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Fisher Phillips Insights 3/24/26
California employers have until March 30 to give employees an opportunity to designate emergency contacts to be notified if they are detained or arrested at work. This requirement is part of the state’s new Workplace Know Your Rights Act, which Governor Newsom signed into law last year in response to current federal immigration activity. While employees may decline to designate emergency contacts, employers must give them a chance to do so before the impending deadline or during onboarding for employees hired after that date. We’ll explain what employers must do to comply, as well as some best practices, and offer four practical steps you can take now to avoid violations and penalties.
Overview of California’s Workplace Know Your Rights Act
The new law, which took effect January 1, requires employers to:
This Insight will focus on the second bullet point above, including when and how employers must allow employees to choose whether to name an emergency contact who should be notified if they are arrested or detained while on the job. Read more
To view a copy of the presentation slides, please click here.
Tuesday, February 24 — 12:00 pm Pacific Time Online
This webinar will examine what we can learn from nonviolent civil protest movements in other parts of the world. John Shattuck, former president of Central European University in Hungary, where he defended academic freedom against a rising authoritarian government, and Oliver Kaplan, author of Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves, will join as panelists.
As civil protest becomes top of mind to many people across the country, experts Shattuck and Kaplan will set the U.S.’s current movement in a global context and discuss what we can learn from strategies of nonviolent resistance movements globally.
More information & register here - https://theconversationus.cmail19.com/t/r-e-tkkulitl-otjlyejid-i/
Left to Right: Demonstration against xenophobic state anti-immigrant policy, Budapest, October 2, 2016 (Anita Szeicz/Pressenza). Protest against ICE after the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, Minneapolis, January 9, 2026 (Octavio Jones/AFP). Thousands march in Bogota - Colombia's capital protesting electoral violence - June 15, 2025 (Reuters).
Stop AAPI Hate - Commentary Data Blog, February 2026
In January, a Hmong American person from Minnesota submitted a chilling report to Stop AAPI Hate: “ICE [is] going door to door in Minneapolis trying to get neighbors to report where Hmong people are living […] ICE agents are asking [them] to report any Asians in the neighborhood.”
Similar reports have surfaced online, confirming that ICE and DHS in Minnesota are targeting Hmong people: staking out Hmong businesses, patrolling immigrant-rich neighborhoods, and terrorizing families that have called America home for decades.
What is happening to Minnesota’s Hmong families reveals the racism underpinning Trump’s anti-immigrant operation. It also signals what could lie ahead for other Asian communities nationwide.
That’s why in this edition of Keeping Count, we’re shedding light on who Hmong Americans are, the roots of their resettlement in Minnesota, and the ways in which local communities continue to resist federal attacks on their rights and their livelihoods.
[READ MORE]
AAPI Data, October 2025
Most AAPI adults cite the importance of the economy, jobs, and inflation, and few approve of how Trump is handling them. AAPI support for the administration's immigration enforcement tactics is low. [Read more]
Press Democrat 1/28/26
Santa Rosa City Council member Victoria Fleming has called on her fellow city representatives to pass a local ordinance prohibiting federal immigration operations on city-owned property.
In an open letter addressed to Santa Rosa residents, Fleming condemned President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign that has escalated in recent weeks across Minnesota communities, resulting in the fatal shooting of two residents by federal agents in as many weeks.
Fleming characterized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, as a quasi-military organization emboldened by the federal administration to act with impunity to send a message “not just to immigrants, but to all of us.”
“What we are witnessing from ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is not ‘targeted law enforcement.’ It is the beginning of a domestic paramilitary — weaponizing fear, vilifying communities of color, and deliberately targeting states governed by this administration’s political opponents,” she wrote in the Wednesday afternoon email.
Local government officials can no longer sit idly by, she said, equating silence and inaction to complicity.
[Read more at Press Democrat]
She asked that the city support creating so-called ICE-free zones that would prohibit immigration officers from operating on city-owned property and policies that require a judicial warrant for ICE to access city-owned property, resources and communications.
Fleming appears to be the first local official to openly call for the city to follow steps taken in other Bay Area communities. Alameda County on Tuesday adopted an ordinance banning federal immigration enforcement activities on county buildings and requiring all law enforcement officers to identify themselves upon entry ordinances. The San Jose City Council adopted a similar policy earlier in January and Santa Clara County did so last October.
