The current federal administration's unlawful anti-immigration policies and actions are creating a culture of fear in our communities. As cultural heritage workers, we can and should counter the harmful narratives being used to justify these policies by crafting inclusive, on-mission programming and resources, dispense critical information to our staff members and community, and actively work to create spaces that are safe for everyone.
We cultural heritage workers are the stewards of our communities’ heritage and history, with the collected experience of humanity at our fingertips. That privilege gives us and our institutions the responsibility to advocate with authority for our communities and honor their trust in us. We are foremost community resources, uniquely positioned to:
Celebrate the wonders of cultural diversity
Teach from and preserve factual history and collective memory
Remind the world of the terrible consequences of othering—and of standing silently by while communities are persecuted
Bring people together in community through our programming
Work toward a future in which everyone can experience our shared heritage in safety
Mass immigration operations affect everyone, either directly or indirectly: our staff, volunteers, families, friends, neighbors, the cultural communities we celebrate and serve, and our workplaces will be increasingly affected emotionally and materially.
Unjust and unlawful behavior by those in power stops only when enough people take up the burden of stopping it. That burden is easier to bear when we stand together in coalition, especially those of us in a position to speak loudly enough to be heard.
This page is an introduction to specific actions you can take. These have been compiled from the work and wisdom of many cultural heritage professionals, activists, civil rights workers, lawyers, and community efforts.
This is a living document! Expect improvements and, as our national situation evolves, changes to both information and suggested actions.
Latest update: February 20, 2026
Please note that CHAACo does not provide legal advice. Laws and rights vary from state to state. For specific advice relevant to you and your situation, consult a lawyer.
Be sure to check out our annotated resources page for know-your-rights information, guidance from immigration law and other law associations, safety plans, signage, and more for specific audiences such as libraries, museums, nonprofits, employers, workers, and immigrants.
If you want to suggest updates or corrections to any of the information presented here, please contact us.
Coming soon: an FAQ page and a printable flyer version of this guide.
If not us, then who? If not now, then when?
—John Lewis, civil rights leader and U.S. Representative (1940-2020), paraphrasing the teachings of Hillel the Elder, Jewish religious leader and scholar (died 10 CE)
Several federal agencies participate in immigration enforcement, each with their own restrictions, orders, training, uniforms, and tactics. Related names you may encounter in your community or the news include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO, part of ICE), Border Patrol (USBP), Customs and Border Protection (CBP, the agency that oversees ICE and BP, among others), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS, the cabinet-level agency that runs all of these agencies), among others. For simplicity, here we refer to them collectively as ICE unless we need to be more specific.
Agencies are legally bound to follow the US constitution, all locally applicable laws, the limits of their own established authority, and due process. However, be aware there have been many well documented recent instances of these agencies violating many laws and the constitutional and human rights of noncitizens and citizens, disobeying hundreds of direct court orders, conducting unauthorized surveillance, overreaching far beyond their jurisdiction, and using enforcement tactics for intimidation and retaliation. Understand your risks before interacting with ICE.
ICE agents may conduct audits, inspections, investigations, raids, arrests, and seizures to enforce employment eligibility and immigration laws. They may verify the accuracy of a business's I-9 Forms, which are filed to document the eligibility of all employees to work in the United States; typically this kind of inspection is done through a formal process of notification and a time window allowed for compliance by submitting paperwork. Raids are usually unannounced and have the intent of detaining unauthorized workers. ICE may also subpoena records of various kinds.
Currently, NOT all operations being conducted by ICE are appropriately authorized, even if ICE agents present documents such as "warrants" and make demands. It is important for you to be able to recognize an enforceable document vs. a claim of authorization that is not, by itself, legally enforceable. Administrative/immigration warrants and subpoenas, and judicial warrants and subpoenas, have different powers, scopes, and requirements for compliance. Learn the differences, what they look like, and what makes each valid and enforceable, and be prepared to contact an attorney for advice if ICE demands to access your records or private spaces.
Judicial warrants (issued by a judge or court) may authorize arrests, seizures, as well as searches, and only of specific identified locations in a specific time frame. A judicial warrant must have the following features:
be signed by a judge or magistrate
identify a specific U.S. District Court or State Court at the top
specify the location (your street address) being searched
be executed during the period authorized, i.e., have a valid date
Administrative warrants (issued by immigration officials) cannot authorize searches and are not enforceable without an additional court order, but can be used to arrest people or seize property.
Subpoenas are demands for records, testimony, or other information/evidence. If issued by a court (judicial), they are enforceable. Administrative/immigration subpoenas are restricted in scope and not enforceable without an additional court order.
