Around 75 people crowded into a presentation room at Centro del Pueblo’s new office in Eureka on a recent Friday night for one in a series of Know Your Rights trainings hosted by the community organization.
In collaboration with the University of California Davis Labor and Community Center and Service Employees International Union 2015, a union representing long-term healthcare workers in the state, this session focused on helping caregivers navigate potential encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“The fact that you all have to know this, it makes me angry,” UC Davis legal fellow Soni Chaturvedi tells the audience while describing how individuals who are immigrants or undocumented can advocate for themselves in the event of an ICE raid at their place of work, at their home or on the street.
That included her advice for those working at the home of someone who may be older or have memory issues: Place a sign by the door reminding the client that they are not legally required to open the door for ICE agents and to ask for a judicial warrant.
Another tip: “You should never answer questions ICE may sneakily ask you to make your immigration situation more difficult,” Chaturvedi says as an English-to-Spanish interpreter speaks faintly into a microphone in the back of the room.
When she asks the audience if they know someone who is vulnerable amid the Trump administration’s large-scale deportation operations taking place across the country, half raise their hands. When she turns to how many personally feel vulnerable, three go in the air.
Participating that night was SEIU member Casey Malone, who says the union came up with the idea for the March 27 workshop before reaching out to UC Davis and Centro to be involved in the process.
According to SEIU 2015’s website 87 percent of in-home careworkers nationwide are women, 62 percent are people of color and 31 percent are immigrants. With the field largely staffed by some of the most marginalized members of society, Malone says she found out some of the union’s membership feared attending such a presentation might place them in danger.
“Women of color in our community across the world and state are very underserved, and this is one way to attack our workers, is to make them feel afraid and unable to learn in other spaces,” Malone says, noting she encouraged those who were afraid to access Centro and SEIU 2015’s resources. “So we’re doing our best to organize across the state to build power for caregivers, and this is part of that, just as much as bargaining with contractors.”
Started as a component of Centro del Pueblo’s community outreach in the wake of Trump’s first election, the nonprofit has hosted Know Your Rights trainings across the county, including a collaboration with the Karuk Tribe on one held in Orleans.
The sessions cover a brief history of immigration law in the U.S. and legislative responses to increased immigration enforcement. They also provide information on local resources for families and a general guide on how to interact with an ICE agent in different scenarios.
The number and diversity of participants at the trainings have significantly increased between Trump’s first and second terms, says Centro del Pueblo’s Executive Director Brenda Perez.
One of the major turning points, she says, was when Humboldt County passed its sanctuary ordinance in 2018.
Approved by 55 percent of voters, Measure K explicitly prohibits county employees from assisting or collaborating with federal immigration agencies. State legislation, Senate Bill 54, was enacted the same year, imposing similar policies statewide.
Perez says she noticed that community members began using protective laws to advocate for themselves after the passing of Measure K, even if ICE agents may not respect those laws during an arrest.
Before 2018, “we still have that deterrent, that fear, based on facts that we will be detained or deported, with a strong collaboration of local law enforcement,” Perez says. “But then after that and now, what we observe is more and more people aware of their rights, more and more people stating that they will make the law valid through their own actions.”
Both Perez and Centro’s CFO and Advanced Director William Dirks also point to how the sanctuary ordinance’s passage created an increased sense of allyship and support within Humboldt’s Latine community, allowing people to be more present at Centro events.
“It makes them feel safer knowing that people have their back,” Dirks says. “They’re not going to be abandoned, that we’re all on their side, that the people they see at the grocery store and the people all voted [for Measure K] to protect each other and protect their neighbors. So that has an impact on people’s well-being.”
That includes the Wiyot Tribe declaring that their land would also be a sanctuary for immigrants after members of Centro staff reached out while campaigning for Measure K.
“For immigrant people, it meant more than passing the law with all the bureaucracy,” Dirks says. “Maybe not having the same legal empowerment, but the emotional connection to the Indigenous people of this land was really important.”
Each of the trainings ends with a theater component by a group of allies, with one holding a hand painted sign of an ICE agent and other holding a sign with educational messages on the front and back. A few others stand around them while reading from a script providing context to each scenario. Each section is read in Spanish, then English.
“¿Estoy detenido? ¿Puedo irme? Am I being detained? Can I leave?” one actor asks.
“No, no puedes irte. No, you cannot leave.” the ICE agent actor replies firmly.
“Deseo ejercer mi derecho a guardar silencio y a un abogado. ¿Puedo irme? I wish to exercise my right to silence and an attorney. Can I leave?” the actor affirms.
“Remember, ICE lies, but you cannot lie. Never hand out fake documents or lie about your immigration status,” an actor to the side adds.
Perez said Centro staff originally acted at the end of the presentations but found the toll on their mental health to be unsustainable.
