The pres­i­dent-elect cam­paigned on promis­es to deport mil­lions of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers and to tar­get immi­grants from Mus­lim coun­tries. While we don’t yet know Trump’s game plan for attack­ing immi­grant work­ers, here’s a check­list of five ques­tions to ask as your union or work­er cen­ter pre­pares to defend members:

Undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers are at risk both from the gov­ern­ment and from their employ­ers. Some­times employ­ers are under gov­ern­ment pres­sure them­selves. Oth­er times they’re using the threat of immi­gra­tion enforce­ment to dis­cour­age orga­niz­ing or keep work­place stan­dards low.

As the real­i­ty of a Don­ald Trump pres­i­den­cy sets in, unions and work­ers cen­ters are gear­ing up for a mas­sive fight to defend immi­grant mem­bers, build­ing on lessons from the past decade.

1 . What resources can you share with members?

Although laws may change, one con­crete step you can take right now is to orga­nize ​“Know Your Rights” train­ings and share resources.

For instance, every­one has the right to remain silent if they encounter immi­gra­tion officials.

“Many work­ers here are very wor­ried about what’s going to hap­pen to them under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion,” says Rigob­er­to Valdez, direc­tor of orga­niz­ing at UFCW Local 770 in Los Angeles.

Local 770 is work­ing with L.A. immi­grant advo­ca­cy groups to devel­op new mate­ri­als to help inform mem­bers of their legal rights. (Click here for a list of exist­ing resources, includ­ing a bilin­gual video in Eng­lish and Spanish.)

It’s impor­tant for mem­bers to know that they should nev­er share infor­ma­tion about their immi­gra­tion sta­tus with their employ­er or law enforce­ment, and that they should always car­ry with them the phone num­bers of their union and local legal services.

Groups should make clear that if work­ers are seek­ing a union and have already filed with the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board — either over unfair labor prac­tices or for a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion elec­tion — the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty has agreed to not engage in work­place enforcement.

The same applies to work­ers enforc­ing their rights under the Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Admin­is­tra­tion for health and safe­ty issues at work, or under the Depart­ment of Labor for wage and hour protections.

2 . How’s your con­tract language?

Does your union have con­tract nego­ti­a­tions com­ing up? Start talk­ing about how you can use bar­gain­ing to strength­en work­place pro­tec­tion for immi­grant members.

UNITE HERE Local 2850 in the Bay Area has won lan­guage that allows work­ers to take leaves of absence — and pro­tects their senior­i­ty — if they need time to com­plete immi­gra­tion paper­work. It bars employ­ers from penal­iz­ing work­ers who change their names or social secu­ri­ty numbers.

The con­tracts also lim­it how employ­ers coop­er­ate with Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment, ​“so they don’t go over and above what is required [by law],” says Pres­i­dent Wei-Ling Huber. And the local has nego­ti­at­ed a legal fund that employ­ers pay into, which mem­bers can draw on for immi­gra­tion-relat­ed cases.

Look at mod­el con­tract lan­guage on work autho­riza­tion and rever­i­fi­ca­tion, Social Secu­ri­ty no-match let­ters, changes in social secu­ri­ty num­bers, par­tic­i­pa­tion in E‑Verify pro­grams, and noti­fi­ca­tion of ICE raids and deten­tions. Down­load the Ser­vice Employ­ees (SEIU) ver­sion at labor​no​tes​.org/​i​m​m​i​g​r​ation.

3 . If your mem­bers don’t have union con­tracts, what oth­er tac­tics can you use to push employers?

There are bet­ter and worse ways for employ­ers to respond to audits and raids. You don’t need a con­tract to nego­ti­ate with employ­ers over this — and the first step is know­ing what their oblig­a­tions and choic­es are.

The Restau­rant Oppor­tu­ni­ties Cen­ter-Unit­ed and the Nation­al Employ­ment Law Project are prepar­ing fact sheets on what employ­ers should and shouldn’t do.

For exam­ple, ​“if an employ­er gets notice of an E‑Verify check or an ICE notice — they need to share that info with work­ers in a respon­si­ble way,” says Teó­fi­lo Reyes, nation­al research direc­tor at ROC-Unit­ed. ​“It can’t be a tool to get peo­ple to quit and leave.”

“You have to be able to give the employ­er some legal cov­er, so they are able to do the min­i­mum required under law,” says Mark Mein­ster of Ware­house Work­ers for Justice.

