Nonprofits Can Turn Outrage Over ICE Into a ‘Big Tent of Decency’
As public opinion shifts on immigration enforcement, civil society has an opportunity to lead a movement rooted in dignity, not ideological purity.
By Eboo Patel
Contributor
January 27, 2026 | Read Time: 5 minutes
Any day now some Trump administration official will likely appear on television and solemnly tell the American public that “it became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
Those who know their history will remember that this twisted statement from a U.S. army major in 1968 played an important role in turning public opinion against the Vietnam War. The reaction for many people was something along the lines of, “I thought we were fighting for freedom, but what you just said sounds insane.”
About as insane as believing that ICE agents in Minneapolis killed Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti because they were terrorists.
This time, the town being destroyed isn’t a Vietnamese village, but an American city. And you don’t need to follow the singular reporting of intrepid journalists like Seymour Hersh to figure out what’s going on. You just need to watch the video of a heavily armed federal agent violently shoving a woman to the ground, and a man with a cell phone trying to help her, and for his good deeds, getting brutally beaten by a masked gang in official uniform, who then shoot him multiple times with guns paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
That man, Alex Pretti (SAY HIS NAME!), lived a life of good deeds. He was a nurse at a Veterans Administration hospital and an American patriot in a salute-the-flag-and-demonstrate-peacefully kind of way. Here he is reading a tribute to a deceased veteran who had been under his care: “Today we remember that freedom is not free. We have to work for it. Nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it.”
The killing of Alex Pretti happened around the same time that the research group More in Common released a report called “Beyond MAGA: A Profile of the Trump Coalition.”
Some fascinating findings:
- 71 percent of Trump voters feel warmly toward legal immigrants. This group wants a diverse country, just under certain rules.
- Only 38 percent of Trump voters are MAGA hardliners. The rest are persuadable.
- 76 percent of Trump voters agree the country should rise above division, redefine common principles, and work together to fix what is broken.
A recent New York Times/Siena poll shows that 71 percent of independents and 19 percent of Republicans think that the tactics used by ICE have gone too far.
‘Open Arms and Positive Vibes’
This is a recipe for change, and the nonprofit world has an important role to play. Simply put, encourage these people off the poisoned path of cruelty and into the big tent of decency with open arms and positive vibes.
No further litmus tests. No purity checklists. You don’t need to chant “Defund the Police” to be in the big tent of decency. You don’t even need to say “Abolish ICE.” You just need to recognize that a heavily armed, poorly trained force of several thousand immigration agents is behaving like an occupying army — detaining 5-year-olds, dragging grandfathers into the bitter cold in their underwear, pepper spraying and even shooting anyone who stands in their way. This is not how immigration agents should conduct themselves within the borders of their own democratic nation.
Gun rights your main passion, but think ICE has gone too far? You’re in!
Got a Fraternal Order of Police bumper sticker on your car, but don’t like ICE agents going into McDonald’s to harass the cooks? Come join the winning side!
Can’t stand wokeness? Will never put a Black Lives Matter sign in your front yard? Don’t want to say your pronouns or do a land acknowledgment? All we’ve got for you is open arms and a cup of hot chocolate.
Come volunteer in our soup kitchen. Come participate in a Habitat for Humanity build. Come join our basketball league at the rec center. This is what it feels like to be part of a civilized society.
It’s worth recalling that this is basically the opposite of what many nonprofits did after the brutal murder of George Floyd in 2020. Back then, organizations like the Sierra Club, which once prided itself on bringing together unlikely allies to support the environment, implemented policies in which staff and volunteers were encouraged to avoid terms like “vibrant” and “hard-working.”
These purity practices by nonprofits drove many people into the Trump coalition. The More in Common report found that 79 percent of Trump voters said that wokeness was a problem, and 21 percent appear to have been principally motivated by their opposition to wokeness.
For some time, important social change leaders have preached the gospel of encouraging change through love rather than shame. Among the most powerful stories in Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy are those of racist prison guards sharing their own experiences of abuse and coming to sympathize with, and advocate for, prisoners.
Feminist leader Loretta Ross has long said that if you want people to give up some of their beliefs — whether racism or hardline anti-immigration tactics — you have to welcome them with support rather than scolding when their views start to change.
There came a time during the Vietnam War when decorated soldiers threw their medals at the U.S. Capitol because they had come to believe that the war was wrong and its tactics inhumane. We may be just a few weeks away from an ICE agent publicly throwing his badge at the White House because he wants off the poisoned path of cruelty and into the big tent of decency.
Nonprofit leaders should be there to welcome him.
