 97% of the people arrested in these Chicago ICE raids had no criminal conviction.

But what about Minneapolis? The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security said ICE has arrested 3,000 people since they started Operation Metro Surge, their current program in the Twin Cities. But they won’t release the names of the 3,000 people arrested. They’ve only released the names of 240 immigrants they’ve arrested, of which about 80% had serious felony convictions—but had already gone through the justice system. This subset of people was arrested by ICE after being released from jail or prison, sometimes on parole. They had already been held accountable by the justice system before ICE ever showed up. ICE added nothing to the safety equation in Minneapolis. In fact, by killing two people, wrongfully arresting others, and terrorizing even more, it’s undeniable that they have made the city more dangerous.

There is a reason the federal government will not release the full list of the names of the people arrested in Minneapolis. They know what we know—the majority of people they’ve arrested have not actually committed any crime and/or have all the required immigration paperwork.

But what about all of the “undocumented” people in the country? That’s not fair, right?

There is nothing quick about the American immigration system. It is a complicated web of applications, hearings, deadlines, and fees. It can take up to 20–30 years to become a United States citizen through the current process. The best-case scenario for most people still takes years.

The vast majority of “undocumented” people are individuals who had legal immigration statuses that either lapsed or were removed. Think of it as needing to renew your driver’s license. If you don’t do it before it lapses, you are driving illegally. The same holds for someone’s visa status. Insidiously, this administration is even arresting and deporting people who show up to court to renew their paperwork. They don’t want people to be in compliance with immigration law, nor do they want to fix the immigration process; they simply want to get rid of certain types of people.

Sometimes, ICE agents are removing people’s immigration status, making them suddenly “undocumented.” For example, last March, the administration arbitrarily ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalis, abruptly removing legal status for as many as 2,400 people. In all, this administration has cancelled TPS status for over 1.5 million mostly black and brown people from Venezuela, Honduras, Haiti, Afghanistan, Burma, Nicaragua, Syria, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Nepal, and South Sudan.

None of these changes in status reflect any understanding of why these migrants were granted TPS status in the first place, undermining arguments from centrist politicians that our asylum and refugee programs are being exploited. The administration has no interest in building a more coherent immigration system. They see the flaws in it as an opportunity to stoke racialized fears for political gain.

And they’ve all but ended the refugee resettlement program for everyone but white South African people. The abrupt cancellation of TPS is meant to strip people of legal status based on who the administration wants in the country, not based on whether it’s safe for people to return home. It would be like if I destroyed your driver’s license then made you drive home from the DMV—only to then follow and arrest you for driving without a license.

In addition, this administration has also revoked over 100,000 visas, making 100,000 people, overnight, suddenly “undocumented.” Indeed, this administration has made more people undocumented than any administration in US history.

At the same time, the Trump administration has fired 100 of the 700 immigration judges—more dismissed than ever before—making it less and less likely that people will even be able to get a hearing. There simply won’t be enough judges to conduct them. The administration is deliberately creating a system so backlogged, it can’t function—which becomes the justification for deporting people without hearings at all, bypassing the due process protections guaranteed by the Constitution.

So, What Is Their End Goal? Remigration.

The Trump administration has openly embraced a policy of mass removal—targeting immigrants, people of color, and anyone deemed a threat to be forcibly deported, even pursuing denaturalization of citizens. There’s a term for this: ‘remigration,’ borrowed from Nazi ideology and promoted by senior advisor Stephen Miller. Remigration’s explicit goal is achieving and maintaining a white majority population. It’s a sanitized word for ethnic cleansing.

To say that the Trump administration endorses remigration is not a conspiracy theory. It is a fact. The highest-ranking members of the Trump administration are deeply steeped in these theories. Trump’s team has openly espoused it.

And who will do the removals? ICE. Remigration isn’t possible without ICE.

I have heard non-immigrant people of color say that ICE doesn’t impact them because they are not “undocumented immigrants”. They fail to realize that any non-white person is an “undocumented immigrant” to a white supremacist. “Undocumented” is just another way to say we-decide-if-you-can-be-here, an age-old sentiment of white supremacy. This also explains why this administration wants to end birthright citizenship. The goal is for them to be able to decide, at their will and with no obstruction, who is—and who is not—a citizen. And to decide, at their will and with no resistance, who is protected by the Constitution and who is not.

