Greensboro's African American Community Newspaper since 1967
On January 3, Indivisible Guilford hosted a community “Know Your Rights” seminar at the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, bringing together advocates and legal experts to share practical guidance for immigrant and refugee communities and the residents who support them.
Representatives from Siembra NC, FaithAction International House, and local immigration service providers addressed how to navigate encounters with law enforcement, understand constitutional protections and access community resources.
Siembra NC organizer Hector Rivera described the group’s ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Watch and Fourth Amendment trainings, which began during the first Trump administration amid threats to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
“A lot of people still don’t know what to do if faced with ICE,” Rivera said, emphasizing the importance of verifying whether someone is a federal agent and understanding when a judicial warrant is required.
He noted that workplace training stresses an employer’s right to refuse entry without a warrant and to ask agents to leave.
“We want to build power and change things in the state so people can have a dignified life here,” Rivera said.
Community activist and former civil rights attorney Lewis Pitts underscored the right to observe law enforcement in public spaces. He said residents may photograph or record ICE activity and cannot have their phones seized, as long as they do not interfere with enforcement actions.
“Your rights are like muscles,” Pitts said. “If you don’t use them, they shrink.”
FaithAction International House Community Engagement Manager, Maricruz Hernandez, shared recent impacts on local families, citing instances of parents detained and children left without caregivers. In response, she said, FaithAction’s immigrant assistance center and advocacy department has expanded food assistance, legal referrals, and case management, including home visits for safety. In the past two months, they have delivered more than 200 food boxes and 230 toys to impacted families.
“Many families have requested financial assistance because they fear leaving their homes to go to work,” Hernandez said, adding that case workers are now seeing up to 30 clients a week.
Immigration attorney Jessica Yanez provided a snapshot of 2025 immigration data, including widespread detentions, visa revocations and reduced refugee admissions. She shared that 68,000 people are currently detained across the U.S. in for-profit detention centers. In addition, 73.6 percent of the people detained last year had no criminal convictions; of those, only five percent had a criminal record.
She described the immigration system as “by design systemically racist,” explaining that immigration courts are administrative rather than judicial and outlining the limited pathways to legal status through family, employment or humanitarian relief. She noted that the U.S. criminal code makes entering the United States illegally a misdemeanor, but being here without status is not a crime.
Yanez encouraged residents to volunteer with ICE Watch training and the community hotline.
“The first step is being informed. The next step is doing something. None of us can solve this on our own. It’s okay to enjoy life. I hope that we dance and sing this year. There can be all these terrible things going on in the world, and at the same time, we can work together, and we can enjoy life, because joy is also a form of resistance,” she said.
Participants at the seminar also received information on case management and community hotlines, including Siembra NC’s number for reporting suspected ICE activity, which allows documented residents to play a direct role in supporting immigrant neighbors. The Siembra NC hotline number is (336) 543-0353.
