Community Preparations

A lot of people from the Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland communities provided some excellent advice to the Charlotte community about things to do to prepare for ICE/CBP operations in the city and surrounding areas. As ICE/CBP seemingly prepares to come to New Orleans and/or other communities in the coming weeks, I wanted to relay a few key preparation points here that other communities can use to prepare for ICE/CBP activity.

  1. Start the conversation NOW about ICE/CBP operations. Don’t wait until ICE is on the ground and active. Despite knowing in advance that CBP would be coming, the Charlotte community seems to have struggled to coordinate on day 1 until after initial ICE/CBP operations had already done damage to several of our communities. Start preparing now. Talk to friends, neighbors, and coworkers and have them begin spreading the word.

  2. Identify key organizations in your area who will be instrumental in coordinating defense and assistance efforts, especially in affected communities. In Charlotte, we have the Carolina Migrant Network, Siembra NC, and CharlotteEAST working to help, serve, and defend affected communities. Lean on these established groups to help coordinate community efforts, volunteer to help them, and donate to them where you can. Also, start letting others know about them so that these organizations can be on everyone’s radar from day 0. If these organizations have ICE reporting/defense phone lines, circulate these phone numbers, too.

  3. Reach out to other organizations doing community improvement/visibility work and start the discussion early about coordinating protests and activism efforts. In Charlotte, we have Indivisible Charlotte, who also organized our No Kings protests, in addition to statewide groups such as Action NC. Indivisible Charlotte has a daily protest schedule publicly available so that people who want to protest know where to assemble, when to show up, etc.

  4. Acquire whistles. Whistles have been critical to alerting Chicago communities to the presence of ICE, and Charlotte is making use of the same system (read about the system here). If you can, start buying/printing whistles and distributing them throughout your communities. Even just distributing them to your local stores or workplace is a start. Start carrying whistles when you go out so that you have them when you need them.

  5. Spread the word about ICE tracking maps and start having people sign up for alerts in their area. In Charlotte, we’ve been using IceOut as our primary tracking tool to report and monitor ICE activity. See if your community groups can help spread the word, and start having people monitor for ICE presence/activity. Just being prepared to make a report and being able to get reports quickly will massively improve community response efforts.

  6. Start printing and distributing Know Your Rights sheets. Everyone should learn their rights, but minority communities are especially vulnerable to ICE taking advantage of people not knowing their individual rights. Whether you’re a citizen, legal immigrant, or illegal/undocumented immigrant, you have rights. Learn them and be prepared to use them.

  7. Encourage local businesses to post “No ICE Entry” flyers, and ensure that business owners and leaders in your area are aware of their rights. Notice examples here. Also see if local businesses will help distribute whistles, Know Your Rights cards, and other information.

  8. Find ways to share critical information with your communities. Utilize your community Reddit pages to post key information and updates. Spread information through Facebook and other social media platforms. Do whatever you can to get information out, and encourage others to do the same.

  9. Seek out & support businesses that will be impacted by ICE operations. Minority owned and frequented businesses will suffer disproportionately as people become scared to go out in public. Give these businesses your support.

  10. Keep an eye out for other volunteer and goodwill opportunities. There will be businesses, organizations, and individuals that will work to help protect and provide to impacted communities: transporting children to/from school or childcare; shopping and delivering groceries and essentials; patrolling ICE hotspots to monitor activity; etc.

See our printables list for printouts & more.

I’ve used this Reddit post and this one too as key sources of information/advice, but I’ve added a few other points above based on what we’ve seen and talked about in Charlotte. This comment also has some other good advice on other things to do. I’ll continue to update this list as I see feedback.