Council Member Joseph asks about armed ICE shelter incident protocols
Council Member Joseph asks what staff are instructed to do when armed and masked federal agents enter shelters without permission. Ali says DSS revised protocols and flow charts, and frontline staff should photograph warrants and let legal counsel determine whether entry is allowed.
In the audit, finding included description of a February 2025 situation in which armed and masked agencies enter the shelter facility without permission of agency staff.
What are we instructing staff to do in such situation if there's a training and such policies?
Because I know even when they were asking questions for them to identify themselves, they just pushed into the shelter and just went about.
What protocols are in place?
I think that that's a very important question.
DSS has issued and revised protocols for frontline agency staff and updated a flow chart that's going to be posted at every shelter on what to do if they face that encounter.
And right now they're working to incorporate and strengthen those best practices in its trainings.
I think the most important and critical piece here is that frontline staff know that they are not alone.
loan in making a determination if an agency is coming in, if they are allowed to enter the facility.
And by that, I mean if someone comes in and presents themselves as a federal enforcement agency and says, I have a warrant, you know, they will take that warrant and not make an assessment.
Is it just a warrant?
Are they allowed entry?
They will take a photograph, flag that for their legal counsel, and only the legal counsel will be making that determination on who enters.
So there are a series of protocols that have been put in place to prevent that and really protect the frontline staff and make sure that they're equipped to protect anyone who is in the shelter.
Thank you.
But we've seen how aggressive ICE has been on the ground.
So I don't know how much pushback.
Sometimes they can do.
So we have to probably revisit that conversation.
Absolutely.
And this is part of the IRC's work in continuing to engage the agencies because what we're seeing now and what we anticipate is that immigration enforcement will continue to evolve.
And so that forces us and requires us to continuously look at our policies as well.