When ICE Shows Up, These Businesses Will Be Ready

Across the U.S., training, resources and hotlines have emerged to help workplaces exercise their rights in the case of an ICE raid.

By: Emily Nonko

Last April, at the James Beard Foundation’s Chef Action Summit, food industry leaders gathered to discuss the political and economic landscape with one concern hanging grimly in the air: undocumented and immigrant workers were increasingly afraid to come into work after ICE raids ramped up at the outset of Trump’s second term. 

But it just so happened the summit took place in Asheville, North Carolina, where activists had already asked, “What would it take to make this the safest state for immigrants in the south?” as Andrew Willis Garcés, senior strategist with the immigrant justice organization Siembra NC, puts it.

One answer: 4th Amendment Workplaces, a framework developed by Siembra NC and launched at the summit to help restaurants and other businesses train up on legally vetted protocols to defend employees against ICE. The idea quickly took hold — there are now over 1,000 4th Amendment Workplaces across North Carolina, with 4th Amendment Workplace resolutions passed in three cities and similar efforts underway across 12 states. 

It’s emerged as perhaps the most powerful workforce training to help businesses prepare for ICE raids, but it is not the only one. Across the country, training, resources and hotlines have been developed for workplaces, alongside an effort to harness the wider labor movement as a force against ICE. 

Though the ICE raids that make the news often take place on the street, workplaces are in fact a frequent target. “We’ve seen ICE this year go into workplaces more than a lot of other kinds of places where people are gathered,” Willis Garcés explains. “With workplaces, there’s usually an open door you can walk through.”

According to the American Immigration Council, ICE publicly reported at least 40 worksite enforcement actions resulting in over 1,100 arrests within the first seven months of the current Trump administration. Businesses employing noncitizen workers — restaurants, car washes, automotive shops, bakeries, nail salons — are typically targeted. ICE has also scaled up large raids at workplaces like meatpacking and manufacturing plants. 

These raids often represent legal violations, which 4th Amendment Workplaces raise awareness around. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” without a warrant based on probable cause — that is, reason to believe that a crime may have been committed.

In North Carolina, volunteers canvas businesses across the state to share what it means to be a 4th Amendment Workplace: identify invalid ICE warrants, secure private employee areas, document unconstitutional actions and defend all workers, no matter their immigration status. Resources include a workplace guide, organizing toolkit, posters signaling opposition to unconstitutional search and seizures, employee handouts and tips for designating private employee areas. 

Workplaces can request dedicated training, in which organizers help business owners and employees develop workplace-specific protocol, and lead them through roleplaying scenarios. “We help you think through … what would you do right after the fact? What would you do to preserve footage, how do you support families left behind, what’s the immediate triage that needs to happen [after a raid]?” explains Willis Garcés.

Scuppernong Books of Greensboro was an early adopter, participating in training, promoting itself as a 4th Amendment Workplace, hiring a lawyer, regularly keeping staff informed of ICE response protocol, even publishing a book on how to resist ICE. Co-owner Steve Mitchell says it is “absolutely essential” for business owners to step up on behalf of employees, especially if the owners are white and legally protected residents: “It’s important for people like us to say that this isn’t right, and we’re going to stand on this side of the issue.”

Even though there hasn’t been a heavy ICE presence in Greensboro, the bookstore’s work with Siembra NC “gives us some sense of confidence,” Mitchell says. “Whether that’s misplaced or not, it at least helps us know what our rights are in that situation.” He adds that using Siembra’s model has made the business feel connected to a broader network of activists.

Willis Garcés describes that model as “plug and play,” easily adaptable outside the state and across a variety of workplaces. Siembra NC recruited small businesses first, with the goal of expansion into higher-targer workplaces like factories and farms.

Today, some North Carolina farmers display giant vinyl banners about their constitutional rights, a riff on Siembra NC’s signage. In Oregon, organizers dubbed themselves “Baddies for the Fourth.” In Minneapolis, the 4th Amendment Workplace was a central demand in a public-pressure campaign around Target. 

There have been other efforts to develop localized training. In New York, Nonviolent Peaceforce trains mostly within the city’s Asian American community, which it has worked with since the pandemic. Last year, ICE raids erupted across the city’s Chinatown.

Nonviolent Peaceforce’s in-person training happens with trusted community partners and focuses on de-escalation and self-regulation tactics, alongside scenario and role-playing. “We came to develop scenarios really at the request of community members who felt that they really needed to know what it was like to be in the moment,” says Roz Lee, head of the organization’s U.S. efforts. She says simple tactics to slow things down — like introducing yourself, asking ICE agents their name, asking for a warrant and taking time to inspect it — can shift a potentially intense and traumatic interaction. 

Other groups have tied the urgency around ICE to larger labor organizing efforts. Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) emerged to help non-unionized labor organize in response to COVID-19. More recently, EWOC developed resources for resisting ICE, which are tied to broader workplace organizing tactics like facilitating conversation among employees, building a committee and planning collective action together. 

“These steps are very universal, whether you work in an office, in a kitchen, at a nonprofit,” says Wes Holing, an EWOC organizer. “If you’re talking about bread-and-butter issues, or you’re talking about a workplace that’s safe from ICE, you’re still ultimately fighting for a place that respects you as a person.” 

This January, EWOC partnered with Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America to hold a No-Work Workshop to train workers on their rights and protections to participate in the Anti-ICE General Strike. It was part of a much larger mobilization among Minneapolis residents and businesses responding to Operation Metro Surge.

The city mobilized far beyond one-off trainings; instead, an entire ecosystem emerged. “The sheer volume, the sheer magnitude of mobilization … it felt like every single person I knew was extremely active,” says Mike Urbanski, who helps lead legal observer training with Monarca. Monarca is a project under the immigrant justice organization Unidos MN, which canvassed businesses in Twin Cities’ immigrant communities. They’d then direct people to Monarca’s ICE hotline as well as its two-hour, in-person training, which focuses on “upstander” legal observation tactics.

Monarca’s trainings were also shared through social media, word of mouth and within community spaces and houses of worship. “We could post a training with 1,000 people in Minneapolis and fill it within four or five days,” Urbanski says, “And most of those people would come, and another 100 people would just show up.” 

The Workers Solidarity Circle also canvassed and shared resources among Twin Cities businesses, channeling that energy into the Minneapolis Worker’s Assembly this February, which brought together over 300 unionized and non-unionized workers across sectors. “It was about building working class power and coordinated strike action, to really push people into action and not wait on managers, bosses or labor officials to save us,” says organizer Aminah Sheikh.

Now that Operation Metrosurge has wound down, organizers have turned their attention to this upcoming May Day: organizing strike committees, holding strike trainings, conducting labor education and committing unions and community organizations to strike on May 1st. Sheikh says there is a growing realization that workers must build political power far beyond their workplace. 

“Listen, in order for us to really stop — abolish — ICE, like people are saying, from the grassroots,” she says, “then we need to do economic disruption.”