As a business owner in the service industry, protecting your workplace and supporting your staff is critical, especially in today’s climate. The resources below are meant to help business owners navigate their rights and responsibilities in the face of workplace visits or raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Stay Informed on Legal Requirements

This includes ensuring your business is compliant with Form I-9s and SSA No Match Letters.

• American Business Immigration Coalition:

  • Details on Business Compliance with Existing Regulations.

Strengthen Workplace Preparedness

ICE Agents can come to your business and question employees and detain those suspected of being undocumented. Those detained will go through a legal deportation process.

How to prepare

• Create a company wide plan for how to respond to a raid - appoint a point person - one per shift and per site.

• Make sure your employees know the plan, and managers are well versed in executing the plan.

• Provide know your rights materials and raid preparation trainings for your employees.

• Display clear signage that shows private and public areas. Without a warrant, ICE can only enter public space.

• Have access to an immigration employment attorney.

What to do if it happens

• Determine whether ICE has a judicial warrant and the legal right to enter your business. Immigration agents can enter a private area ONLY IF they have a judicial warrant. A judicial warrant must be signed by a judge and say “U.S. District Court” or a State Court at the top.

• If they have a warrant, check the scope of the warrant.

• If they do not have authorization, do not let them into private areas.

• Capture as much information from the agents as possible (badge numbers, names, what they asked, where they looked, etc.).

• Have employees refer all questions to the point person for that shift.

• Do NOT panic, run away, or lie to officers or interfere with their activities.

• National Immigration Law Center:

  • A Guide for Employers: What to Do if Immigration Comes to Your Workplace

  • Know Your Rights Flyer (Spanish) and (English) versions.

• Workers Defense Project:

  • Know Your Rights Flyer with Card in English and Spanish.

Provide Employees with Essential Resources

• The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP): Families, providers, and communities must be prepared for immigration raids. We have compiled these resources to help stakeholders and providers support children and families who may be affected by immigration raids. These resources can also help providers keep their programs safe and trusted spaces for the families they serve.

  • CLASP Immigration raid resources

• Immigrant Legal Resource Center:

  • Every family should have a Family Preparedness Plan in case of an emergency. It is critical for immigrant families to think ahead and set more concrete plans for immigration emergencies that can arise. For example, this Resource Toolkit goes into detail about different childcare options available in case of an absent parent, where to find trusted immigration services in your community, and how to prepare to assert your constitutional rights in the presence of an immigration officer. 

    Family Preparedness Plan (English) and (Spanish)

• Immigrant Legal Resource Center:

  • The ILRC’s Red Cards help people assert their rights and defend themselves in many situations, such as when ICE agents go to a home.

    Red Cards/ Tarjetas Rojas

• Ready to Stay

  • A resource directory for immigrants and advocates that provides up-to-date information on changing policies and connect immigrants to local legal aid.

• Find Legal Help 

  • National Immigration Legal Services Directory

Additional Resources

• Independent Restaurant Coalition: Resource Library for preparing your business.

• National Immigration Law Center:

  • A Guide for Employers: What to Do if Immigration Comes to Your Workplace

Good Work Austin helps businesses navigate the challenges of providing health care to their employees.

Many small business owners would like to offer health care as a benefit to their workers. Offering health care is a strong incentive to retain great employees, and hire new ones — especially in a tight labor market.

It’s not easy, but GWA can help connect you to the health care solution that is right for your business — and work with you to make a plan to pay for it.

We have partners offering different health care options, including:

Direct Primary Care

Cost Sharing Communities

Traditional Health Insurance

Good Work Austin helps small businesses implement paid sick leave policies that work for their businesses and their employees.

Contact us to learn more about the creative solutions that Good Work Austin members have implemented, and we’ll connect you to other business owners that have been able to provide paid sick leave.

By putting some of Austin’s lowest wage workers on firmer financial footing, GWA is working to help employers secure our community’s foundation from the ground up.

