|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Lyn McCoy and Dan Bayer glanced both ways before crossing a busy New Garden Road in Greensboro on a recent Saturday afternoon. They walked hurriedly, their gait edging into a light jog as they made it to the parking lot of Craft City Sip-In and walked through its doors.
McCoy and Bayer approached the bar and greeted the manager on duty, Ashley Sanchez, with their pitch.
“We’re volunteers with an organization called Siembra NC,” Bayer said. “We’re going around informing businesses of their Fourth Amendment rights. Do you know about those?”
The conversation took just a few minutes. Soon, Sanchez was signing her name on a piece of paper, and the two volunteers were out the door.
The canvassing initiative is the newest effort of Siembra NC, a statewide immigrant rights organization that works predominantly with Hispanic residents. Since Trump’s reelection, the group has been busy operating an emergency hotline where callers give tips on where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may be operating and hosting training sessions on how to respond.
Their latest effort also aims to create a coalition of businesses across the state that will stand in solidarity with immigrant workers.
‘Workplace Arrests Have Gone Off the Charts’
At a training in late March, dozens of eager volunteers gathered at a co-working space in downtown Greensboro. They listened to Siembra co-director Nikki Marín Baena and Andrew Willis Garcés, who are also married, as they announced the new initiative: Fourth Amendment Workplaces.
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. The amendment prohibits searches and seizures without warrants and requires actions to be justified by probable cause.
“We’re seeing more ICE detentions at workplaces than ever before,” Garcés told the group. “We’re seeing them every day, small-scale detentions taking between two to 20 people … People are avoiding going to work.”
Federal data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University shows there are close to 48,000 people in immigration detention as of April 6. That’s the most people who have been detained by ICE since late 2019, according to their data. Almost half of those currently detained—46 percent—have no criminal records, and many have only minor offenses, such as traffic violations, the organization reports.
During the first few months of the second Trump administration, many immigrant advocacy groups saw ICE agents going directly to people’s homes or attempting to detain people when they left for work. But recently, Garcés said agents have also started targeting workplaces that may employ undocumented immigrants.
“Workplace arrests have gone off the charts,” he told The Assembly. “That’s definitely different than the last administration. They didn’t target small business operations.”
A quick online search shows examples of what Garcés is talking about.
In mid-February, ICE agents raided a taco truck in Memphis, Tennessee, detaining three employees. A few days later in Kansas City, ICE agents raided a Mexican restaurant, apprehending a dozen workers. And over the last two months, a handful of tire shop employees across the country have been detained during workplace arrests.
Garcés said many of the arrests did not include a judicial warrant or an official court order signed by a judge authorizing the search of private property or arrests. ICE agents would instead show up with just an administrative warrant—which is not signed by a magistrate or a judge, as noted by the National Immigrant Justice Center—or without a warrant at all.
And that’s because many workplaces don’t understand their rights when it comes to allowing ICE agents onto or into their property.
“We’re trying to get workplaces to signal that unconstitutional arrests are not okay,” Garcés said during the training.
That’s where Siembra’s new efforts come into play.
Launched in early April, the Fourth Amendment Workplace effort consists of volunteers like McCoy and Bayer going to businesses to ask them to be part of a coalition that understands their rights and will stand up for immigrant workers, and then providing trainings for those who want to participate.
The first phase of the effort is to target high-traffic, popular local businesses to sign a pledge to protect immigrant workers and assert their rights if ICE agents show up. Many of these businesses may not employ undocumented or immigrant workers, but the point is to create a vast network, Garcés explained during the training. Once there is a critical mass of these types of businesses, they can pitch to those that could be targeted by ICE.
“We will be more successful if we get these first,” he said. “Then, we can go to more vulnerable, high-employment workplaces and say, ‘See, it’s not a big deal. There are other businesses doing this already.’”
Since launching their efforts a few weeks ago, businesses in Burlington, Raleigh, Graham, and Durham have signed on. In Greensboro, where the effort began, shops like Scuppernong Books and Deep Roots Market were the first supporters.
“These places are visible, and they’re easy to get because they share our values,” Garcés said.
After watching Baena and Garcés role-play the parts of a business owner and volunteer, the group of about 24 trainees paired up and engaged in role-playing themselves.
Using a worksheet provided by Siembra, they asked each other questions like, “Do you have a minute to talk about the warrantless detentions that are happening?” and “What’s it like to think about federal agents coming into a small business without permission?”
At the end of the training, the members received a packet of documents outlining what businesses can do to become a Fourth Amendment Workplace and a script. They then gathered in groups to partner up and canvass local businesses they frequent.
Michael Hill, who served for 30 years in the Coast Guard, told The Assembly why he wanted to volunteer.