Trump’s goal is to remove as many non-white people from the country as possible and to punish disobedient white people who oppose him. “Immigration” is the cover for this plan. White nationalism will always punish white people who refuse to participate in its program. There is a long arc to this. We cannot forget Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, two white men killed during Freedom Summer by the KKK. The killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Good and the subsequent defaming of her name, targeting of her wife, and refusal to even investigate the officers involved are examples of this administration continuing to target disobedient white people. They punish these white people publicly to send a message to other white people to fall in line, hoping that white people will choose the safety and comfort of whiteness over justice.

This is an exercise in power.

Trump’s Personal, National, Militia

To support ICE today is to support the President of the United States having a personal police force that is able to arrest citizens without judicial warrants, whose agents can hide their identities from citizens and the press, damage property and assault citizens at their will, and, importantly, operate with the full expectation that there will be no oversight or accountability, even as they kill people while the world watches.

This administration has already made clear that the Department of Justice will not hold individual officers or ICE leadership accountable for any of their actions.

You might have heard that members of Congress are discussing passing a ban on ICE officers wearing masks? A ban only matters if it’s enforced. The administration has already told us that they’re not enforcing the current laws.

What about making the Use of Force standards stronger for ICE agents, as some have suggested? The Use of Force standards already prohibited the officer’s actions that led to his even being in the vicinity of Renee Good. We wrote those standards as a part of our 8 Can’t Wait campaign. They are good standards. But this administration has already said that it will not enforce any use of force policies. Just days after killing Renee Good, Border Patrol killed Alex Pretti. Alex was also a legal observer, volunteering to protect his community by recording federal officials to ensure that they complied with the law. And he was killed, too, in violation of the Use of Force standards.

Accountability mechanisms only work if there’s faith that oversight and accountability will actually happen. The Trump administration has made clear that they have no intention of providing either. In another administration, the DOJ might function as an impartial agency, but under Trump, it’s nothing more than a political arm of the White House, targeting critics and dissenters. US Attorneys are no longer ambassadors of the law or the Constitution. They’re Trump’s ambassadors.

This administration has even said that ICE officers operate with absolute immunity (they walked the claim back after public pressure). They have said that officers do not need search warrants signed by judges and that ICE staff can now sign them instead. They are arresting children in Minneapolis and flying them to Texas and leaving them there. They are randomly “deporting” people to Venezuela. How do you file a petition to the court from Venezuela or a counterterrorism prison in El Salvador? You don’t. And the Trump administration has made it clear that ICE’s mandates are not limited to issues of immigration, but that they can police anyone, anywhere.

This is only the beginning.

So, what?

We have not been given much choice here: you either support the President having a personal police force with no oversight or accountability, or you don’t. If you don’t support the President having this personal police force, then you support the end of ICE. It’s that simple. Ending ICE does not mean ending immigration law—it means ending a militarized, unaccountable enforcement apparatus.

Just on Wednesday, January 28th, Trump sent out a fundraising email with the opening line: “Are you a proud American Citizen or does ICE need to come and track you down?” Trump is clear that ICE is his personal police force and that none of this is an honest debate about immigration policy.

In the last decade, our team at Campaign Zero has led the change of laws in 25 states regarding Use of Force, the repeal of the nation’s first-ever Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights (e.g. Maryland), led the passage in every state of statewide limitations on no-knock raids and the citywide restrictions on no-knock raids in Minneapolis, and have staved off dozens of changes to felony theft thresholds. We currently lead 15 other campaigns nationally and locally to end the violence of the police and mass incarceration. Every day we work on issues that people said were impossible to fix and every day we prove them wrong.

And remember, we’ve disbanded police departments before in this country. Both Compton, CA (2000) and Camden, NJ (2013) disbanded their police departments to root out corruption. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. Our task is to make sure that once ICE ends, it doesn’t reappear under a different name.

The end of ICE is the common sense, practical position to adopt. We’ve seen ICE in action. We’ve seen what fails. We’ve witnessed a refusal to take accountability. We’ve endured the agency’s leadership lying to the public, time and time again. The end of ICE is overdue.

In the coming days, we will release a roadmap of how to end ICE. After all of my years in organizing, I know that it’s possible. But it begins with being crystal clear about the story we tell each other about what’s happening and what’s possible.

We were safe before ICE existed, and we will be safe(r) once it is gone.

#AbolishICE

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