Unidentified ICE agents in plainclothes and masks surrounding a woman as she walks down the street.
A man being led away in handcuffs from his wife, 8 months pregnant.
Social media feeds have been filled with these stories, so rapidly that it can be hard to keep track.
First They Came For is an ongoing project to catalog and share the stories of people who have been kidnapped by the Trump Administration.
The administration has openly bragged about targeting those who have been critical of the American government, particularly its support of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Their actions have been a clear violation of freedom of speech rights and threatens everyone who disagrees with the current government and its policies.
Others have been swept up in the raids with no clear pretense.
Many of the hundreds of migrants deported to El Salvador have been unidentified.
There are likely many more people who have been abducted than we know about - who lack the resources or connections to get their stories publicized.
Those kidnapped by ICE are not being charged with a crime and are being denied their rights to legal counsel and due process, making it difficult for their loved ones to find them in the detention system.
The Trump administration is rapidly moving towards defiance of court orders, deporting more than 250 people to a maximum security prison in El Salvador called CECOT.
Imprisoned in another country, it seems that all of their rights under U.S. law will be ignored.
The infrastructure that has allowed the administration to do this - detention centers, border patrol agents, and coded language about who deserves to be here - existed before Trump.
The Department of Homeland Security was established in 2003 under the George W. Bush administration, and includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and (CBP) whose combined budget has grown under every president.
One of the first proponents of a family separation policy, and Trump’s current ‘Border Czar’, Tom Homan, was first appointed as Immigration and Customs Enforcement's executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations in 2013 by President Obama and received an award for his service in 2015.
He has bragged that he "doesn't care what judges think".
For tips, updates, or questions, contact general@firsttheycamefor.com
The intention of this site is to highlight the injustices and stories of the individuals who have bene targeted. This is a volunteer-led project and information may be incomplete. We encourage you to also review the United States Disappeared Tracker and believe that redundancy and visibility is key to to documenting the administration's actions.
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Mass resistance is critical.
The forms that resistance takes will evolve as the crisis continues, but we have seen the Trump administration back away from harmful and dangerous policy due to public backlash before, such as the 2017 protests around Executive Order 13769, commonly called the “Muslim Ban”.
In 2018, the family separation policy catalyzed the Occupy ICE movement in major cities around the country, that disrupted ICE’s ability to process detainees.
We do not yet know what actions will germinate and succeed under this Trump regime.
Some initial ideas are: