You can now report ICE misconduct directly to the city of Phoenix

The city of Phoenix on Tuesday launched an online portal to report civil rights violations committed by federal agents. 

The website is the city’s latest response to growing concern over President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement actions. Earlier this year, the Phoenix City Council adopted the Community Transparency Initiative, a policy that bars federal agents from using city property to stage immigration raids. 

Part of that policy included establishing a website to inform residents about their rights and give them an opportunity to report federal actions that may have been unlawful.  

The Federal Enforcement Reporting Portal is available in multiple languages, including Spanish, and it allows members of the public to submit photographic and video evidence. The portal’s landing page notes that federal agents have “broad authority to enforce federal laws,” but adds that even that doesn’t empower them to undertake unlawful actions like using excessive force, conducting unlawful searches or arrests, interfering with voting or making wrongful detentions. 

A majority of Americans, as much as 60%, disagree with the way federal officials are conducting immigration enforcement and believe they have gone too far, according to a January survey conducted shortly after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota.

The city’s website isn’t the only one of its kind in Arizona, as elected officials seek to establish some degree of oversight over federal agents in a time when public trust in the federal government’s approach to immigration enforcement is plummeting. Following weeks of public protests over Pretti and Good’s deaths and ICE activity in the Valley, Gov. Katie Hobbs unveiled a Know Your Rights website. And the state attorney general’s website also hosts a reporting form for people to submit complaints about federal misconduct. 

It’s unclear what local officials can do to hold federal agents accountable, but that hasn’t stopped local leaders from turning to the public to document violations in the event a legal defense must be mounted in the future. That’s increasingly a concern in the face of the federal government’s unwillingness to cooperate with state-level investigations. Shortly after an ICE agent fatally shot Good in Minnesota, the Federal Bureau of Investigation shut Minnesota officials out of the investigation and refused to share evidence. 

Vice President J.D. Vance claimed the agent had absolute immunity, a legal theory that stems from the Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution, which posits that federal officers are shielded from state prosecutions. Minnesota later took the federal government to court over its unwillingness to share information on the killings of Pretti and Good and the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan immigrant, in what has been widely regarded as a potential test of that legal theory.