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Fifth Column

'Anti-ICE 'digital Minutemen' use military-grade surveillance tactics [SALUTE] against feds

2026-02-06

Really long — article continues at the link.

[FoxNews] Fox News Digital uncovers a shadow network of anti-ICE scouts tracking law enforcement across 13 databases in a surveillance operation a retired Green Beret warns is 'dangerous'

Early last week, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the bureau is investigating the use of the encrypted Signal messaging platform by "ICE Watch" activists to track and block federal immigration enforcement.

Just days later, Jill Garvey, co-founder of a group called "States at the Core," logged into a Zoom webinar to train a new crop of "rapid responders" on a military-grade intelligence gathering method called "SALUTE." An acronym for Size, Activity, Location, Uniform, Time, Equipment, SALUTE is a mnemonic device that typically instructs soldiers how to systematically track details about enemies. Garvey framed the work as operational surveillance against agents she had called "mercenaries" in an interview days earlier.

"We are all ICE Watch!" declared Garvey, whose group is funded by the Hopewell Fund, a dark-money organization aligned with the Democratic Party. She added a boast that she's taught 40,000 "rapid responders" this past year.

Garvey is just one of hundreds of anti-government operatives training agitators to interfere with federal law enforcement. Last Saturday, Manola De Los Santos, co-founder of the People’s Forum – a Marxist-Leninist organization funded by a China-based tech tycoon, Neville Roy Singham, with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party – hosted an all-day "People’s Assembly for ICE Out of NY!" at the group’s headquarters on W. 37th Street.

"Adopt a corner!" leaders urged, instructing attendees to conduct surveillance tactics at fixed locations.

That same day, at about 4 p.m. ET, a user on one of 37 Signal chats operated by the "Seattle Area Rapid Response" network shared a copy of the "Mini-Manual Of The Urban Guerrilla," a 67-page Marxist manifesto outlining the use of "mobile units," "surprise," "knowledge of the terrain," "occupation," "mobility and speed," a "clandestine press," "popular support" and "street tactics," such as "constructing barricades," "throwing bottles" and ultimately using lethal weapons, to wage a "revolutionary armed struggle" against the United States.

The user directed fellow "rapid responders" to page 35 for "security level questions." There, the manual advised recording a "daily information service" on "what the enemy appears to be doing, where the police net is operating and what points are being watched."

A Fox News Digital investigation reveals these groups are part of a nationwide web of at least 200 anti-ICE organizations that are building a civilian intelligence-gathering and "rapid response" system that trains, mobilizes and activates civilians to act as on-the-ground scouts, using the SALUTE method to collect data on federal authorities they cast as the "enemy," raising serious national security concerns.

In intelligence circles, they would be called "collectors" in the craft of "human intelligence, or "HUMINT."

Fox News Digital has established that these national operations feed data about the movements of law enforcement and immigration authorities into at least 13 sophisticated databases, storing highly sensitive information, including license plate numbers, timestamps, geolocation data, uniform details, photographs, behavior patterns and, in at least one case, the names, email addresses and phone numbers of federal authorities. The network operates through at least 18 hubs nationwide in largely Democratic states and cities, coordinating traffic, verification and reporting.

"This is mind-blowing. We have an entire nation of collectors against our country’s law enforcement. It’s extremely dangerous," said retired U.S. Army Green Beret Eric Schwalm, who first learned the SALUTE framework as a newly enlisted Army private, later applying it during patrols in Iraq as he fought an insurgency and then in Afghanistan as he trained Northern Alliance fighters to defeat the Taliban government.

After reviewing the civilian training, operations and databases uncovered by Fox News Digital, he said, "If Iraqi resistance ran this level of operation against us, we couldn’t have stayed past 2007. They didn’t even need to shoot at us. Protests like this would have created a narrative nightmare."

Indeed, these stakeouts have not only become deadly, with the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but they have led to many confrontations and most often put federal authorities on the losing end of a narrative war. On Tuesday, a group of "rapid responders" in "Minnesota Ice Watch" tailed ICE agents so closely with their vehicles that agents ordered them — at gunpoint — to stop their cars, before handcuffing and detaining them.

At a recent anti-ICE training webinar, Gabe Gonzalez, a co-founder of "Protect Rogers Park," a neighborhood anti-ICE group in north Chicago that pioneered the "rapid response" alerts, coaxed the webinar's attendees to take risks, complimenting them as "courageous." His group includes SALUTE in its "SOP," or standing operating procedures, to "protect targeted locations," like churches and food pantries, and organize "Remote Responders" stationed at "cafes and shops," "near windows of major throughways" and other "sensitive areas."

Raising particular national security concerns, the network includes foot soldiers and leaders of the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, two professional protest organizations in the Singham network that openly support the People’s Republic of China as an ideal state and declare they seek to dismantle the "hyper-imperialism" of the "American empire" from inside the "belly of the beast." The organizations didn’t return requests for comment.

Several congressional committees are investigating Singham’s network, which now includes "ICE Out of New York." That group tells donors online: "Yes, your donation is tax-deductible. We are collecting donations through The People’s Forum which is a 501(c)3 not for profit organization. . . ." As part of its efforts, its leaders created a slick "Migra Whistle Instructional Zine," with the SALUTE method detailed under the header: "SPREAD INFORMATION, NOT PANIC."

"FORM A CROWD. STAY LOUD," the flyer instructed its scouts.

In upstate New York, Rafael Concepcion, a former assistant teaching professor of photography at Syracuse University, told Fox News Digital he plans to launch "a score" of new ICE tracking databases built from a mapping platform he published last year, called "DEICER" for "Diversity Equity Inclusion Community Engagement Reporter."

Concepcion said he wanted to build a "network of digital minutemen," the elite hand-picked rapid-deployment force who were part of the New England colonial militia, ready at a "minute’s notice" to scout British Army locations during the American Revolution, often times before skirmishes broke out.

In today’s scenario, U.S. federal authorities are the target. Concepcion said "the use of the SALUTE method" is to differentiate between local police and federal immigration officers.

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