In late 2025 and early 2026, federal immigration enforcement under Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota triggered an immediate, coordinated backlash. Rapid-response hotlines were activated, demonstrators took to the streets, and legal challenges against detention expansions escalated. A federal judge blocked Trump immigration detention expansion in Minnesota, while groups demanded probes into deadly encounters with agents. Parallel condemnations erupted in California, where organizations decried raids in Los Angeles and staged national days of action.
This was the work of an ecosystem of of nonprofits whose most recent annual revenues—for the 35 with available IRS Form 990 data—exceed $425 million. (Unless stipulated otherwise, all annual revenue figures reported below are from the most recent publicly available IRS reports.)
These groups have been sustained by major left-leaning foundations, donor-advised funds, program service fees, and investment income. They treat immigration enforcement not as a standalone policy dispute but as just one phase of their broader activism. Their overlapping participation in anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian campaigns, climate alarmism, and the No Kings anti-Trump protests reveals a multi-issue machine that pivots seamlessly from one cause to the next, all while drawing on a lot of the same deep pockets.
The groups referenced in this report often use left-wing public relations buzzwords such as climate, housing, or economic “justice” to frame programs, platforms, and campaigns as a fight for equality. But in practice, the PR phrases conceal support for left-wing policy advocacy. Phrases such as “climate justice” or “clean energy,” for example, will often turn out to be opposition to the natural gas industry and support for weather dependent wind turbines and solar panels. For simplicity, the PR phrases they use have been repeated here, but this does not imply endorsement of the deceptive messaging.
The main players and their donors
This movement includes some of the largest and best-resourced immigrant advocacy organizations in the country. Reporting $54.2 million for its most recently available annual revenue, CASA (Casa de Maryland) is the largest player researched. Close behind are UnidosUS at $44.7 million, RAICES Texas with $35.6 million, and CHIRLA at $31 million. Rounding out the heavy hitters are Make the Road New York at $23.1 million, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center at $24.8 million, the Asian Law Caucus at $17.9 million, and both the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and National Immigration Law Center at $17.6 million each.
But even smaller-budget entities wield outsized influence through strategic positioning. Minnesota-based COPAL reported just $546,000 in revenue, yet it controls the COPAL Education Fund with $4.1 million, and sponsors the Immigrant Defense Network, a coalition of more than 90 organizations that has trained up to 30,000 “constitutional observers” in anticipation of enforcement actions. The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project brings $5.9 million to the table, focusing on detention defense in the Southwest. National players like the United We Dream Network and its 501(c)(4) arm reported $3.2 million and $8.9 million, respectively.
Funding flows primarily from private donations and major left-wing foundations, supplemented by program service fees for legal work and investment earnings. Many groups operate without standalone EINs—rapid-response networks in Los Angeles and San Diego are hosted by CHIRLA and ACLU affiliates, while the Cosecha Movement functions as an unregistered direct-action network relying on voluntary contributions and fiscal sponsorships.
Intersectionality: activism, donors, and cross-movement ties
Several of these groups participate in all four tracked advocacy categories: anti-ICE opposition, anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian activism, anti-energy climate alarmism, and No Kings protests.
Mijente and its Support Committee lead the pack, as documented in its 2024 Building Power Annual Blog, in #NoTechForICE campaigns, pro-Palestinian solidarity, climate alarmist initiatives, and an explicit partnership in the No Kings coalition. Its funders include the Ford Foundation and the Tides Foundation. The Mijente Support Committee received $600,000 from the Tides Foundation and $300,000 from the Ford Foundation in 2022 alone.
The No Kings coalition—which organizes recurring national days of action against what it describes as authoritarian overreach—lists on its partner page organizations from across this network. The ACLU network, encompassing the Minnesota, Northern California, and Southern California chapters, has been a core participant and has hosted training sessions on constitutional protest rights tied to No Kings mobilizations. The NYCLU’s event page for the October 2025 No Kings Day of Action cites Trump’s “fast-tracked deportations” as a central organizing grievance.
The Indivisible Project served as the primary organizational engine for No Kings protests throughout 2025, coordinating actions in every state while simultaneously running its “Halt the ICE Terror Machine” campaign, with toolkits specifically aimed at Minnesota enforcement. The NoKings.org website identifies Indivisible as a founding coalition partner, and the Trump administration’s actions in Minnesota were a catalyst for what organizers described as a third wave of No Kings protest activity.
