An anti-ICE activist organization is advertising paid organizing positions while developing campaigns designed to pressure businesses into cutting ties with federal immigration enforcement. The group’s plans include disrupting hotel reservations, organizing boycotts, and attempting to shut down Home Depot locations across Los Angeles.

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The Grassroots Activist International Association (GAIA) is recruiting workers for its campaigns, including an initiative called ICE Breakers, which targets companies that do business with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

According to the group’s job advertisement, organizers can earn between $23 and $36 per hour, with bonuses available for meeting fundraising goals.

From Natalie Winters on Substack:

The group’s Hilton campaign plan demands a policy banning ICE and related immigration-enforcement agencies from staying at or using Hilton-branded properties.

It proposes recurring protests in Los Angeles, San Diego and Portland, timed to busy business hours. Supporters are also encouraged to make refundable reservations and cancel within the hotel’s policies to disrupt occupancy planning.

…

GAIA’s Home Depot campaign describes a six-month organizing effort intended to:

“shut down every Home Depot in LA for one day”

GAIA’s activities go beyond recruiting paid organizers. The organization has published detailed plans for pressuring businesses that maintain relationships with federal immigration authorities.

The organization also hopes to pressure conferences, universities, unions, and nonprofits into avoiding Hilton venues. Its stated objective is to make maintaining relationships with ICE more financially costly than ending them.

Meanwhile, GAIA’s Home Depot campaign proposes a six-month effort to disrupt the retailer’s operations throughout Los Angeles. The organization wants Home Depot to sever its ties with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security while permitting the National Day Laborer Organizing Network to organize at its stores.

Proposed tactics include boycotts, investor pressure, daily outreach, and coordinated demonstrations.

GAIA identifies Chris Abrahamsen, a former Greenpeace organizer, as its founder. According to his organizational biography, Abrahamsen received training in direct action, strategy, leadership, and grassroots fundraising during nearly five years with Greenpeace. His involvement in the Occupy ICE movement in Portland in 2018 helped shape the organization’s current approach.

The group is also preparing to train additional activists. On October 24–25, GAIA plans to hold a two-day organizing summit in Los Angeles, where participants will practice strategies for pressuring a fictional hotel company over its relationship with a fictional immigration-enforcement agency.

The curriculum includes nonviolent direct action, operational security, protest rights, de-escalation, and interactions with law enforcement.

Although GAIA openly advertises paid organizing positions, the available information does not establish that ordinary protesters are being paid simply to attend demonstrations. The organization also claims its campaigns are funded entirely through canvassing and small donations, though its actual payroll and financial records have not been independently verified.

Nevertheless, the group’s published strategies illustrate how organized activists are attempting to exert financial and operational pressure on private businesses over their relationships with federal immigration authorities.

As the Trump administration continues its immigration enforcement efforts, let’s pray for the safety of federal officers, wisdom for business leaders facing organized pressure campaigns, and the protection of lawful immigration enforcement.

How are you praying for our immigration officers and the businesses caught in these campaigns? Share your prayers and scriptures in the comments.

(Excerpt from Natalie Winters on Substack. Photo Credit: Tony Webster – Abolish ICE – Protest Sign in Minneapolis, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=160014416)