A working group of Sonoma County supervisors is studying developing an ICE-free zones policy amid renewed pressure from community groups to take action.
Fleming said Santa Rosa must step up to protect immigrant communities “and affirm that our city will not be used as a staging ground for fear.”
“Our city’s resources and our public facilities exist to serve our residents — to provide safety, shelter, services and opportunity — not to be used as launching points for enforcement actions that invoke fear, tear families apart, and destabilize entre communities,” she wrote.
“I ask my colleagues to stand with me in drawing a line and in affirming that Santa Rosa is a city of courage,” she added.
Her comments come on the heels of the council’s Tuesday meeting where Council member Caroline Bañuelos reiterated earlier calls for the city to take a stand against the immigration crackdown.
Bañuelos, a seasoned civic advocate and longtime community organizer who became the first member to publicly identify as Latina when elected in 2024, said she decided to speak out because she could no longer remain silent.
“I keep asking myself when did we become a country that allows cruelty and inhumanity to be normalized,” she said during her Tuesday remarks. “Even though we have not seen these kinds of acts here, we’re very lucky, I don’t believe we can bury our heads in the sand and think it can’t happen here or to someone that we know or even to ourselves.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
You can reach Staff Writer Paulina Pineda at 707-521-5268 or paulina.pineda@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @paulinapineda22.
Thu, February 5, 2026 at 5 PM (PT) Virtual event
Free Registration HERE
On 1/24/26, federal agents horrifically shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who cared for veterans, in the Eat Street neighborhood of south Minneapolis after brutally beating him in front of witnesses.
Enough is enough. Exercising our Constitutional right to document and record ICE and other federal agents is more important than ever. This call will give you the tools to exercise your rights in a moment when federal agents are terrorizing our communities and using excessive force.
Join our call, Eyes on Ice: Document and Record on Thursday, February 5th, 2026 at 8:00 pm ET. RSVP for Link.
We will cover the latest updates on ICE and CBP's out-of-control and dangerous operations. We will talk through rights when documenting and recording law enforcement encounters, and how you can continue to take action.
RSVP NOW.
Indivisible is managing registration, data, and communications with participants for this event, and will be sharing data collected via this form with our NO KINGS event co-hosts and partner organizations. By registering for this event, you agree to receive info from Indivisible about this event, and to receive communications via e-mail or SMS message from us and other NO KINGS partner organizations that Indivisible may share your data with. Indivisible will treat your data according to our organization’s applicable privacy policy: https://indivisible.org/privacy-policy
Friday, February 6, 20261:00 pm - 2:30 pm PT on Zoom Free to Register - Register HERE Organized by the National Immigration Project in Washington, D.C.
This training will go over the Parental Interest Directive and parental rights and children’s rights in the ICE arrest, detention, and deportation contexts. We will also cover emerging risks in this enforcement environment and some ways that parents might navigate and lessen those risks.
This training is for non-attorney advocates, including organizers and others supporting community members facing immigration enforcement, as well as parents who might face arrest and detention.
This training will be presented in English with Spanish simultaneous interpretation and is not eligible for CLE credit.
Questions? Please contact events@nipnlg.org.
In recent weeks my 80-year-old Asian American parents have started to carry their passports each time they leave their suburban townhouse. Neighbors on their Ring doorbell app will alert users when ICE agents are spotted on nearby roads. My mom has canceled appointments after receiving such warnings. A practical woman, she says she’s in a game of “cat and mouse” with federal agents, and she’ll be damned if she gives them the upper hand.
This is something the headlines often miss when describing what it’s like to be living with ICE in Minnesota.
We know that federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti. We’ve learned that agents have approached and detained residents who appear to be “foreign” at grocery stores and bus stops. We’ve seen the picture of 5-year-old Liam, with his Spider-Man backpack and animal snow hat, before he and his dad were taken by federal agents. We’ve watched the horrific videos of masked agents tackling, cuffing and dragging U.S. citizens through the street — or parading them into the arctic chill in their boxers — and later releasing them, without apology.
On Saturday morning, Pretti, an ICU nurse, was killed by a Border Patrol agent while holding his phone to record a chaotic scene. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Pretti lost his life on Eat Street, a corridor revived by immigrants. Believe the video that shows Pretti was a helper. He was helping a woman whom an agent violently shoved to the ground. He was helping document the actions by federal agents so that the truth could be preserved.