Make the Road New York, also on the NoKings.org partner list, previously joined the No Kings June 2025 national day of action, participating alongside climate justice organizations in what Inside Climate News described as the largest mass mobilization in the U.S. since the pandemic. UnidosUS, which has an active clean energy and climate program, participated in No Kings organizing, as documented in its press release.
The Detention Watch Network’s “Communities Not Cages” campaign, which rallied 100 organizations in 2025, framed detention abolition explicitly within the same constitutional-rights language as No Kings.
The Indivisible Project occupies a strategic node. With $12.5 million in reported 2023 revenue, it organized No Kings demonstrations in every state and ran the “Halt the ICE Terror Machine” campaign, with toolkits tailored to Minnesota enforcement. Its funders include the Open Society Foundations (more than $7.6 million since 2017), the Tides Foundation, and Democracy Alliance members such as Reid Hoffman. The group’s collaboration with MoveOn.org and Working Families Power further embeds it in the broader left-of-center infrastructure.
CASA (Casa de Maryland): In November 2023, CASA Executive Director Gustavo Torres issued a public statement declaring that CASA “stands in resolute and steadfast solidarity with the people of Palestine in their relentless fight for freedom,” calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and describing Israel’s conduct as “systematic ethnic cleansing.” The statement—which explicitly drew parallels between Palestinian liberation and the struggles of CASA’s immigrant membership—triggered a public rebuke from Montgomery County Councilmember Andrew Friedson and demands to defund the group. CASA subsequently deleted the statement, but the full text was preserved by local media.
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR): The CCR maintains a dedicated Palestinian Solidarity practice area on its website, with content going back decades. In October 2023, following the Hamas attacks on Israel, CCR issued a statement refusing to condemn Hamas, characterizing the violence as “Palestinian armed resistance” against “Israeli colonial domination”—a stance documented in detail by both InfluenceWatch and NGO Monitor. In November 2023, CCR filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Palestinian families and NGOs seeking to halt U.S. military aid to Israel, arguing U.S. support constituted complicity in genocide. CCR also supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has represented the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights in litigation.
Mijente: Mijente’s 2024 Building Power Annual Blog explicitly documents the NGO’s participation in Palestinian solidarity actions and BDS-aligned campaigns as part of its multi-issue political program, alongside climate justice and immigration work.
CAIR-Minnesota: CAIR-MN’s Palestinian solidarity engagement is institutional and ongoing. The group co-signed opposition letters during Operation Metro Surge and issued calls for a local investigation of ICE-involved shootings in Minnesota.
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC): AFSC—which appears in this network through its Minnesota anti-ICE work—maintains a dedicated Gaza advocacy program on its website. AFSC has called for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel, signed a statement asserting that genocide is taking place in Gaza, and operates a “U.S. Palestine Activism” program with monthly organizing newsletters.
The broader immigration–Palestine nexus: The BDS movement, which leads the campaign to boycott Israeli goods, promote institutional divestment from, and encourage government sanctions against Israel, explicitly frames anti-ICE activism and Palestinian solidarity as a unified struggle. The BDS Movement notes that “the struggles of the US immigrant rights movement and of Palestinians have historically been connected” and cites Israeli military training of U.S. ICE and law enforcement as a concrete link. Several organizations investigated—including Mijente, CAIR, and CCR—have embraced similar framing in their own public communications.
UnidosUS: UnidosUS maintains a left-wing climate program. A December 2024 report titled “Unleashing the Promise of the Clean Energy Economy for Latino Workers and Communities” frames climate action as an economic justice imperative, arguing that Hispanic communities “face disproportionate harm” from climate change and have been “underrepresented in the clean energy sector.”
UnidosUS hosted a panel on clean energy workforce development at its 2024 Annual Conference in Las Vegas, further embedding climate as a programmatic pillar. Its 2024 State of the Union response called for federal investment in “clean energy” careers for Latino workers.
CHIRLA: CHIRLA’s Climate Justice Department, through community education, research, policy and organizing is “dedicated to empowering immigrants on the frontlines of the climate crisis to foster an alternative agenda for environmental, social and economic justice.” The group is committed to advancing the “intersection of climate and immigration justice.” The program is consistent with CHIRLA’s broader social and economic justice mission.
Make the Road New York: Make the Road New York asserts that the U.S. operates “deeply entrenched systems of oppression” that “drains resources, health, and good jobs” from their communities and that “many immigrant families live in constant fear of separation.”
