Days after FBI Director Kash Patel announced a federal investigation into encrypted Signal messaging networks used to track and obstruct ICE agents, a woman named Jill Garvey logged into a Zoom webinar and started training civilians to do exactly that — using a battlefield intelligence method designed for combat patrols in Iraq.
Garvey, co-founder of an organization called "States at the Core," taught recruits something called the SALUTE framework: Size, Activity, Location, Uniform, Time, Equipment. It is the same structured reporting method the U.S. military trains soldiers to use when gathering intelligence on enemy forces. A retired Green Beret says he first learned it as a newly enlisted Army private. Now it's being handed out in Zoom trainings to civilian activists targeting federal law enforcement officers executing lawful immigration operations on American soil.
A Fox News Digital investigation has uncovered a network of at least 200 anti-ICE organizations building what amounts to a civilian intelligence apparatus — feeding data into at least 13 databases that store license plates, timestamps, geolocation data, photographs, uniform descriptions, behavioral patterns, and in at least one case, the names, email addresses, and phone numbers of federal agents.
This is not a handful of protesters with smartphones. The network spans at least 18 coordinating hubs nationwide, from Seattle to New York, Chicago to Charlotte. Garvey claims to have trained 40,000 "rapid responders" in the past year alone. She runs new training sessions every several days.
The operational structure she outlined on the Zoom call is telling. Three distinct roles: recorder, supporter, monitor. Participants carry whistles with coded signals — three blasts mean an ICE operation is underway. Recruits are pressed to assess tactical units, identify munitions types, and gauge formation sizes. They are instructed to rehearse at home what to do if stopped by police.
In a prior interview, Garvey called ICE agents "mercenaries." On a podcast called "The Left Hook," host Wajahat Ali praised her approach and told her plainly:
"Your camera is your weapon."
Garvey's response to the growing movement she helped build was a single triumphant line:
"We are all ICE Watch!"
States at the Core operates under the fiscal sponsorship of the Hopewell Fund, described as a dark-money organization aligned with the Democratic Party. Hopewell offered this defense:
"States at the Core provides training for people to lawfully and peacefully observe law enforcement in their communities, and Hopewell is proud to be their fiscal sponsor."
Lawfully and peacefully. That framing is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
On Tuesday, a group of "rapid responders" affiliated with "Minnesota Ice Watch" tailed ICE agents so closely with their vehicles that agents drew their weapons and ordered them to stop, then handcuffed and detained them. This is what happens when civilians are trained to shadow federal law enforcement using insurgent surveillance techniques — the line between "observation" and obstruction doesn't blur. It vanishes.
The databases themselves tell the story. Consider just a few:
That last line is not about transparency. It is about targeting.
Rafael Concepcion, a former assistant teaching professor of photography at Syracuse University, is building the infrastructure to scale this nationwide. He developed a mapping platform called "DEICER" — Diversity Equity Inclusion Community Engagement Reporter — and plans to launch what he described as "a score" of new ICE tracking databases. His tools have already been activated in North Carolina and Massachusetts. He developed another platform called "Windbreaker" for Chicago groups.
Concepcion was candid about his vision. He said he wanted to build:
"One of the things that our constitution has tried to be able to provide is an avenue for individuals to make sure that they are aware of any kind of tyrannical government. If we are supposed to be able to guard against foreign and domestic, there should be a mechanism for us to be able to identify that."
He described his recruits as a "network of digital minutemen." The original Minutemen took up arms against a foreign power. Concepcion's version takes up cameras and databases against American law enforcement executing American law.
In New York, an organization called The People's Forum — described as Marxist-Leninist — hosted an all-day "People's Assembly for ICE Out of NY!" at its headquarters on W. 37th Street last Saturday. Co-founder Manola De Los Santos organized the event. The People's Forum collects tax-deductible donations for the effort, as stated on its own donor page:
"Yes, your donation is tax-deductible. We are collecting donations through The People's Forum which is a 501(c)3 not for profit organization. . . ."
