COPAL’s Legal Observers Monitor ICE Activity in Real Time (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Continue recording. Focus on the camera.

[00:00:03] Speaker 2: I spent the day with a group of people who monitor the movements of federal immigration agents in real time.

[00:00:10] Speaker 1: Thousands of tips come in. It can be a hundred in a day or more.

[00:00:14] Speaker 2: They're called legal observers under the immigrant advocacy group, COPAL. They're part of a network of 5,000 people who respond to tips that federal immigration enforcement is around.

[00:00:26] Speaker 1: We heard reports of federal enforcement here.

[00:00:28] Speaker 2: They say they're trained to observe, document, use their whistles and their voices to demand answers. They train other observers to not touch any agents and stay eight feet away.

[00:00:40] Speaker 1: Our observers are trained to walk in and say, I need to see a signed judicial warrant. Why are you here? What are you doing here? And all of that creates a legal record as well.

[00:00:49] Speaker 3: Even videos of documenting things can really help people because sometimes people don't know their family is being taken away.

[00:00:56] Speaker 2: They say they've seen three times as many people registering to be an observer since Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent. What types of people sign up to be observers?

[00:01:07] Speaker 1: People that look a lot like Renee Good. We have a lot of moms. We have a lot of retirees.

[00:01:14] Speaker 2: But a lot of critics say that they're getting in the way of government operations.

[00:01:18] Speaker 1: We have a 100 percent no obstruction protocol as observers. We want to document this just like any other law enforcement activity.