Blowing whistles as a public warning system. Forming rapid-response groups on Signal. Filming arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Pounding drums and making noise at hotels where ICE agents sleep. Pouring into the streets for protests and days of “no work, no school, no shopping.”

These are just some of the many ways Americans are protecting their neighbors from the Trump administration’s violent crackdown on immigrants.

What could really put a dent in the administration’s efforts is if state and local governments refuse to contract with companies who collaborate with ICE. Despite its ballooning budget, the agency relies on the private sector for a wide range of goods and services. As Eric Blanc, Wes McEnany, and Claire Sandberg write, “Without the logistical, financial, and political support of business, its capacity to terrorize our communities would crumble.”

In January, activists pressured Avelo Airlines to stop flying deportation charter flights for the agency. And during ICE’s surge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, workers pushed a local Hilton affiliate to stop renting rooms to agents. But residents in Syracuse, New York, are taking this approach a step further by pressuring city leaders to pass a resolution that would ban the renewal of city contracts with companies doing business with ICE. Syracuse recently terminated its contract with Flock Safety, a company that provides license plate readers and is under fire nationally for providing data to ICE.

“Our public funding should be appropriated for the public good,” a Syracuse resident who helped draft the resolution said. “[This is a] commitment that the city can make to ensuring their constituents are safe and that their money is being spent well.”

“These companies are not neutral service providers,” said California state legislator Alex Lee, who has introduced a bill that would prohibit companies contracted with ICE from receiving certain state tax benefits and would redirect resulting revenue toward immigrant legal aid. “They profit directly from the policies that tear families apart and subject people to inhumane treatment.”

Syracuse is not alone. In 2019, during Trump’s first term, the city of Oakland, California, banned contracts with companies that provide ICE with data collection or immigration detention facilities. That ban is currently holding up a new city contract with the massive, private equity-backed Allied Universal, the nation’s third-largest private employer. Allied owns a company called G4S, one of a set of private security firms that The Lever has described as “a keystone of ICE’s expanding deportation machine, providing vehicles and personnel to transport immigrants to deportation flights and far-flung detention centers.”

This hints at the power that state and local spending—an estimated $2 trillion every year—can have on making government work for all of us, not just the wealthy few. As we argued in our 2023 report with Local Progress, Harnessing the Power of Procurement, aligning public spending with public values can help governments tackle the crises of our day, from economic inequality and racial injustice to climate change and—in the case of Trump’s violence against immigrants—rising fascism.

Is your community considering ending its contracts with vendors doing business with ICE? We’d like to hear about it: info@inthepublicinterest.org.

Jeremy Mohler
Writing Fellow
In the Public Interest