Instructors are available to teach employers how to set up systems or come to their small business to counsel staff. They can also lead larger group seminars about how to create transparency regarding wages, promotions, and raises to create employees who can more efficiently speak about their income and their role and value.

Find out more: Financial Health Pathways

Financial Health Pathways (formerly The Financial Literacy Coalition of Central Texas) is a non-profit corporation whose members come from all walks of life — public and private, individual, and organization — but are united by the same goal: to promote community prosperity by providing unbiased financial education.

The sub-minimum (or tipped minimum) wage is a powerful legacy of slavery. It keeps an entire industry of employees, mostly women and people of color, working for as little as $2.13 per hour.

A One Fair Wage policy would require all employers to pay the full minimum wage with fair, non-discriminatory tips on top, that would lift millions of tipped and sub-minimum wage workers nationally out of poverty.

GWA businesses believe that employees should not be dependent on the kindness of strangers to be full participants in Austin’s economy.

What’s wrong with tipping?

For one thing, employees who work for tips are subject to more sexual harassment from customers and co-workers. For another, tipped workers are more likely to be receiving government assistance and living in poverty.

While the federal government guarantees that everyone earns at least the $7.25 per hour minimum wage, the burden to report underpayments and to extract any owed balance is on the employee. Many of these wage claims end up in court, which costs hourly workers time and money that they often can’t afford.

Why change?

Ethically, this is an easy decision. It’s also good for business. Done correctly, all those “tips” become revenue and owners can have more control of the pay-scale at their businesses. Their employees will begin working for them and not for the whims of customers.

With one fair wage, formerly underpaid jobs that were filled by more transient employees become professionalized. Businesses will suffer less turnover, more dedication from employees, and the freedom to provide employee benefits as a further incentive to hiring and retaining professional staff.

How can GWA help?

The minimum wage is going to go up and GWA businesses are already set up for the transition.

We can help you analyze your business, learn more about the history of the dysfunctional sub-minimum wage, determine what other business models exist (with and without tipping), and how to message this change to your employees and customers.

Find out more: One Fair Wage Coalition

One Fair Wage is a national coalition, campaign, and organization seeking to end all sub-minimum wages in the United States and increase the sustainability of wages and working conditions in the service sector.

Qualifying service industry employees may be eligible for 12 months of payments to be used for childcare through the Texas Workforce Commission and a grant made possible by the American Rescue Plan.

Find Out More: Texas Workforce Commission

The Mike & Sherry Project and Capital Area Counseling offer affordable counseling to employees of GWA businesses for as low as $25 per session. Employees pay $10 or $15 per session. Employers pay the balance. You only pay for the number of visits your staff utilizes.

This is an excellent way to normalize counseling in your workplace. It is completely anonymous and not so cost-prohibitive that your staff won’t be able to just try it out.

Find out more: Capital Area Counseling

Capital Area Counseling (CAC), formerly known as Capital Area Mental Health Center, was started in 1980 by members of the Capital Area Psychological Association who personally responded to the need for low-cost psychological services to people living in the Austin, TX.

Good Work Austin partners with Comedor Run Club to help food and beverage professionals “shift the post-shift culture.”

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10am, Comedor Run Club meets to run a 5K. The community provides an inclusive space where all paces are encouraged, and the mission is to support the health and wellness of individuals in Austin’s food service industry.

Find out more: Comedor Run Club

Ben’s Friends is a community of chefs, bartenders, line cooks, servers, sommeliers, host and hostesses, GMs and owners who have found or are seeking sobriety. Their mission is to offer community, hope and a path forward for those struggling with substance abuse and addiction. They are hospitality workers who have found connection, and the tools to seek and maintain sobriety while managing their careers and lives in a sane and purposeful way.

Ben’s Friends hosts a meeting every Monday at 11am. Participants can join on Zoom or in-person at Comedor (511 Colorado St. in downtown Austin).

Find out more: Ben’s Friends