00:00...southbound on the 710.
00:02It was just after dawn in Los Angeles earlier this summer,
00:06but Francisco Romero and a dozen other immigration activists
00:09were already gathered near an ICE staging area,
00:12alerting the public on the agents' locations
00:15as they set out in marked and unmarked vehicles.
00:18What we're working to do is create a listing of all the...
00:26We're trying to create a listing of all the types of vehicles
00:29they're using, license plates, license plate numbers,
00:36you know, description of, again, make, model,
00:38directions they're going, right?
00:40Where they came off of, where they're headed.
00:42And we're trying to document it because they do the same to us, right?
00:47At times, Romero, known as Chavo,
00:50and other activists tail the agents' vehicles.
00:52Yeah, so right now we're on our way to Home Depot
00:55here in our neighborhood of Huntington Park.
00:57Yesterday, there were some kidnappers there in plain clothes
01:02that were looking to take some of our people.
01:05But we were able to get volunteers out to kind of stay the whole day
01:09and into the night, sort of monitoring the situation.
01:13As President Donald Trump ramps up his mass deportation efforts,
01:17civilian surveillance of federal immigration agents like this
01:20is becoming increasingly assertive.
01:22In Austin, a technology worker created an app to report sightings of agents.
01:27It has over one million users.
01:29On Long Island, New York, another activist developed a similar app
01:33to report immigration enforcement raids in local areas.
01:36Romero says he's protecting the Latino community.
01:40The Trump administration says he,
01:41and anyone else surveilling ICE agents
01:44in an effort to warn people about their work,
01:46are helping criminals.
01:47Six legal experts told Reuters that surveillance of ICE
01:50is largely protected under the U.S. Constitution,
01:53as long as the activists don't interfere with that work.
01:57Courts have long held that recording law enforcement officers
01:59in public areas is legal.