Maybe Pretti knew how difficult life was becoming for those around him. A quiet, pervasive fear that has taken root in the Twin Cities, forcing some people of color who are not even immigrants to change our behaviors. We take extra precautions. We carry the passport. And we question our belonging.
Federal agents have been recorded on video, acknowledging that they’re homing in on individuals who speak with foreign accents. In one encounter, a man named Ramon Menera had just returned home to Columbia Heights with his daughter after getting ice cream when he was approached by a Border Patrol agent.
“Now, talking to you, hearing that you have an accent, I have reason to believe you are not born of this country,” the agent says in the video.
In other videos, shot at my local Costco parking lot, agents are seen politely asking random shoppers unloading their carts if they are U.S. citizens.
These interactions with agents are almost as chilling as footage of their violent tactics. Such videos normalize unabashed racial profiling by our federal government. It’s clear that anyone who looks or sounds anything but “American” is now viewed with suspicion.
This comes at a heartbreaking cost. Last week a video of an Asian American boy from Iowa circulated widely on social media. He’s 12, his name is Max and he wears a soccer uniform and a tournament medal around his neck. But instead of celebrating his team’s victory, he breaks down crying, describing to his mom the jeers he heard from the other team’s goalie.
“These guys told me I’m an illegal immigrant, even though I was born in America,” he said. “He said Trump is gonna get me and send me back to where I used to live. I was born in America!”
He’s trying to apply logic here, but the math won’t math.
We’re living in a nightmare where a kid who should be elated over his team’s win is processing that some of his peers see him as a second-class citizen. He is feeling the humiliation and denigration that can come with being different, which is something all people of color have experienced. But this time the hate is powered by a schoolyard bully who happens to be the president of the United States.
Somali Americans in Minnesota, says Trump, should “go back to where they came from,” a slur that so many kids from immigrant families have heard. Only now, it is repeated by children who cite the leader of the free world.
What troubles me is how far we are regressing.
Asian Americans, in particular, have always struggled with being perceived as perpetual outsiders, no matter how long we’ve lived in the country. When immigrants of my parents’ generation started families here in the 1970s, many of them figured their children would fit in and thrive here, so long as they gave their children Western names and made sure they could speak perfect American English. I always felt they went overboard, that we didn’t have to whitewash ourselves to gain acceptance. A half-century later, I’m thinking maybe my parents were onto something.
In the initial weeks of the ICE surge in Minnesota, I refused to carry my passport, an act of defiance in a country I no longer recognize. I worried more about my mom, who has a master’s degree in English but speaks with a Taiwanese accent, and my dad, an Army veteran who grew up in the Midwest but has Alzheimer’s and struggles with his words.
But the other night, after hearing from Twin Cities police chiefs that their officers of color have been harassed by federal agents demanding paperwork, I uploaded my passport to my Apple Wallet, just to be safe. It felt like a compromise I could live with.
A document that once made me proud of all the places I’ve traveled is now a badge to prove I belong. It speaks volumes that a person like me is scared — somebody with so many privileges, including my perfect American English.
Aren’t you scared, too?
Laura Yuen is a reporter and columnist for the Minnesota Star-Tribune.
As Sonoma County supervisors entered the chambers after a recess at their regular meeting Tuesday, many in the packed room clapped as Supervisor Chris Coursey took his seat at the dais.
It was the first meeting since Coursey broke with his colleagues in calling for an end to any communication sharing between the county Sheriff’s Office and Immigration and Customs Enforcement through the jail. It was also the first time supervisors gathered since 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse, was shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis as he attempted to film them and help another protester – the second fatal shooting by federal officers in as many weeks in the city that’s become the latest focal point in President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
The incident sparked fresh outrage and waves of protests across the country, including in Sonoma County.
After years of pressure on the sheriff and county to cut all ties with federal immigration officials, Tuesday’s meeting marked a new, raw point in the local debate about how to address, if not confront, the increasingly aggressive and legally questionable immigration enforcement being carried out under Trump’s second administration.
Up until now, supervisors have voiced strong support for immigrant communities and crafted policies and dedicated resources to bolster local protections, while endorsing the sheriff’s policy of sharing only limited information sharing with ICE – about inmates convicted of serious or violent crimes, a more restrictive threshold even than mandated under state law.
Speakers on Tuesday cheered Coursey’s change of heart, which he made public in a Jan. 20 statement that stopped short of calling on his colleagues to do the same or pressuring the sheriff to actually change course.