Notices of Inspection (issued by immigration officials), or NOIs, are not by themselves warrants or subpoenas. These are often accompanied by a subpoena.
U.S. States and local governments have the power to make additional laws with respect to immigration enforcement agencies that affect how governments, law enforcement, or employers must or must not support or comply with ICE, and new laws are being issued frequently in response to recent ICE overreach.
Employers should be aware of their legal obligations, which may require you and your staff to take actions such as the following:
refuse to comply with ICE requests for information about your employees or visitors without a judicial warrant (and therefore to train your employees about this)
provide your employees with prompt notice of ICE inspections, and the results
provide employees notice of their rights
contact an employee's emergency contact on file if they are detained at work
If ICE agents are following the laws and respecting your rights, this is what you can expect:
ICE agents, just like the public, can enter public areas (such as parking lots, cafes, or galleries) of your premises without permission, and they may approach visitors and employees in those spaces. They do not have the power to stop, arrest, or detain just anyone, and employees are not obligated to speak with agents. Everyone has a right to remain silent, and you are not required to hand over IDs or papers.
To enter private areas (such as offices, break rooms, or storage) without your consent, they are required to have a judicial warrant (not an ICE/DHS administrative warrant, which does not permit a search). You have the right to verify the judicial warrant.
You should be aware of implicit exceptions to warrants:
Do not give ICE permission to enter a private area. Giving consent allows them to enter private areas without a judicial warrant. Do not open the door to the private area, as that can be construed as consent.
Do not run away from ICE agents. ICE agents may argue that running away is a sign of likely illegal status and claim probable cause to pursue and detain you without a warrant.
Unless there is a significant change of priorities specifically from Congress, we expect ICE’s behavior and operations to grow worse and more widespread over the next year or longer.
See FAQs for more information.
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
— a paraphrase of the teachings of Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
The actions listed below include some that ask you to take a stance, and many that give you tools for risk mitigation—or both—for your organization, yourself, or your community. Each comes with its own risks and benefits. Just as your organization should do risk assessments as part of your emergency and disaster preparedness, you should do risk assessments as part of your decision-making on these topics. Do these assessments often as the situation and your capacities change, and include all levels of your organization. Identify what your mission and ethics demand, what you are risking by taking or not taking an action, who could be harmed and how, the likelihood of the risks, what steps could be taken to reduce the risks (e.g., training is an excellent tool for risk mitigation), and what level of risk you and your community can tolerate. Then decide how and in what ways to make a difference.
For more on risks, see our FAQs.
Workplaces have an obligation to protect your coworkers, staff and visitors. Start today!
Create this alongside your other emergency, safety and security plans. As ICE changes, so must guidance. Prepare now and revise occasionally. Real-time responses to ICE presence may be highly dependent on the situation, ICE’s tactics, as well as the size, coordination, preparedness, and vulnerabilities of your team. Some preparedness steps you might decide to adopt include the following:
Read existing guidance for organizations and rapid response planning and consider these factors: your legal requirements, your legal freedoms, your responsibility to protect staff and visitors on your premises, your staff’s skills and vulnerabilities, your various risks and risk tolerance, and your ethics and mission.
Mark areas as private with clear signage such as "Staff Only".
Train staff to be consistent in following established protocols to keep private spaces private all the time—otherwise they may be legally considered de facto public spaces.
Train staff never to allow ICE into designated private areas of the building, and teach staff what to do if ICE agents insist or claim to have a warrant.
Learn which staff members may have an interest or prior training in deescalation techniques or are involved in other rapid response programs or immigrant aid efforts, and ask if they are interested in being involved in ICE preparedness for your workplace. This is likely to give you a much more proactive, invested, and prepared team than if you assign these roles solely according to institutional hierarchies.
Remember that ICE agents may pose, lawfully or otherwise, a real and imminent physical threat, especially to people of color. Assign workplace responsibilities and training with this in mind.
Establish your chain of command and communication for ICE encounters, and train all employees to defer or direct ICE to those in the chain of command.
Identify whom to contact for legal and practical support during or after a workplace raid, such as your local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild or your regional immigration lawyers association.
Contact a regional immigrant rights group if you or your staff members need mutual aid now or will likely need it in the event of a raid, such as translation help, grocery deliveries, or rent assistance. Ask for someone to reach out to you if they can help.
Join or develop a coordinated, diverse rapid response team beyond your work team that includes a communication tree, practiced protocols, practical support or mutual aid such as child care and interpretation services, lawyers, and media contacts ready to publicize your story and needs.
Train all of your staff and volunteers appropriately on your plans and policies. Do role-playing or scenario rehearsals to prepare for high-stress situations.