Make the Road New York also sits on the steering committee of NY Renews, a 380-organization coalition that campaigns to “cap greenhouse gas emissions from corporate polluters and redirect revenue into clean energy jobs and climate investments in low-income communities of color” and immigrant-focused environmental health work.
The organization also participated in the Make Billionaires Pay march in September 2025—a climate-justice mobilization organized on the eve of New York Climate Week that explicitly linked immigration enforcement, climate action, and anti-Trump politics.
COPAL and the COPAL Education Fund: Both entities promote environmental justice programming. COPAL’s civic advocacy in Minnesota includes environmental justice as a pillar alongside immigration and labor rights work, consistent with the organization’s broader community organizing profile.
Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ICIJ): The coalition’s expansion into climate and environmental justice is documented through its participation in the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition, which combines opposition to ICE detention at Adelanto with environmental concerns about the facility’s impact on the surrounding Inland Empire community. ICIJ links immigration detention directly to environmental justice, asserting there is, “toxic chemical exposure, contaminated water, and dangerous air quality” at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center while arguing that the facility’s pollution “harms not just detainees but the surrounding majority-Black and Latino community of Adelanto.”
The group maintains that Adelanto has been deliberately targeted by corporations “exploiting lenient local land-use policies.”
The September 2025 Make Billionaires Pay march—which drew thousands into Manhattan’s streets on the eve of the UN General Assembly Climate Week—provides an illustration of how the network operationally fuses these issue streams. Inside Climate News reported that the action “unite[d] climate activists, migrant rights defenders and women’s rights advocates.” The event was attended by organizations across all four of the protest issue categories. The march’s promotional materials linked Trump’s immigration crackdown, climate inaction, and the economic power of billionaires into a single, unified target.
Minnesota illustrates network density at its peak. Nine Minnesota-centered groups—ACLU-Minnesota, COPAL, the COPAL Education Fund, CAIR-Minnesota, the Immigrant Defense Network, the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, ISAIAH, the Minnesota Freedom Fund, and MIRAC—coordinate through joint press releases, shared hotlines, and overlapping leadership.
CAIR-Minnesota adds a distinct intersection, co-signing opposition letters and issuing calls for investigation of ICE-involved shootings while framing issues through Palestinian solidarity. The ACLU chapters in Minnesota, Northern California, and Southern California all participate in No Kings as part of a wider constitutional-rights framing.
California actions follow the same pattern. The Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice expanded its portfolio to include environmental justice via the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition. NorCal Resist grew in response to local raids, while the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and partners condemned Los Angeles operations.
The Detention Watch Network rallied 100 organizations behind “Communities Not Cages,” and National Nurses United staged a national day of action.
Political alignment and tactical coordination
These groups operate within a left-of-center advocacy ecosystem that views federal immigration enforcement as inherently illegitimate under the current administration. Indivisible’s congressional call-ins to defund ICE and United We Dream’s demand for a “Melt ICE Act” exemplify the framing. Immigration actions become catalysts: Minnesota’s enforcement crackdown helped trigger broader No Kings protest cycles nationwide.
Structural features amplify this alignment. 501(c)(3)/501(c)(4) pairings—used by Indivisible, United We Dream, and Mijente, among others—allow tax-deductible charitable work alongside ideological advocacy. Informal coalitions such as ICE Out Minnesota (without its own EIN) multiply reach while evading standalone scrutiny.
The result is a rapid-response machine that turns localized enforcement into national constitutional resistance. The fusion of these issues was on public display at the September 2025 Make Billionaires Pay climate march in Manhattan, where immigration, climate justice, and anti-Trump politics were explicitly presented as a single unified campaign by organizational partners drawn from across our research.
Conclusion
A network of organizations with combined revenues topping $425 million in recent 990 filings, bankrolled by the Ford Foundation, Tides Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and allied donor-advised funds, has built an infrastructure capable of challenging federal policy at every level—from Minnesota courtrooms and street protests to California raids and nationwide No Kings demonstrations.
Examples of the cross-issue alignment include CASA’s declaration of solidarity with Palestinian liberation; CCR litigating ICE detention and filing a genocide lawsuit against U.S. arms transfers to Israel; Mijente’s annual report that names all four issue columns; UnidosUS’s clean energy program framing climate action as immigrant justice by another name, and the BDS Movement declaring that anti-ICE activism and Palestinian solidarity are a single shared struggle.
Immigration enforcement is merely one front in a multi-issue left wing campaign infrastructure.
