Recent national news headlines have focused on Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at workplaces throughout Los Angeles, escalating arrests, and related protests. One local response from North Carolina business owners is called “4th Amendment Workplaces.”
The new initiative was organized by Siembra NC, a grassroots organization begun in 2017 to defend immigrant workers from employer, landlord and ICE abuses.
Trump administration “border czar” Tom Homan signaled early on in his tenure that workplace raids would be a priority. Shortly after they began to take place at small businesses like taco trucks and restaurants, 4th Amendment Workplaces was born. The goal is to ensure that immigrant workers, their employers, and business owners understand their constitutional protections from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
But Siembra Co-Director Nikki Marin Baena points to the unrest in Los Angeles and says violations to immigrant workers are just the tip of the iceberg.
"In some cases, now we’re seeing First Amendment violations of people who are protesting peacefully," she says. "And that’s actually part of the reason that we are trying to get the word out there that workers have rights, employers have rights, business owners have rights, and that those rights are guaranteed by the Constitution — and that we don’t believe that any federal agent is above the Constitution."
So far, 88 workplaces across North Carolina and here in the Triad have signed on to participate in the initiative with in-person and virtual trainings for employers and their staff at nightclubs, restaurants, farms, butcher shops, health care facilities and more.