They’re California schemin’!
New York City socialists are importing even more aggressive tactics from their comrades on the Left Coast as they open up a new front in their fight to obstruct federal immigration agents, the Post has learned.
Delis, car washes, gas stations, hardware stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot — any workplace known to attract illegal migrants — will be infiltrated by teams of at least five to interfere with a fed takedown.
At a meeting last week in Midtown hosted by the Chinese Communist Party-linked People’s Forum, activists urged Big Apple socialists to form “patrol” teams, with roles that include not one but two videographers, a photographer, a notetaker and someone in charge of communications, all in an attempt to intimidate ICE.
Each team would target one workplace, posting at each corner as they wait for ICE agents to descend.
“Look, this is risky,” admitted Caleb Soto, a Los Angeles lawyer with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
“There is nothing I can say to guarantee your safety, but by using these filming tactics and saying it out loud . . . it’s a signal to them . . . if you keep doing what f–ked up thing you’re doing, I’m going to make sure I get it on record. And it scares them, honestly. They don’t like it. That’s why they get so upset.”
The event began with the crowd of about 200 enthusiastically chanting “ICE out.” Attendees were served a lavish breakfast that included eggs, French toast, empanadas and tamales, by the group that gets at least $20 million from China-based former software exec Neville Roy Singham.
Soto instructed attendees not to back down.
“Now they’ll say, ‘Get the f–k out of my face.’ And what you say, ‘I am not intervening in this action. I am a legal observer,'” he said.
Soto also told activists to use encrypted Signal group chats with “neutral titles” to make a rotating schedule that ensures a team member will be at each site most of the day in anticipation of an ICE raid.
“A lot of times it’s been really fast — like 15 minutes, if that, in and out. And it’s really hard if you’re not there already to actually respond,” advised Soto.
“If we don’t have those roles prepared, we’re going to be caught in chaos, and they thrive off of that chaos, but they fail when we’re organized,” he added.
The tactics have been used by the Los Angeles chapter of the DSA since June, one of its leaders told a “Solidarity Melts ICE” mass call Tuesday night, attended by far-left Astoria Councilmember Tiffany Caban.
“There’s a lot of f–kery that goes on with that group,” blasted Thomas Malone, a San Fernando Valley DSA leader, referring to ICE agents.
“What you’ll often find is that their vehicles do not have license plates, or they have the same license plates matched across six vehicles, or they have out of country license plates.”
California’s anti-ICE tag teams, euphemistically called “Community Defense Patrols,” have been going to Home Depot parking lots across Los Angeles, Orange County, Long Beach and San Diego, starting at 6am, Malone said.
They’ve been handing out “care packages” that include red “know your rights” cards as they wait for federal agents to show up.
Over the past months, ICE has conducted raids on the hardware chain at locations across Tinseltown, leading to clashes with protesters.
For decades, undocumented workers have gathered in Home Depot parking lots across the United States in search of contractors or homeowners to hire them off the books for day labor – a practice known as “shaping up.”
It’s turned the nation’s largest home improvement store into a deportation hotspot, resulting in dozens detained since the summer.
In one raid on a Sacramento Home Depot in June, five of the 11 migrants arrested had criminal histories, according to Border Patrol officials. They included Carlos Mata, a convicted sex offender who broke into a nearby apartment and assaulted someone as he attempted to flee ICE.
ICE has more than doubled its headcount in the past year, as agents descend on cities for large-scale operations to arrest migrants convicted of crimes or living in the US without legal status.
Meanwhile the NYC DSA has been mustering an army of 4,000 anti-ICE crusaders ahead of an expected imminent crackdown on the Big Apple.
