Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the fringe anti-Zionist group with a history of supporting Palestinian terrorism and peddling propaganda demonizing Israel, joined forces with an Abolish ICE group to pressure senators to strip funding from ICE and Border Patrol.
The partnership between JVP Action, the anti-Israel group’s political arm, and Detention Watch Network—both funded by George Soros—helps activists lobby senators. After filling out a form with their contact information, supporters are connected by phone to senators’ offices and are given scripts that urge the lawmakers to vote against appropriations for ICE and Border Patrol. The effort has already sent nearly 38,000 letters to representatives and fostered collaborations with more than 1,000 other organizations, according to JVP and Detention Watch.
“Detention Watch Network (DWN) and JVP Action are partnering to urge you to tell your Senators to vote NO on funding for ICE and [Customs and Border Protection],” the form reads. They promoted their efforts on a coauthored Instagram post on Wednesday that prominently displayed both of their logos.
The Senate failed to advance the legislative package, which included funding for a host of other departments and agencies, Thursday afternoon. A partial government shutdown will likely begin Saturday, even if a proposed resolution were to pass the Senate—but ICE, thanks to funding through President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will be able to continue functioning.
Detention Watch and JVP Action specifically targeted eight Senate Democrats—Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Patty Murray (Wash.), John Fetterman (Pa.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), and Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.). All of them voted against the package, though most had already signaled that they would vote against it even before the groups announced their partnership.
JVP Action’s decision to partner with Detention Watch underscores radical left-wing groups’ shift to center on the anti-ICE movement. For instance, Sunrise Movement, which was founded to fight climate change, has directed its local chapters to fight the Trump administration and advocates to “Abolish ICE.” Its Twin Cities chapter has held “ACTION TRAINING[s]” on how to “STOP ICE & BUILD A REVOLUTION,” maintains a running list of hotels housing ICE agents, and has spent over a month organizing late-night “noise demonstrations” aimed at making it “impossible” for those hotels to operate.
JVP Action and Detention Watch’s team-up is bound to help the groups build out their networks. The online form supporters fill out notes that by submitting their information, they will be “added to Jewish Voice for Peace’s email list” and agree “to receive periodic text messages.”
Like many of the activist groups pushing chaos in Minnesota, both JVP Action and Detention Watch have received significant funding from the Left’s premier foundation and dark money networks. JVP Action took $150,000 from the Open Society Action Fund in 2021 and $100,000 in 2023 from Tides Advocacy, the lobbying arm of Tides Foundation. Since 2019, Detention Watch has received $700,000 from Soros’s Open Society Foundations, $450,000 from the Tides Network, nearly $1.1 million from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and $1.7 million from the Ford Foundation.
Detention Watch has also redistributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in sub-grants to grassroots organizations across the country for what it describes as “anti-detention work,” according to financial records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
For Detention Watch, cutting immigration enforcement’s funding is only the start. The group aims to “abolish immigration detention in the United States” entirely. It calls detaining illegal aliens “racialized oppression” that’s inseparable from “struggles against racism, xenophobia, discriminatory policing, and mass incarceration.” It also dubbed the South Florida Detention Facility, popularly nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” a “Concentration Camp.”
Even as the Biden administration neglected immigration enforcement, Detention Watch pushed for more leniency. The group met with senior ICE officials in January 2024 as part of a “stakeholders” meeting that ICE said was part of an effort to provide “open lines of communication with stakeholders regarding its mission and operations.” The organization simultaneously pressed the White House to shut down detention centers, coordinated nationwide anti-deportation protests, trained activists in digital organization and “nonviolent direct action,” and even accused then-president Joe Biden of “broken promises.”
And less than a week after Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D.) accused ICE of carrying out a “campaign of organized brutality” while urging residents to resist the agency, Detention Watch launched a webinar series called “MELT ICE.” Its first session, titled “DETENTION 101: ABOLISH ICE,” which was attended by the Free Beacon, encouraged attendees to disrupt the Trump administration’s efforts by joining “rapid response networks,” donate to immigration bond funds, and push to shutter detention centers in their communities.
Minneapolis, meanwhile, has been gripped by anti-ICE protests and riots in recent weeks. Agitators have assaulted law enforcement, refused lawful orders to disperse, and stormed a church. Two agitators, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were shot and killed by federal officials while interfering with immigration enforcement operations.
Wednesday’s training was promoted on Instagram by the People’s Bail Fund of Minnesota—a newly established bail fund and nonprofit that’s helping free anti-ICE agitators and illegal immigrants detained in Minneapolis. The Legal Rights Center—which Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison led for five years and is funded by Minnesota taxpayers—has been supporting the fund through its Know Your Rights MN project, which provides legal resources and information to activists. The project has promoted the fund and encouraged donations, the Free Beacon reported.
Detention Watch and JVP Action did not respond to requests for comment.
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