Inside the Reddit Rebellion Against ICE
As federal immigration enforcement expands under a veil of secrecy, ordinary people on Reddit are turning surveillance into resistance — and transforming digital forums into lifelines.
WASHINGTON — Online communities dedicated to tracking U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations have exploded in size as fear and mistrust of masked agents rise across the country, according to an analysis by Migrant Insider.
More than 100,000 people now follow subreddits like r/ICE_raids, r/LaMigra, and r/EyesOnICE, where immigration lawyers, journalists, advocates, and everyday people post real-time updates on raids and document abuses they say are happening with little oversight.
“I’m a veteran who spent a lot of my formative years in border towns,” one mod told Migrant Insider. “The people impacted by ICE are my neighbors, my friends — part of the community I was raised in. What’s happening in this country has every mark of a fascist takeover, and that’s tragic. I didn’t serve, and my grandfather didn’t fight in WWII, just to live in a ‘papers please’ regime.”
That mod — who also cited spending “too much” time per week on moderating — said the subreddit “evolved” because it became whatever the community needed. Their subreddit “matters because of how it evolved. It never had a strict direction — it just became what people needed,” they said.
Over 40,000 users have joined r/ICE_Raids in the last month, with over the community drawing more than ten million views. “It’s crazy how explosive the growth of the community has been,” said an r/ICE_Raids mod, noting that the group quickly rose to one of the top subreddits in the influential category for communities dedicated to discussing legal issues.
The community dedicated to ICE surveillance isn’t limited to one space. On r/EyesOnICE, another mod told Migrant Insider that they founded the subreddit after realizing mainstream platforms often crowd out nuanced discussions about immigration enforcement.
“ICE’s activities occur mostly behind closed doors,” the r/EyesOnICE mod said. “Yet its actions — whether raids or budgetary intricacies — impact the day-to-day existence of millions.”
That subreddit has grown steadily by gathering credible source material — “a collection of documents that range from court filings, first-hand accounts, confidential memos, and primary source materials of specific importance,” they explained.
The mod team on r/EyesOnICE estimates spending more than 60 volunteer hours a week vetting posts and ensuring that submissions reflect the latest developments and can help community members stay safe.
Both mods said their subreddits aim to counter fear and secrecy with transparency — an increasingly urgent mission as ICE enforcement ramps up. “We let this community become what it needed to be — for the people who needed it,” an ICE_Raids mod added.
Immigration rights groups say these grassroots efforts highlight the changing face of digital activism at a time of heightened enforcement, surveillance, and public unease. Whether these communities can remain sustainable under increasing public scrutiny — and threats of retaliation from law enforcement — is an open question.
For now, the subreddit moderators and their communities say they will continue monitoring raids and sharing vital updates as long as they can, while keeping their channels clean of posts that violate Reddit’s terms of service, like threats of physical violence against masked agents.
“It’s a lot of work and it can be scary sometimes,” said a mod for r/LaMigra. “But it’s totally worth it to protect our freedoms by holding a rogue agency accountable and serving as a resource and forum for our fellow Americans living under the constant threat of ICE.”
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