A Philadelphia police officer is dead and the city council is teaching people to spy on ICE.
A reporter went undercover at two city-organized activist trainings to find out what they were really teaching.
What he found inside looked less like a protest training and more like a military intelligence operation.
Larry Krasner's Philadelphia Gave Activists a Military Intelligence System to Track ICE
Washington Examiner reporter Christopher Tremoglie didn't walk into the Philadelphia ICE Out trainings with a press badge.
He wore loafers, jeans, a tie-dyed shirt, thick black-framed glasses, and a University of Pennsylvania zip-up fleece – and he signed in as Diego De La Vega, the alter ego of Zorro.
What he documented inside is a manual for building a civilian spy network against federal law enforcement.
The trainers opened with a moment of silence for activist deaths from months earlier – and said nothing about Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, or Jocelyn Nungaray.
One of the lead instructors was a bald older man with a medium-length white beard, square teal earrings, and pink-painted fingernails.
The reporter noted he seemed like the kind of person who might object to being called "he."
He was there to teach the Five Ds of Fighting ICE – document, disseminate, direct, delay, and disrupt.
The entire curriculum traced back to one goal: create a civilian network that could track ICE officers in real time and flood a rapid response system with their movements.
The centerpiece was the S.A.L.U.T.E. tactic, and anyone who has served in the U.S. military will recognize exactly where that acronym came from.
S.A.L.U.T.E. stands for size and strength, actions and activity, location and direction, uniform and clothing, time and date of observation, and equipment and weapons – the exact reporting format soldiers use to call in enemy positions from the field.
Philadelphia's city-organized trainers taught civilians to report on federal law enforcement officers using the same intelligence format the U.S. military uses against enemy forces.
Trainers instructed attendees to photograph and film ICE officers – not the individuals being arrested – and to record horizontally "to capture more of the scene."
Trainers also told attendees that ICE "lies and tries to trick people," casting federal officers as the villains and illegal immigrants as the victims, even though crossing the border illegally is a federal crime.
The training included role-playing exercises, one of which placed attendees at Pat's Steaks responding to a nearby ICE operation.
Tremoglie volunteered first and gave an answer his trainers applauded.
Soros-Backed DA Krasner Built This Resistance Network While Philadelphia Buried a Police Officer
The people running these trainings were not anonymous activists.
Two Philadelphia City Council members organized these sessions – the same legislative body that, led by Kendra Brooks and Rue Landau, passed the ICE Out legislation package in January 2026.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner – the Soros-backed prosecutor who publicly called ICE officers "wannabe Nazis" and vowed to "hunt" them down – championed this operation from the start.
Sheriff Rochelle Bilal called ICE officers "fake, wannabe law enforcement."
And while Krasner, Bilal, and the City Council were running this operation, Philadelphia was burying Billy Schmidt – a Penn State University student – and police officer Shane Seiber, both killed in recent months by violent criminals.
Schmidt and Seiber got no moment of silence, no acknowledgment, no role-playing exercise about what to do when an illegal alien kills a cop – just a room full of people learning to photograph federal agents more effectively.
Minneapolis ran this operation first, and the DOJ responded by charging more than 150 anti-ICE protesters with crimes ranging from obstruction of federal agents to conspiracy to impede federal officers – felonies carrying multi-year prison sentences.
Independent journalist Cam Higby had infiltrated the Signal chat networks those activists were using to track federal agents across Minnesota – what The Blaze documented as "organized obstruction," complete with assigned roles marked by emojis and real-time vehicle-chasing of ICE officers.
Former DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the legal stakes: "Obstructing law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime."
The people who sat in those Philadelphia folding chairs, taking notes on S.A.L.U.T.E. formats and filming angles, would be wise to look up what happened to the activists who ran this same operation in Minnesota before the DOJ does it for them.
Philadelphia's elected officials did not build a protest movement – they built a civilian surveillance apparatus to obstruct the federal officers removing child rapists and gang members from American neighborhoods.
Krasner can keep calling ICE "wannabe Nazis," but the DOJ has already shown what it does to cities that train civilians to run this operation – and it has made clear it is nowhere near finished.
Sources:
- Christopher Tremoglie, "Infiltrating the Left: Going undercover and attending radical, left-wing 'ICE Out' trainings," Washington Examiner, October 2026.
- Staff, "Soros-backed Philadelphia DA vows to 'hunt' down ICE agents: 'We will find you,'" Fox News, January 27, 2026.
- Julio Rosas, "'Organized obstruction': Leaked alleged Signal chats show anti-ICE radicals tracking ICE agents, chasing vehicles," The Blaze, January 2026.
- Staff, "From protest to felony: the lines Minnesota anti-ICE agitators may be crossing," Fox News, 2026.
- Staff, "Child rapists, gang members, domestic abusers helped evading deportation by anti-ICE agitators, DHS says," Fox News, 2026.