When the FBI Comes Knocking: How All Community Organizations Can Prepare and Respond

By Vivian Lee Adkins, Anti-Hate Program Manager

On June 11, 2026, over a hundred federal agents raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a nonpartisan organization that has spent nearly two decades registering voters and building civic power in communities across the state.

For organizations like ours and the partners we work alongside every day, this raid is not a surprise. It is the latest move in a sustained, coordinated effort to intimidate the civil society organizations that protect democratic participation and community safety — a pattern Asian Americans Advancing Justice — AAJC has been tracking for more than a year. This post explains what happened, why it matters, and, most importantly, what community organizations can do to prepare and respond.

What Happened in Ohio

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is a grassroots organization founded in 2007 that works on voting rights, labor rights, racial justice, and community power across Ohio. According to the Ohio Capital Journal, the collaborative focuses its efforts on communities of color and working-class people, and it helped register nearly 160,000 Ohio voters ahead of the 2024 election. On June 11, 2026 federal agents searched the group’s Cleveland office, questioned staff and people affiliated with the organization across the state, and seized documents, laptops, phones, and other devices. Board member Prentiss Haney estimated that more than 125 agents were involved and described the action as a coordinated attempt to intimidate people working to expand ballot access. As Haney told the Guardian, the raid was “a full-on coordinated assault weaponizing the Justice Department and DHS against people who are fighting for working-class voters and Black voters” to ensure they have access to the ballot.

The Justice Department has declined to explain the basis for the search, and the search warrant affidavit has not been made public. Representative Shontel Brown called the searches “an unprecedented attack on democracy” and said they appeared to be “part of a systematic effort by Trump and Kash Patel’s FBI to attack our elections and perpetuate more myths of voter fraud.” Brown said her office contacted the FBI for answers.

This search does not stand alone. It follows a January 2026 FBI search of a Fulton County, Georgia, elections warehouse in which agents seized approximately 700 boxes of 2020 election materials. Those materials had already been counted, certified, and repeatedly reaffirmed through reviews and a hand audit confirming Georgia’s election results. The administration has also sought voter registration data from states and pursued litigation against states that declined to provide it. It also comes amid broader federal inquiries into alleged voter fraud and noncitizen voting in multiple states, despite longstanding findings from government officials and election experts that voter fraudis virtually nonexistent.

The Environment Nonprofits Are Operating In Right Now

The FBI search of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative did not happen in a vacuum. It is the latest action in an 18-month coordinated campaign between the Trump administration and the 119th Congress to defund, discredit, and dismantle the civil society organizations that protect democratic participation and community safety.

As soon as President Trump took office in January 2025, he issued Executive Order 14173 directing agencies to terminate “equity-related” grants and requiring every federal grantee to certify they do not operate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. In May 2025, DOJ formalized that threat through its Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, explicitly targeting grantees accused of operating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. Congress followed suit: the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled “How Leftist Nonprofit Networks Exploit Federal Tax Dollars to Advance a Radical Agenda.” The House Homeland Security Committee launched a probe into more than 200 nonprofits serving immigrant communities and held a hearing titled “An Inside Job: How NGOs Facilitated the Biden Border Crisis.” These were not independent acts of oversight. They were a coordinated attack using the machinery of Congress to legitimize the administration’s campaign to starve civil society of resources and public trust.

In September of 2025, the Trump Administration issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum that signaled a troubling shift toward politicized domestic terrorism enforcement that could enable agencies to target civil society organizations, advocacy networks, protesters, immigrant communities, and other groups based on ideology or protected activity rather than credible evidence of violence.16 The pressure escalated through 2026. The DOJ pursued a campaign against the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has fought violent white supremacy for 55 years, including a criminal indictment that even whistleblowers say was rushed over internal objections. The House Judiciary Committee held three separate hearings targeting SPLC in a single congressional session. Within days of the indictment, major financial institutions restricted charitable giving to SPLC despite no judicial finding of wrongdoing, raising concerns about the chilling effect on nonprofits. In May 2026, the White House directed agencies to compile all federal spending data for 49 named civil rights and advocacy organizations, including the ACLU, National Urban League, and U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

This targeting has consequences beyond the organizations themselves. Civil society organizations already face threats from extremist actors ranging from online and offline abuse to doxxing and physical intimidation, and the Trump Administration validates violent nationalist rhetoric that stokes violence against networks of nonprofit workers, canvassers, and organizers serving diverse communities.

What Community Organizations Can Do To Prepare

The most important step is to connect with legal counsel before any contact from federal authorities occurs, so staff, board members, and volunteers know whom to call and what their rights are in the moment. These resources can help organizations prepare:

1. Lowell and Associates, Know Your Rights: What Happens if Law Enforcement Requests or Compels Election-Related Information, Records, or Equipment from Your or Your Organization?

2. ACLU, Recording and Documenting Police and Federal Agents

3. ACLU, Encountering Law Enforcement and Military Troops

4. ACLU, Federal Agents at the Polls

5. ACLU, Resisting Voter Intimidation Efforts: Voting Rights

6. Leadership Conference, Toolkit: Digital Security Best Practices

7. Democracy Security Project, Resource Library

8. Nonprofits Together unites civil society organizations in the face of unlawful threats. Email them for support and a referral to legal counsel

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative and the #HandsOffOhio campaign are also asking organizations around the country to stand with them. Advancing Justice — AAJC has signed on to their statement. Showing up together is part of how we protect the freedom to vote and the organizations that make civic participation possible.

Protect Democracy highlighted their Nonprofit Toolkit, which includes a series of resources that cover guidance on congressional investigations, subpoenas, search warrants, demands to disclose sensitive data, concerns regarding asset freezes and forfeiture, IRS investigations, and Operational Security for Coalitions.

Holding the Line Together

The prosecution of SPLC, the search of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, and the dismantling of federal hate crime prevention infrastructure are not isolated events. They reflect, as Advancing Justice — AAJC stated to the House Judiciary Committee, a pattern that “weakens the very civic and democratic infrastructure communities rely upon to prevent, report, and respond to hate, protect public safety, defend constitutional freedoms, and preserve an independent civil society capable of holding those in power accountable.”

Civil rights organizations help bridge gaps in community safety, support victims, and defend democratic participation. Weakening those organizations makes vulnerable communities less safe. But as the Ohio Organizing Collaborative said after the search, it “will not be deterred from carrying out its vital mission.” Neither will we. Advancing Justice — AAJC will continue tracking these developments, sharing resources as they become available, and standing with partners across the civil rights community.