Earlier this month, Slate's Alex Salmon found himself in a rec center parking lot in outer Los Angeles.

He was about to watch a covert operation unfold in real time, and the sun had not even come up yet.

I think I rolled into the parking lot around 545.

You needed a passcode, right?

Yep, yep. So I rolled in there at 545 in the pitch dark and someone asked me if I was there for

the knitting club.

The so-called knitting club was actually a group called the Harbor Area Peace Patrol. Every morning, they go to local

schools, donut shops, home depots, and look for signs of law enforcement. Then they push messages

out on Instagram, declare a location clear, or not. Sometimes they send out pictures of vehicles

and license plates, they say are suspicious.

Yeah, that's the bulk of it. By 6 o'clock, everyone's basically on the road doing

reconnaissance effectively, driving around, keeping an eye out, and it goes from there.

Doing this work means looking at the world around you differently.

Seeing any public space is a place that could transform into a staging area.

Like this guy Jay, who I spent some time with, he was like, I will never look at a Home Depot

parking lot the same again for as long as I live. And it makes a lot of sense.

What they figured out is basically like,

where are the places where ICE can amass vehicles where it can gather

and then it can strike basically in short range.

Who's actually willing to show up and do this work like at 6 a.m. every day?

In this case, it was like mostly like teachers and nurses.

There were a handful of people who had remote jobs or work from home arrangements.

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