“Everybody should have the rights that are in the constitution, and that shouldn’t be held differently or perceived differently because of some social construct that’s been created,” Hill said. “I was in the Coast Guard. We didn’t say, ‘Well, this is who’s in the water. Nobody cares. That’s a human being.’ It was, ‘Can you go out and help that human being that’s in distress?’”
‘This is One Small Thing We Can Do’
Before they walked into Craft City Sip-In, McCoy and Bayer visited Cozy Brew Cafe, a newer restaurant in the Brassfield Shopping Center that McCoy frequents. The owner wasn’t available, so McCoy wrote down the owner’s name and told the employee she talked to that she’d be back another day. Around the corner, the two ventured into The Sub Spot, a longtime sandwich shop. McCoy and Bayer talked to the owner, who voiced her support for the initiative and signed the pledge. Afterwards, the two talked outside.
“It helps if you know the area or know the owners,” Bayer said. “It’s best if you have a relationship.”
The outing was Bayer’s third time canvassing local businesses, and McCoy’s second. Part of Siembra’s tactic is to send volunteers out in pairs so they feel more empowered to make the ask.
Bayer has volunteered and participated in ICE-watch sessions with Siembra in the past, and McCoy heard about the effort through a group called Triad Rising. When they saw the impact of deportations by the Trump administration, each said they wanted to get involved.
“In my opinion, what’s going on with immigrants is absolutely unspeakable,” McCoy said. “It’s so wrong on so many levels. I don’t even know where to start. And this is one small thing we can do, but it’s not so small if we get a lot of businesses and the universities on board.”
Bayer referenced a poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller that activists often cite.
“‘First they came for the immigrants, and no one spoke,’” he said. “I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t an immigrant. And you know, eventually when someone comes for me, there’ll be no one to speak up for me.”
Scuppernong Books’ co-owner Brian Lampkin also credited Niemöller’s poem for his business becoming an early adopter.
“It’s a sense of you don’t want to leave people isolated,” Lampkin said. “ If you believe that what’s going on is madness, this is just a small thing we can do to alleviate some of that madness.”
After hearing the pitch from volunteers McCoy and Bayer, Ashley Sanchez of Craft City Sip-In stood behind the bar and explained why she signed Siembra’s pledge.
“What’s going on is obviously extremely upsetting, and we all have to do our part,” Sanchez said. “So something as simple as signing something is the least that I can do.”
By joining Siembra’s effort, Craft City Sip-In has many options, including hosting a staff training, adopting a protocol for engaging with federal agents, installing locks or doors between public and private areas, and hanging up a poster of support. Many of these will be rolled out in the next few weeks, according to Garcés. For now, the organization is working on getting businesses interested in the idea.
“We’re gonna make the Fourth Amendment the new Second Amendment,” Baena joked at the training.
Creating a Feeling of Safety
While the efforts may have started in Greensboro, the initiative is already making its way across the state. As reported by Enlace Latino NC, a group of Siembra volunteers held a training in Asheville a few weeks ago to canvass businesses there.
In Winston-Salem, volunteers secured Chad’s Chai as an early adopter, too.
Thomas Lees, one of the shop’s co-owners, said when he first heard about ICE raids at workplaces, he turned to the internet to understand his rights.
“I had to Google, ‘Does a coffee shop count as a public or private space?’” he said. “And I learned that any space that the public can’t go would count as private.”
“In my opinion, what’s going on with immigrants is absolutely unspeakable,” McCoy said. “It’s so wrong on so many levels. I don’t even know where to start. And this is one small thing we can do, but it’s not so small if we get a lot of businesses and the universities on board.”
Lyn McCoy, a volunteer with Siembra NC’s Fourth Amendment Workplace initiative.
That means federal agents can’t access those spaces either, according to immigration law experts.
“We have production for our wholesale in the back, so we knew we had a space we could take people for safety,” Lees said.
Those are the kinds of logistics they’ve been thinking about, Lees said. So when Siembra approached them, it was easy to sign on, he said.
“It’s about communicating to our community who we are and the kind of space we want to be for others,” Lees said. “I’m happy to be part of it in whatever way we can. It goes back to wanting to be a place where everyone feels valued and feels safe.”
And for that to happen, Garcés said there will be strength in numbers.
“We think that agents will be less likely to do this if there are more and more signs that people aren’t going to take this,” he said during the training.
Their goal is to pitch 10 businesses a week so they can get 50 in each county to become a Fourth Amendment Workplace by the end of June. Ultimately, it’s about sending a message not just to ICE agents and the Trump administration, but also to the immigrant workers who are being affected.
“It’s about creating a feeling that a lot of people are standing up for their rights,” Garcés said. “We want people to keep living dignified lives as much as possible.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly named Andrew Willis Garcés as Siembra’s co-director. He leads the Fourth Amendment Workplace initiative.
Sayaka Matsuoka is a Greensboro-based reporter for The Assembly. She was formerly the managing editor for Triad City Beat.
More by this author.