At a restaurant on Valencia Street, one employee knows exactly what he would do if immigration agents approached his business.
He walks me through a rough plan of subtle communication and relocating his coworkers: A group of people move to the back of the business while another group starts a distracting conversation to allow his at-risk coworkers enough time to evade arrest.
At a nearby cafe, the owner points out a private back kitchen, where she notes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers cannot enter without a warrant. A barista at another coffee shop said his manager had pulled aside each employee to tell them how to prepare for an ICE visit.
“The feeling is not a good one,” Melody Ruelas, the owner of Sisters Coffee Shop on Valencia Street, said.
Recent ICE arrests in San Francisco have local businesses and merchant associations on edge over possible risks to their customers and their staff. In response, business associations, which represent restaurants, bars and shops, said that they’re preparing their members for ICE encounters.
Some have hosted Know Your Rights trainings to teach managers and employees how to respond to the presence of ICE agents within a legal framework. At least two business associations sent out an updated informational this week on how to prepare for immigration enforcement action at the workplace.
Posters tacked on the windows of businesses up and down the Mission’s busiest corridors share the San Francisco Rapid Response Network hotline number — (415) 200-1548 — to report ICE activity in bright orange lettering. In English and Spanish, the posters are direct about how to handle an encounter with ICE: Do not open the door. Do not answer questions. Do not sign anything.
“Our business owners are so busy trying to keep their businesses afloat that they need that extra support, that network,” Susana Rojas, the executive director of Calle 24, said. “Business associations, merchants associations, even neighborhood groups, nonprofits, volunteer groups; everyone has a place right now to keep our city together.”
An owner of a larger restaurant and a manager in a restaurant group said that they have consulted lawyers on what to do if immigration officers approach their businesses. If any of their staff were detained, both said that the restaurant’s lawyers would come to the staff’s defense.
This month, Mission Local has confirmed 22 ICE arrests in San Francisco, all of them at ICE’s downtown field office and the San Francisco Immigration Court. San Francisco is a sanctuary city, meaning the city places limits on its cooperation with ICE or providing information that ICE requests.
Calle 24, an organization that works with merchants and residents in the Mission’s historical arts district, distributed red cards at the beginning of the year that are the size of business cards and contain information about how to resist search and seizure and self-incrimination as protected by the constitution.
“These cards are available to citizens and non-citizens alike,” read the cards, which were visible and available for distribution on the counters of multiple businesses visited by Mission Local this week.
Rojas said that local businesses have been shaken by targeted false alert phone calls. Such calls can prompt a business to shut down for the day, but doing so is a double edged sword. Any closure can signal to immigration enforcement that people who work in that business are concerned about ICE.
Multiple restaurant workers interviewed by Mission Local repeated a rumor that ICE had been at 16th and Mission streets near the BART station on Monday, which was false. One clothing shop owner had closed her store that weekend in response to rumors about ICE in the area. Ever since, business has been slow.
“When they hear information like that, the first step should [be to] go to a trusted source before they share it online or close their business,” Rojas said. She directed people to call the Rapid Response Network hotline to report ICE activity or verify rumors about raids.
Ryen Motzek, the board president of the Mission Merchants Association, who owns two businesses in the Mission, compared the level of fear and uncertainty in small businesses right now to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when restaurants contended with stay-at-home orders, a shuttered city and tight finances.
The association has hosted Know Your Rights trainings for its members and is considering creating a hotline to share updated information about ICE in the area.
“Anybody that has an ounce of empathy is feeling very unsettled right now,” he said. “We’re here to support small businesses, and when their staff feels threatened, when their owners feel threatened, regardless of their status, it’s concerning.”
Avi Ehrlich, the owner of Silver Sprocket and vice president of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association, said that the speed of developments had made it difficult for the association to provide detailed information to its members immediately.
Still, businesses within the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association have collaborated to print posters and distribute stickers about resources during encounters with immigration enforcement.
Ehrlich said the independent, small-business spirit on Valencia Street informed local responses to the threat of immigration enforcement.
“None of us are being told by corporate what we’re allowed to do or what we’re not allowed to do,” Ehrlich said. “It’s heartwarming to see our community band together to say that this is something we’re not okay with.”
Additional reporting by Jordan Montero.
Practically speaking, it would be very difficult for ICE to conduct raids in the Mission.
People should be vigilant, and know their rights. Of course.
But that said, consider ICE’s problems operating on Valencia Street:
* Where are a fleet of vehicles going to park? ICE likes to operate in numbers.
* An angry mob could gather in minutes, and SFPD is not friendly with ICE (though, kudos to the mayor for sending SFPD to protect the federal building last weekend. We don’t want the National Guard or Marines on our streets)
* Such a mob could easily block ICE’s cars from getting away and make for a very volatile situation.
Of course ICE could ignore all this. But if you have been following its pattern of arrests so far, it’s working either in courthouses where it has lots of personnel, or in wide-open spaces like parking lots where it can convene lots of personnel and has room to maneuver.
Be careful anywhere. But illegal immigrants in San Francisco should take extra care where we know ICE likes to hang out, places like I described. Good luck.
Republicans are loving causing fear in all immigrant families, documented or not. And it is intentional and done out of racism and selfishness. Trump is now getting yelled at by his donors who employ farm workers, hotel workers etc. and suggesting they will back off workplace arrests, but I do not believe him. My heart breaks for so many who are only here to work and give their kids a better life.
They ARE arresting and deporting drug dealers, murderers, child molesters and rapists.
I thought that was what we are protesting against.
…Or… These restaurants and other businesses could hire legal citizens and pay them a living wage.
What a concept.
Thanks for reporting
These ice agents should be arresting the drug addicts and dealers
So tired of see selfish addicts destroying themselves with poisons .
Not ok .
They are rotting away .
Insanity that this is still going on in this city
Very sad