For more information on proactive community defense measures, see our FAQs.
Where you can exercise discretion in setting organizational policy, choose the side of generosity and kindness toward your fellow staff members or employees. Better morale is better for staff retention and overall institutional health. Mutual trust and respect are vital building blocks in a resilient organization and community.
Fear because of uncertainty doesn’t help anyone. Proactively provide policy information and address topics of concern.
Provide know-your-rights guidance to all staff, regardless of their immigration status, including what the law requires of employers with respect to both employee protections and employer compliance with ICE/law enforcement.
Give all staff a list of lawyers or organizations that can provide high quality, free or low-cost immigration legal advice in your state.
Help staff members stand up for democracy and human rights with clear communication, even if it’s not in writing.
Make it clear to all staff, beforehand, that the organization won’t punish them for taking principled actions on these topics, even if it may be disruptive to your operations (e.g., speaking up respectfully to management about concerns with your business practices, or participating in a walkout or general strike).
Clearly communicate limits to this policy.
Ask staff to communicate with you in advance, if possible, so you can accommodate them and adjust accordingly.
Change or clarify policies so it is easier for staff to take sick leave for “mental health days.”
Keep enough workers on the schedule for critical redundancy in case someone is out on sick leave. Understaffed teams have higher stress, lower morale, and take fewer days to tend to their own health and needs.
Make it clear that your organization respects mental wellness, that you recognize that leave time spent volunteering in the community or taking care of your family is good for mental health, and that scheduling sick leave for those purposes is OK. Sick leave for mental health is a requirement in some states; actively supporting it is good employment practice everywhere.
Prompt all staff and volunteers to update their emergency contact and beneficiary information.
If you are an employer of immigrant employees and can afford to do so, retain a lawyer to help the organization, your staff, and their families in the event of detainment. Clearly communicate to staff how to initiate legal counsel and what the costs to the employee might be.
Decision-makers at any level can help make an organization be more welcoming and grounded in community through thoughtful policies, inclusive content, and well-designed programmatic choices.
Small tweaks to your policies can make a big difference to your visitors and community.
Make your privacy policies transparent to help your visitors understand their risks when visiting your site or using your services.
Amend event registration requirements and other member data collection processes to request and store only necessary data; all stored data is vulnerable to ICE investigation.
As part of your workplace preparedness planning, develop emergency/ICE rapid response protocol flyers to hand out to event attendees or regular visitors and staff, especially if ICE is active in your area. You can also post basic guidance on walls.
If you have rental, education, or meeting spaces, offer use of them for free or at cost to volunteer organizations without their own space who are working to support immigrants in your community.
Both active and passive programming techniques (i.e., staff-run, time-bound events vs. unstaffed activities and information that visitors can choose to engage with) can help people feel safe and valued. When assessing risks, consider that passive techniques result in less direct interaction with individual staff members and may be perceived by both workers and visitors as a lower-risk approach. The methods, locations, and timing of programming and event promotion may also change the level of risk for your patrons.
Display solidarity posters, Know Your Rights (KYR) information, and/or signage explicitly denying ICE access to private areas.
Provide Know Your Rights (KYR) cards or other empowering flyers at information and security desks and pin them on information displays.
Include a clear note telling people to take the cards (preferably in all languages on the cards you are sharing).
Reevaluate your exhibits, text, programming, and languages used from the perspective of visitors and staff, especially those most likely to be targeted by ICE. Do they make people feel safe and welcome? Change if necessary.
For guidance, there are many resources published about breaking down racist and colonialist narratives and centering the communities whose cultures you are showcasing.
Make and distribute free, educational take-home art kits or reading materials to families who are not leaving their homes. Translate them into multiple languages common in your area.
Especially for libraries and archives, consider hosting educational programming about privacy laws, know-your-rights training, or counseling/self-care sessions.
Add exhibits and programs that celebrate immigrant cultures; the creative and intellectual work of immigrants; the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution (in honor of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution); fundamental civil and human rights; or that warn against fascism and discrimination.
Host/co-host a benefit for a relevant charitable organization’s initiative, such as a housing security initiative for those in ICE-targeted areas who don’t feel safe leaving home to work. Help promote the event through your marketing channels.
For more programmatic ideas and suggestions for risk mitigation, see ICE Response Protocols for Public Library Workers and ICE Response Protocols for Higher Education Workers.
You don’t have to wait for your organization to take the lead or be a decision-maker to have a positive impact. Be proactive in what you learn and do.
Learn about your local immigrant aid and activist organizations; sign up for their mailing lists or social media communications to learn about issues, actions, and new developments.