“It was very, very hard for us to keep reproducing that scene,” Perez says. “So now we call for our allies that aren’t necessarily related to that trauma to perform that piece so that we can all build into the rapid response system. And the answer has been very positive. We now have a big group of allies that are performing that, without us feeling triggered and traumatized all the time.”
Len Wolff, a local resident who played the ICE agent, says he feels it’s important for Latine and immigrant voices to be highlighted at these events and wanted to do his part to reduce any additional emotional burden.
“The amount of triggering we get is miniscule compared to them,” Wolff says.
Dirks describes one phone call Centro received, thanking the group for their Know Your Rights trainings, with the caller saying she felt more prepared afterward to advocate for her legal rights and handle the stress and emotional response an ICE encounter would trigger.
“Every training we do, it teaches one more family that reaches out to their network,” Dirks says. “And the schools are starting to come up with safety plans and people are becoming more educated for sure.”
The trainings are just one of Centro del Pueblo’s advocacy and community-based programs, which also include a medical fund, the support group Hermana Flor and the Sanctuary Garden.
In January of 2025, the group also launched Rapid Response Network, which seeks to empower community members to observe and document but not interfere with potential immigration enforcement actions in Humboldt.
That includes a hotline set up in response to Trump issuing a flurry of executive orders targeting undocumented immigrants starting on day one of his second term — from declaring a national emergency at the southern border and canceling tens of thousands of scheduled immigration appointments to one seeking to end birthright citizenship.
More than a year later, the ICE sighting hotline often receives several calls a day, usually from Humboldt residents wanting to report vehicles that appear suspicious or verify rumors they heard. That number spikes dramatically with the ebb and flow of media coverage on ICE raids in larger cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles, with Dirks recalling one week where they received 300 to 400 calls.
One of the hotline’s purposes is to reduce the fear and anxiety in the community. Centro has staff available to respond to potential sightings and document them before confirming any information with the public and emphasizes the importance of people not posting on social media before then to prevent unnecessary panic.
Perez says the hotline has also received a couple of calls about people claiming to be with ICE harassing Latine and Indigenous individuals, and businesses, an issue that’s arisen nationwide since Trump regained office. “That exists as a phenomenon in our county,” she says.
Centro del Pueblo volunteer Krista Bornman says she was working the hotline on March 26 when the organization received a photo of an alleged U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle in Fortuna. Border patrol vehicles have exclusively green decals, while field operations vehicles only have blue decals, but the vehicle in the image had a mix of blue and green. When Centro del Pueblo member Peyton Leone went to verify the sighting in person, the image was discovered to be likely AI-generated.
“That is, to my knowledge, the second time we’ve had someone use an AI-generated image to try and stir up fear and anxiety in the migrant community, and, I assume, to waste our time and our resources,” Bornman says.
Bornman and Perez are encouraging people to keep tabs on Centro del Pueblo’s social media platforms for verification of rumors and confirmed sightings, and to attend several Know Your Rights training sessions as the information is continually updated to keep up with rapidly changing federal legislation.
“Things are challenged in court, and sometimes things are just very unclear about whether it is actively the legal situation, or if it’s an office member memo, or if it’s a Tweet, does that count as law?” Bornman says.
On May 1, before the Journal went to press, the community organization was set to be “representing Indigenous migrant workers” at the Humboldt County Courthouse for May Day — International Workers’ Day — before a march to the Eureka Theater for a showing of Inglourious Basterds, according to a press release.
In addition, Centro will be announcing the creation of the Centro de Recursos Legales de la Región Redwood (CRLRR) and a new series of education services for the community.
“This new center, led by Centro del Pueblo’s Movimiento Indígena Migrante, aims to address the legal barriers faced by immigrant, Indigenous, and agricultural communities in the region, including access to work permits, DACA renewals, labor rights, cooperative development and environmental regulations,” the release says.
A partnership with Redwood Region RISE (RRRISE – Resilient, Inclusive, Sustainable Economy), Centro says the center “proposes a community-based model that combines accessible legal services with community empowerment, operating through trusted spaces such as Sanctuary Farm and Sanctuary Gardens.”
Working with the UC Davis Labor and Community Center, those educational sessions will include legal clinics in the summer.
“This May Day, we are not only taking to the streets, we are also building concrete solutions for our communities,” Cyntia Pérez, a community organizer, says in Centro’s release.
In the future, Brenda Perez says she hopes to see policy reform on the federal level to streamline the process for citizenship and to protect the U.S.’s Latine and Indigenous communities.
“We are going to be here after Trump,” Brenda Perez says. “We are going to be here regardless of what president implements any plan for massively deporting our communities, and therefore we deserve better policies.”
Centro del Pueblo’s hotline can be reached at (707) 200-8091.
Griffin Mancuso is a freelance journalist based in Eureka. More of his work can be found at griffinmancuso.wordpress.com.
This article appears in Know Your Rights.