As public support wanes, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become the target of nationwide protests. While many of these protests are peaceful and popular, they have also created an opening for aggressive activist networks with long histories of revolutionary politics. Some of these groups are moving beyond lawful dissent, with organizers and online channels increasingly promoting confrontation, disruption, and other unlawful actions against federal authorities.
Two leading anti-ICE groups are Centro Community Service Organization (Centro CSO) and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). Both have been subjected to federal scrutiny, including raids by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Working variously through local chapters and affiliate networks, both groups have pushed militancy into protests that were once nonviolent.
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Even organizations in the progressive mainstream, including the Sunrise Movement and 50501, have become entangled in this ecosystem through coalition alignment and tactical approaches that involve acknowledged legal violations or heightened legal exposure.
What began as criticism of federal immigration policy is now tied up with illegal, targeted agitation campaigns. Anti-ICE Democrats and centrists need to take responsibility for policing their movements, or they risk being seen as willing participants in escalating radicalism.
Much of this radical momentum is channeled through FRSO, which plays a central role in “big tent” coalitions. These coalitions often coalesce around popular causes, such as opposition to President Donald Trump, and offer logistical infrastructure for protests, ranging from social media promotion to on-the-ground leadership, along with established networks of allies prepared to mobilize in the streets on a moment’s notice.
FRSO chapters are listed as a member and steering committee member, respectively, of the People’s Action Coalition Against Trump in Minnesota and the Coalition Against the Trump Agenda in Chicago.
While mainstream progressives are often attracted to these groups, FRSO does not necessarily consider the normal Left its allies. Mira Altobell-Resendez, an organizer with the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) and FRSO member, made that clear on a podcast earlier this month: “All of our movements that have been active here [in Minneapolis] have an enemy with Jacob Frey and with Tim Walz.”
In the same podcast interview, Altobell-Resendez mocked what she described as Governor Tim Walz’s threat to deploy the National Guard to “keep down riots,” arguing that politicians use the word “riots” to describe “people who are rightfully expressing their anger at this system.”
Despite criticizing some elected Democrats, Altobell-Resendez has collaborated publicly with others, including at a protest with Representative Ilhan Omar. This demonstrates how easily FRSO affiliates move between mainstream Democratic and radical activist spaces.
But Altobell-Resendez is a committed radical and has supported illegal actions. On a recent FRSO webinar, she stated, “Just because, like, something is illegal doesn’t mean that we won’t do it,” before adding a caveat about not wanting “to put us in hot water.”
She is just one cog in a broader network that includes more mainstream organizations, such as Black Lives Matter and the anti-Trump organization 50501—both of whose Minnesota chapters are part of a coalition with FRSO Twin Cities—and the eco-activist Sunrise Movement.
Sunrise partnered with Altobell-Resendez’s organization, MIRAC, to target hotels hosting ICE agents, banging pots and pans and pressing car horns in a “wake-up” operation. Leaders within the Sunrise Movement have openly acknowledgedtheir awareness that these actions can violate the law.
Some of the most fervent—and sometimes violent—anti-ICE activity has happened in California.
One of the leading anti-ICE organizers in the region is Centro CSO. The group emerged in the 1990s by reviving and repurposing the historic CSO name associated with its predecessor, the “Community Service Organization,” which trained Cesar Chavez.
Carlos Montes has led Centro CSO since the 1990s. During this period, he “self-recruited” into the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). He reportedly believed a revolutionary organization such as FRSO would better aid him in the “fight for Chicano liberation and socialism.” He is not the only Centro CSO member also to be in FRSO.
Centro CSO is alsolisted as a “supporting organization” for the national Legalization For All network, a large coalition of activists and groups advocating for the legalization of all illegal immigrants.
Leaders of Centro CSO are clear about the tactics they endorse. At a major conference in Chicago this past fall, one member described confronting ICE vehicles in Los Angeles.
“You should have seen how f*cking scared they were when a couple dozen Chicanos surrounded their unmarked black tinted truck,” Gabriel Quiroz Jr., a Centro CSO member, said. He mentioned that a number of WayMo cars caught fire “by accident,” prompting laughter from the audience.
On a separate movement call late last month, FRSO member, Legalization for All signatory, and Centro CSO leader Carlos Montes highlighted a “spontaneous upsurge of thousands of young people” that “took over the streets” and occupied freeways in Los Angeles for a day in February 2025 to protest the Trump administration. He called the effort a “community self-defense coalition.” According to Montes, these actions have inspired “a whole new generation of young activists” to join Centro CSO.
On that same call, Marisol Marquez—a member of FRSO, Centro CSO, and Legalization for All—noted that the Legalization for All network trained activists in other cities on “barrio walks,” “rapid response networks,” and coordinated responses to ICE activity during attempted raids.
Centro CSO’s tactics and ideas are spreading into the mainstream anti-ICE movement, too. Ron Gochez, a leading academic activist who has been involved in ICE watch activities, publicly thanked the group for leading a local protest. Centro CSO also hosted the Emergency Southwest Summit Against Deportations, which was attended by more than 150 activists and featured workshops on “topics like how to set up rapid response systems and barrio organizing, fighting deportations, how to fight for and win sanctuary cities and schools, and how to build coalitions to fight back.”
FRSO and Centro CSO have faced federal scrutiny in recent years. Last summer, the FBI seized electronics from a Centro CSO member and raided another’s home. That second member was arrested and charged, though the Department of Justice later dropped the charges.
Federal focus on these groups is not restricted to the Trump administration. During President Barack Obama’s first term, Montes and other FRSO leaders faced raids of their own. The Department of Justice also investigated the organization for material support of terrorism; it remains unclear why the DOJ did not pursue charges.
Popular animus toward ICE has created an opening for the FRSO and Centro CSO. These groups’ goal is not merely reform. The goal, as FRSO member Chrisley Carpio put it, is to “lead ever larger numbers of people into confrontations with the enemy.”
In spite of this radicalism, groups like FRSO and Centro CSO are increasingly welcomed into the anti-ICE tent. Progressives can police their movements to drive out such radicals—or risk giving in to their most dangerous ideas.
Top Photo: A demonstration organized by the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)