Is it lawful for non-profits to use their tax-exempt status to interfere with the operations of federal law enforcement?
As US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ramped up its efforts to apprehend and deport illegal aliens – especially those with criminal records – left-wing NGOs have escalated their efforts to derail and block ICE from carrying out its duties.
These are not grass-roots endeavors but organized efforts that require funding. Often, it comes in the form of direct taxpayer subsidies: the California Courier has reported on Orange County Congressman Dave Min’s efforts to secure $1.6 million in taxpayer dollars for a left-wing advocacy groups called Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California (AJSOCAL). While the money would ostensibly be for a domestic violence program, budgets are fungible and $1.6 equals 10% of the 501(c)3’s $15 million budget and free up funds for anti-ICE advocacy.
AJSOCAL collaborates with the Rapid Response Network, which is a regional non-profits dedicated to preventing ICE from apprehending illegal immigrants. The Orannge County Rapid Response Network, for example, maintains a hotline for reportign ICE sightings in order to give potential apprehended the opportunity to make themselves scarce.
In a June 13 Instagram post, AJSOCAL urged followers, “If you see ICE, call the Rapid Response Network.”
These Rapid Response Networks use the promise of tax deductibility to solicit donations to find their interference with ICE.
Donations to the Orange County Rapid Response Network are funneled through the blandly-monikered Charitable Ventures of Orange County, which provides “fiscal sponsorship” for OCRRN.
Fiscal sponsorship is an arrangement in which a nonprofit organization (the “fiscal sponsor”) extends its tax-exempt status and administrative infrastructure to support a charitable project or group that does not have its own IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) status. This enables the sponsored project to receive tax-deductible donations and grants, while the sponsor manages the funds and ensures compliance with legal and financial regulations.
The progressive goliath known as the Tides Center pioneered the modern use of fiscal sponsorship as a key strategy for growing and proliferating a networked army of left-wing NGOs.
In this case, Charitable Ventures of Orange County handles all of OCRRN’s administrative, compliance and legal matters so the group’s staff can focus on activism.
With revenues of nearly $24 million and a professional staff of 32 people, Charitable Ventures of Orange County is the fiscal sponsor for a number of left-wing advocacy non-profits besides the OC Rapid Response Network, including Decarcerate OC, People’s Budget OC and Tenants United Santa Ana.
What the OC Rapid Response Network, with the support of Charitable Ventures of Orange County, is using its non-profit status to fund interference with the enforcement of immigration laws by federal agencies.
Is this legal?
Possibly.
A legal advisory prepared last October by Lowenstein Sandler LLP, Make the Road New Jersey, and Morris County Organization for Hispanic Affairs “to educate nonprofits on their rights to protect their immigrant clients,” NGOs should exercise caution when it comes to interfering with federal immigration authorities:
“However, nonprofits and their staff should be aware that if they take affirmative steps to conceal an individual or aid in a person’s escape from immigration authorities, they could be accused of
violating federal laws against “harboring” undocumented individuals,” cautions the advisory.
The Orange County Rapid Response Network and its allied organizations make no bones that express intent of their activities to help illegal aliens escape from ICE.
In a June 11, 2025 white paper entitled “Nonprofits and ICE: Illegality, Compliance, and Exemption,” attorneys with the law form Adler & Colvin opined that participation by NGOs in the anti-ICE movement could, depending on the circumstances, jeopardize their non-profit status.
The paper opines that non-profits are free to exercise their 1st Amendment rights “to organize, promote, and engage” in peaceable protests.
“However, the line is drawn at supporting and participating in illegal activities that are not consistent with, and can endanger, a charity’s 501(c)(3) tax exemption,” the white paper states.
“Various factors affect the level of risk to which an organization is exposed as a result of illegal activity by its directors, officers, employees, agents, volunteers, or members,” the paper continues. “The most significant are the nature and amount of illegal activity and the extent to which the organization’s leadership ratifies, condones, or encourages it.”
As reported here, at the core of OCRRN’s mission has been helping illegal immigrants evade apprehension. This is also true of it’s member organizations. One such, Resilience OC, has been sharing OCRRN’s “Migra Watch” social media alerts sharing real-time intelligence about where ICE agents are operating – with the clear purpose of frustrating the ability of those agents to carry out their legal duties.
This week, OCRRN Program Director Sandra DeAnda this week called on OCTA to prevent ICE agents from boarding buses in search of specific illegal immigrants.
Leftwing non-profits like OCRRN and their more corporate partners like Charitable Ventures of Orange County have operated in this manner for years, comfortable in the knowledge careerists in the IRS and Justice Department could be counted on to turn a indulgently blind eye to their skating the edges of illegality.
The second Trump Administration, however, has been moving with astonishing speed to replace old guard careerists with appointees willing to vigorously pursue the Administration’s priorities. If the recent appointment of former Assemblyman Bill Essayli as US Attorney for the Central District of California is only the most public sign that the era of benign neglect is over.
