how can we protect employees traveling to areas with increased immigration raids?

A reader writes:

Sending in a question I truly never thought I would have to ask: what are some things that my organization, as an employer, can do to help ensure staff safety in areas of increased and contentious ICE action?

We have staff of Hispanic heritage (“present” Hispanic, names clearly of that background if ID or car registration were checked) who are frequently on the road for our organization. This includes many areas where they are an ethnic minority and which have colloquial reputations for profiling (but staff do not report previous issues) — and areas with increased, visible, concerning ICE enforcement. We’re talking large scale “operations” which seem to have very broad goals, many agencies, masked agents.

Staff are often on the road solo, in their personal vehicles. Our staff are authorized to work in the U.S. but we certainly see from media reports that people are not given the chance to even establish their status in these raids.

We spoke today with those potentially impacted by concerns about ramp-ups in the area. In some situations, staff members come from families/communities with many undocumented individuals, where those families may be limited in their safe ability to get involved. I am struggling what we can do to help support safety and very open to suggestions

My thinking so far:

* We have a lot of flexibility on when/where we decide staff will take these trips (we’re talking about attending events with partner orgs, not service provision to a specific population) — so for us, conveying that they can always flag if a trip doesn’t work for them based on their needs (and they don’t need to spell out this issue as the concern!).

* OFFER the opportunity to have another staff member check in with them to ensure they have arrived at destinations for any trips they want (all, some, whatever), and have a plan for what to do if they do not pick up. (For example: call once, call 15 minutes later, call 30 minutes later, then authorized to call their emergency contact to check in.)

* OFFER location-sharing for any trips they’d like with a similar plan — if you’re not at the location you had planned to be at within a certain time frame, begin calling.

* Have an informal leadership plan of what we would do next if there was a situation where we believe the staff member may be in trouble, including a contact for legal counsel and a list of detention centers in the region for inquiries.

How are folks handling this? I want our staff members safe, period, but feel a particular concern when they are going out into the world specifically to do the work of our org!

I checked in with the community organizer in Chicago who offered advice earlier this month on what to do if ICE comes to your workplace. She said:

This person already has a pretty solid safety plan in place! I’d want to emphasize a point I included in my original letter: don’t make risk judgments for people. Give them information and resources, but don’t tell people they can’t take trips to specific places based on their last name, ethnicity, etc.

It might also be good to have contacts within the partner orgs who can handle things locally. If someone needs to be picked up from detention, for example, it’s better to have someone who’s at least somewhat trusted and known to the employee than not. Otherwise, though, I think they already have a really good plan in place.

She also notes, “The main Border Patrol force has left Chicago and is now terrorizing Charlotte, N.C., and a lot of groups doing this work anticipate seeing similar patterns — one or two cities getting very aggressively targeted, while many other locations have much smaller ICE or Border Patrol deployments. So these kind of resources are going to become increasingly important as these agencies spread across the country, unfortunately.”

I checked with another person who works in this field and they offered this:

Personally, I think this employer’s first impulse to make work travel completely voluntary is the best thing they can do. Employees could know all their rights, and employers could have the perfect safety plan, but if law enforcement or ICE disregard someone’s constitutionally-protected rights or attempt to fast-track their deportation without due process — even if they have legal status — the consequences for employees and their families can be absolutely devastating. If that’s not a risk the employees want to take, and the travel isn’t necessary, then making the travel voluntary is probably the best thing employers can do to help mitigate that risk.

Some additional resources that may help:

Know Your Rights Pages:

The post how can we protect employees traveling to areas with increased immigration raids? appeared first on Ask a Manager.