The People's Forum is funded by Neville Roy Singham, a China-based tech tycoon with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Several congressional committees are now investigating his network. Tax-exempt dollars, flowing through an organization linked to a CCP-connected benefactor, are funding operations designed to obstruct American immigration enforcement. The layers of insulation are not accidental.
In Chicago, a group called "Protect Rogers Park" includes the SALUTE method in its standard operating procedures to "protect targeted locations" like churches and food pantries. Co-founder Gabe Gonzalez has organized "Remote Responders" stationed at cafes and shops, positioned "near windows of major throughways" and other "sensitive areas." This is not community organizing. It is a surveillance grid.
Two people are dead. Renee Good and Alex Pretti — both fatalities connected to stakeout operations against federal agents. Pretti was dispatched by an organization called "Defend the 612" to the Glam Doll Donut shop on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis. In the hour before his confrontation with federal officials, he was functioning as a rapid responder. He did not survive the encounter.
The network that trained these people, that dispatched them into volatile situations with federal agents, that told them their cameras were weapons — that network bears a share of moral responsibility that no fiscal sponsorship disclaimer can wash away.
Meanwhile, in a Seattle Signal chat last Saturday around 4 p.m., someone shared the 67-page "Mini-Manual Of The Urban Guerrilla." The same chat network — comprising roughly 35 to 37 separate Signal groups across Washington state — later announced a "rapid response drill" with a telling caveat:
"don't be running red lights to get there first, don't be blowing whistles once you arrive."
That they had to say it reveals the atmosphere they've created.
Nearly every operator in this network wraps their work in the same legalistic packaging. Ahmad Perez — a former Biden administration political appointee who launched the "Long Island ICE Tracker" — bragged about 574 verified sightings on Thursday while insisting the information is "strictly prohibited" from being used to "harass, threaten, intimidate, stalk, doxx or interfere" with anyone. He framed criticism itself as suspect:
"Attempts to label community transparency efforts as 'illegal' or 'surveillance' often reflect discomfort with accountability rather than genuine concern for ethics or safety. Oversight, documentation and public awareness are not threats to democracy — they are foundational to it."
Sam Fletcher, who identifies as a high school student and created the "Deportation Tracker" database, offered similar assurances:
"Any doxxing, harassing or stalking is unacceptable."
These disclaimers function the same way a sign reading "For Tobacco Use Only" functions at a head shop. The intent is obvious. The disclaimer is there to provide legal cover, not moral guidance. You do not train 40,000 people in military intelligence-gathering methods, feed their reports into databases storing the personal information of federal agents, and then claim surprise when someone gets hurt.
Federal statutes exist for exactly this scenario. 18 U.S.C. § 115 protects federal agents from threats. 18 U.S.C. § 2261A addresses stalking. Obstructing, striking, or resisting federal agents constitutes a felony. The FBI investigation Patel announced is now a live matter — and the network's response has been to accelerate, not retreat. Database entries are climbing. New platforms are launching. Trainings continue every several days.
Retired Green Beret Eric Schwalm reviewed the civilian training materials, operations, and databases uncovered by Fox News Digital. His assessment was unsparing:
"This is mind-blowing. We have an entire nation of collectors against our country's law enforcement. It's extremely dangerous."
He put it in terms that should give every American pause:
"If Iraqi resistance ran this level of operation against us, we couldn't have stayed past 2007. They didn't even need to shoot at us. Protests like this would have created a narrative nightmare."
Two people are already dead. Thousands of federal agents have their names, addresses, and phone numbers circulating in activist databases. A network spanning 200 organizations, funded in part by a CCP-linked billionaire and shielded by dark-money nonprofits, is training civilians to conduct battlefield intelligence operations against their own government's law enforcement.
The FBI is investigating. Congressional committees are probing the money. The question now is whether the legal system moves fast enough to dismantle an infrastructure that is growing by the day — or whether the next rapid responder dispatched to a donut shop ends up like Alex Pretti.