“The moment to come forward – publicly, forcefully – is now,” said Scott Johnson, a west county resident.
Through at times tearful and frustrated testimony, speakers urged fellow supervisors to take a similar stance and to push the Sheriff’s Office to shift as well. Many were longtime advocates, but others were moved by recent events to speak for the first time.
While there was no sign of additional shift on the board, supervisors grappled publicly with the shockwaves unleashed after Pretti’s killing and wider reckoning over Trump’s immigration crackdown, with thousands of ICE and Border Patrol agents deployed in the latest American city.
“We all know the amount of stress our nation, our state, other states in our country, have been under,” said board Chair Rebecca Hermosillo. “Our focus has been to work diligently on tangible efforts that will help mitigate the impacts of ICE when they come to our community.”
Supervisor Rebecca Hermosillo attends the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors meeting at the Sonoma County Administration Building in Sonoma Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. (Beth Schlanker / The Press-Democrat)
Hermosillo and Supervisor Lynda Hopkins have led efforts to enhance protections and resources for local immigrant communities as part of an board committee formed to address mounting concerns. Hermosillo highlighted training and protocols for county staff on interacting with ICE, a clearinghouse website with local support resources, a soon-to-be-released countywide immigration enforcement response plan and the development of an “ICE-free zones” policy in progress, as well as a new $15,000 grant to the North Bay Rapid Response Network, a 24-hour hotline for reporting and responding to local ICE activity.
Hermosillo and Hopkins also noted that they were meeting with immigrant service providers to identify other gaps to be filled. “There is more to do,” Hermosillo said. “I just wanted to share that I understand how challenging it is right now to be a U.S. citizens, to be a person of color in this nation, and we are working as best we can to help protect everyone.”
Supervisor David Rabbitt sought to add to comments he made in an interview with The Press Democrat last week following Coursey’s statement and before Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis. In that interview, Rabbitt said in part that ICE officers were being put in difficult situations by higher ups and that he believed most federal agents sought to use best practices and ensure public safety. On Tuesday, speaking from the dais, he said he was misquoted, though he has not reached out to The Press Democrat to request any correction.
He called the two fatal shootings in Minneapolis “a horrific tragedy that should concern every American.”
Supervisors David Rabbitt, left, and Chris Coursey attend the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors meeting at the Sonoma County Administration Building in Sonoma Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. (Beth Schlanker / The Press-Democrat)”I totally understand the angst, the frustration. I want to stand and shout. This is horrible and needs to stop. At the same time, who are we looking out for? Who are we trying to protect?… For me, that really needs to take center stage,” Rabbitt said. He referenced his support for all of the measures taken by the county so far, but also the sheriff’s public safety considerations in communicating with ICE.
“We are all dealing with what’s happening in Minneapolis and across the country perhaps in different ways and taking different tacks. I believe here at the county, our number one concern is to make sure that – the people that we’re all concerned about – we take the decisions that are best for them at heart. Sometimes that flies in the face of making statements for statements’ sake.”
For his part, Coursey said “I’m not a person who makes a lot of statements just for the sake of making statements… but it’s important for people to raise their voices now when you see things that they cannot support in any way, and those are the things that are happening in other parts of this country, not here, but we all live in the same country.” He emphasized that his statement was “a personal decision.” “It was me following my own inner compass,” he said, while thanking Hermosillo and Hopkins for their work. “I believe that it’s valuable work toward the same goal for all of us.”
The roughly two dozen people who lined up to speak didn’t disagree, but it wasn’t enough for many.
“I really respect the work we’re trying to do with the ad hoc, and it’s not enough. We really need the noncollaboration ordinance with ICE. It seems like a little thing in the midst of everything, but our community has been fighting for this for years,” said Jennifer Fish, a Santa Rosa physician who said she works daily with at-risk immigrants. “Handing people over to ICE is immoral. It puts our community at higher risk,” she said, pointing to increasingly dire conditions at ICE detention facilities.
“Alex Pretti really hits home for me because he was a nurse,” she added. “He could be me. He may be in the future.”
You can reach senior reporter Marisa Endicott at 707-521-5470 or marisa.endicott@pressdemocrat.com. On X @marisaendicott and Facebook @InYourCornerTPD.
Asian American Pacific Islander Coalition of North Bay is a 501(c)(3) community-based nonprofit organization.122 Calistoga Road, #357, Santa Rosa, CA 95409.