Pick a non-English language spoken in your city or on your work team, and learn a few phrases.
In conversations with your colleagues, promote messages that illustrate how immigrants make our communities stronger.
Speak out against demeaning, dehumanizing, and “othering” language, like loaded phrases such as "illegal alien" and other hate speech.
Advocate for humane policies and laws by contacting your representatives; tell them how important immigrants are to your community, or how ICE activity is materially affecting your organization (e.g., through decreased revenue, lower visitor numbers, increased employee absenteeism, etc.). Putting pressure on Congress to act by raising your voice is the fastest way to halt harmful behavior by ICE.
If you are part of a labor union, ask your union to provide, or get prepared to provide, mutual aid to members affected by ICE.
Propose changes to your institution’s programming to your supervisor, as described above.
Share this web page with your director, colleagues, and peers at other organizations.
The more that individuals are aware of current events, understand risks, and know what to do in a critical situation, the safer everyone around them will be. This is true even without a top-down plan for your organization. The more we participate in building community with each other, the better the foundation we have for sustaining each other and our shared values in times of fear and oppression.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel: Pick one current issue you care about and get involved with organizations already doing the work. (There are plenty.) Financially contribute or volunteer your time to extend their reach, and commit to sustaining your effort indefinitely.
Get to know your neighbors, renew ties with friends, join professional networks, or find groups of folks with similar interests in your area. Building community is a proactive strategy to counter oppression. It acts as a shield against systemic division by building trust, forming networks to support mutual aid, and provides mental health support and safe spaces.
Make a plan for what to do if you are detained, regardless of your citizenship or immigration status. Figure out whom to notify and what steps need to be taken, and communicate that to your employer and family members.
Get your family prepared for emergency and disaster situations. Make sure your important papers are accessible and you all know what to do in likely emergency scenarios.
Fact-check the information you encounter, especially on social media, and specifically if it relates to immigrants or civil rights. Think critically even about news sources you have trusted for years.
Learn about digital security and how to communicate sensitive information safely to protect yourself and anyone you talk with or about.
Learn conflict deescalation techniques.
Learn about effective rapid response tactics, and share that information with your colleagues and trusted neighbors.
Discuss possible immigration enforcement scenarios and risks with your work team, and if you haven’t received clear training from your administrators, decide among your immediate team how you plan to respond.
If ICE is active in your area, keep an eye on their movements with a crowdsourced ICE-tracking app or a local Signal group set up for this purpose.
Learn how to alert your hyper-local immigrant aid groups if ICE is around.
Learn how to be an effective eyewitness or Legal Observer:
Practice using your phone to record video promptly without unlocking your device
Learn what information to document about the agents and the encounter (S.A.L.U.T.E.)
Learn what information to collect from someone being detained so they can be helped. Ask for their name, if they have an “A-number” or Alien Registration Number, and if they want you to contact someone, and that person’s phone number.
Identify trustworthy immigrant rights groups in your state to send evidence and information to so they can get lawyers to find detainees, alert their families, and follow a prepared plan for acting on your evidence
For more information on proactive community defense measures, see the FAQs.
Do not obey in advance! Rising authoritarians depend on the people allowing them powers not granted by law, out of fear or other motivations. This is called “anticipatory obedience.” If a law doesn’t exist to make you or your organization comply, it helps everyone in the long run if you insist on your rights and decline to cooperate voluntarily in inhumane activities.
Don’t censor yourself or your team—especially in your work as an interpreter of cultural heritage—because you don’t want to attract the ire of the federal administration.
Don’t open doors or provide information to ICE when they really should have a warrant.
Learn what nonprofits and their leadership and staff are allowed to say about “political” issues— you may be surprised. Then speak out and ask your organization to do so, too. Be prepared to defend yourself and your choice to speak up.
Ask your organization’s leadership above you to stop any business practices, purchases, and contracts that are harmful to immigrants or democracy.
If you are the head of your organization or a board member, reflect on how your own actions determine policies that impact staff and visitors. Determine how you can position the organization to meet the moral demands of this episode of history, and make that happen.
Ask your administration to take specific proactive steps that will guide and protect employees and visitors, such as those suggested in this resource.
Injustices don’t wait until it is convenient for you to give them your attention. It takes time to build community and resilience by establishing relationships of trust. It takes time for your representatives to draft policy, write legislation, and appeal to their colleagues to make systemic changes; call them now and ask them to get started. Developing workplace policy and training your staff take time. All sustainable efforts also require pacing yourself.
Do what you can do today and begin planning what you will do tomorrow. Together, if everyone does something in their capacity, we can move mountains.
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
― Anne Frank (1929-1945), Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings
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