Over the last year, the Trump administration has expanded police power and state violence, while stripping away vital measures for accountability. As federal police terrorize immigrant communities and overtake policing operations in majority Black cities, civil rights lawyers, and National Police Accountability Project (NPAP) lawyers in particular, have stepped in to make the government answer for its actions.
In his ruling which found that the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles was illegal, Federal Judge Breyer warned that Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ran the risk of “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.”
We cannot let that happen. For more than 25 years, NPAP has been suing the police to keep them from hurting people – at all levels of government. In response to the illegal federal overreach and abuse of power, we are training attorneys from around the country how to sue federal agents.
We are equipping community advocates to pressure their local governments to not cooperate with federal law enforcement deployments. In the past ten months, NPAP members have stopped DHS attacks on journalists in Los Angeles, challenged abusive practices in ICE detention centers, and demanded consequences from ICE when they wrongfully arrested and harmed citizens.
There are just some of the work from this past year we share in our 2025 Impact Report. As you read through some of our stories from this past year, our invitation is that you join us as we continue this vital work of defending democracy and the rights of people harmed by police.