Unions Mobilize to Protect Immigrant Workers During ICE Raids

As the Trump administration’s deportation efforts ramp up, unions are increasingly on the frontlines with workers in protest despite limited options and evolving court precedent.

The recent arrest of SEIU California labor leader David Huerta during a raid in downtown Los Angeles puts at the forefront the question of unions’ roles when federal agents come knocking. The mobilization of organized labor reflects the growing use of “rapid response networks” in partnership with immigrant groups to respond in real time to ICE crackdowns on undocumented workers across sectors, reaching even non-unionized workplaces.

Huerta’s arrest sent the message that “we’re going to stand up for each other; we’ve got your back,” said Elizabeth Strater, national vice president of United Farm Workers. “You come for one of us, you’re going to come for all of us.”

While unions for months have held “know-your-rights” sessions with employees and employers to prepare for immigration crackdowns, some have also adopted contractual language ensuring employers don’t exceed legal requirements to comply with federal enforcement efforts.

As immigration enforcement collides with growing anti-deportation protests, legal questions persist on whether immigration-related organizing can be considered protected concerted activity under the National Labor Relations Act.

“We’re doing a lot of work to educate members and management about their own roles and rights,” said Faye Guenther, president of United Food & Commercial Workers 3000, which represents grocery, retail, and health-care workers in the Pacific Northwest. “Unions have to step up.”

Rapid Response

US Customs and Border Protection agents in early January swept through predominantly Latino communities, arresting farmworkers. UFW members sued, securing a ruling in the US District Court for the Eastern District of California prohibiting CBP agents from conducting unlawful sweeps based on racial profiling.

Farm raids surged in California this week, covering Ventura County, the Central Valley, and parts of Los Angeles County, Strater said.

Before the surge began, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the region’s central labor council, partnered with immigrant groups like the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles to form the LA Rapid Response Network, a network of union members and advocates who can quickly mobilize in response to reports of ICE activity, said University of California, Los Angeles Labor Center Director Saba Waheed.

Union members at the scene of a raid can ask for warrants from agents, inform workers of their rights, and protest and document the raid, she said. “A union can’t be everywhere, but union workers are everywhere.”

‘Conditions of Work’

Workers involved in immigration-related protest often connect labor rights with civil rights, meaning they could be engaging in protected “concerted activity” under the NLRA.

A set of worker protest cases stemming from the 2020 “Black Lives Matter” resurgence is currently winding through federal appeals courts, which may clarify which actions count.

In one of those disputes, the NLRB found that an employee’s refusal to remove a BLM pin from his uniform wasn’t “inherently concerted.” However, the board ordered the worker’s reinstatement because the NLRA protected his ability to raise issues of racism at work.

A US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit panel of Republican-appointed judges indicated Wednesday they were skeptical of how the board weighed employers’ free speech rights against workers’ rights.

The Trump administration is likely to try and narrowly define “concerted activity” and “employee,” so the National Labor Relations Board could have “less jurisdiction and will intervene less to protect the rights of workers who may be engaged in organizing activity, collaborative activity,” said Sameer Ashar, a law professor at University of California, Irvine.

Still, while it depends on specific circumstances, “if workers are organizing together to defend workers who are being subject to unlawful immigration enforcement activities in their workplace, then that’s certainly a kind of concerted activity that has to do with conditions of work and should fit squarely within the act,” Ashar said.

Contractual Measures

Some unions have also turned to their collective bargaining agreements to institute protections for undocumented workers.

Between 2020 and 2022, 11% of about 1,000 collective bargaining agreements mentioned immigration or work authorization, according to an analysis in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

While just 4% of those contracts had substantive measures exceeding anti-discrimination law, according to the study, that share is growing.

UFCW’s Guenther said her union has drafted standardized memorandum of understanding language requiring employers to give notice before federal immigration agents arrive on site, comply with limits on self-audits of personnel records, and abstain from retaliating against workers who request changes to records of their names or Social Security numbers, among other provisions.

The union’s working to implement the language across over 200 different contracts, and recently reached a tentative agreement with grocery giant Kroger that includes it, Guenther said.

Employer Impact

Businesses are also implicated in immigration enforcement, attorneys and labor scholars said.

Their responsibilities haven’t “really been part of the conversation of late,” said Virginia Parks, a professor in UCI’s School of Social Ecology. “Employers are the ones who hire immigrants, and if the question is about undocumented workers, then employers need to be a part of that conversation as well.”

When Huerta was released from federal custody on a $50,000 bond, California’s Department of Industrial Relations reminded employers of state labor law mandates, which require them to fulfill many of the obligations for which unions are advocating.

“We’re seeing a lot of employers impacted by the loss of these workers,” said David Jones, co-chair of Fisher Phillips’ Immigration Practice Group, who’s based in Tennessee. “I’ve talked to employers who are losing hundreds of workers based on just changes in work authorization.”

“It’s really important for employers to have an understanding of their workforce, and know what they can do to make sure that they don’t have these massive reductions in workforce due to some sort of ICE enforcement activity, or changes by the DHS in general,” Jones said.