His group worked with oth­er Chica­go-area unions and work­er cen­ters to form the Dig­ni­ty Project in 2007. The coali­tion respond­ed to a slew of no-match let­ters sent by the Social Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion, main­ly in non-union workplaces.

The coali­tion set up a hot­line that work­ers could call, trained work­er advo­cates and unions on how to deal with employ­er threats, and sup­port­ed orga­niz­ing in work­places where mass fir­ings were loom­ing because of the let­ters. It saved about 500 jobs.

One les­son, Mein­ster said, was that on-the-job action was key. In one exam­ple, the boss at a soap fac­to­ry received mul­ti­ple no-match let­ters, putting work­ers’ jobs at risk. ​“A whole bunch of peo­ple walked out and were able to win that strike and force the com­pa­ny to rehire every­body,” Mein­ster said.

“The group has to take action togeth­er,” he says, ​“and that means doing a lot of work on the front end to unite peo­ple who might not be immi­grants or undoc­u­ment­ed. It’s best if you can take the posi­tion that either all of us work, or none of us work.”

4 . Can you join a rapid-response net­work or a com­mu­ni­ty coalition?

For unions that don’t have many immi­grant mem­bers, join­ing an exist­ing net­work is a con­crete way to sup­port immi­grant work­ers in your com­mu­ni­ty. Do you know what groups are orga­niz­ing around immi­gra­tion in your com­mu­ni­ty? Can you build rela­tion­ships and sup­port their work?

For those that do, when lead­ers are detained or fac­ing depor­ta­tion, unions and work­er cen­ters may have to respond quick­ly. What alliances could your union start build­ing now, so that you are ready if you need to defend tar­get­ed members?

A city­wide rapid-response net­work sup­port­ed the work­place actions in Chica­go by turn­ing out sup­port­ers for pick­ets and direct actions. In oth­er com­mu­ni­ties, such net­works can pro­vide expert sup­port in case of work­place or com­mu­ni­ty raids. The Nation­al Immi­gra­tion Law Cen­ter has tips on how to devel­op a rapid-response team by recruit­ing com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and immi­gra­tion attor­neys in advance of poten­tial raids.

The work­er cen­ter Desis Ris­ing Up and Mov­ing launched a local Hate Free Zone. A thou­sand peo­ple marched through the streets of Jack­son Heights, Queens, Decem­ber 2, to show their support.

“The mes­sage was ​‘we want to make sure our com­mu­ni­ty is safe, and peo­ple know it’s safe and are active­ly going to be pro­tect­ing each oth­er,” says Bas­ma Eid, an orga­niz­er with the nation­al work­er cen­ter alliance Enlace.

Pittsburgh’s chap­ter of the Labor Coali­tion for Latin Amer­i­can Advance­ment has been lead­ing a fight to free a local labor leader, Mar­tin Esquiv­el-Her­nan­dez, detained in a for-prof­it prison on immi­gra­tion charges. A hun­dred com­mu­ni­ty allies marched on Novem­ber 15 to demand his release. Migrant Jus­tice in Ver­mont has also mobi­lized com­mu­ni­ty sup­port to free sev­er­al farm­work­er lead­ers who were held in detention.

5 . Can you make your city or work­place a sanctuary?

Hun­dreds of coun­ties and dozens of cities across the U.S. have passed poli­cies lim­it­ing coop­er­a­tion with fed­er­al immi­gra­tion enforce­ment. Most include ​“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” poli­cies where cities com­mit not to ask res­i­dents about their immi­gra­tion sta­tus, and not to share that infor­ma­tion with ICE.

“We know that a sanc­tu­ary city pol­i­cy is not going to [com­plete­ly] resolve the prob­lem,” says Rosan­na Aran of the Laun­dry Work­ers Cen­ter, one of the groups work­ing to get such ordi­nances passed in Orange and East Orange, New Jer­sey. ​“But we are try­ing to cre­ate a safe space for the com­mu­ni­ty, a zone free of intim­i­da­tion and retaliation.”

Pass­ing such poli­cies and defend­ing them — Trump has threat­ened to cut off fed­er­al funds to sanc­tu­ary cities — are fights that unions can take on, says Andrea Mer­ca­do, cam­paign direc­tor of the Nation­al Domes­tic Work­ers Alliance.

“Labor unions often have a lot of polit­i­cal lever­age with polit­i­cal lead­ers that a lot of times immi­grant orga­ni­za­tions don’t have,” she says. ​“Insti­tu­tions that have those kinds of rela­tion­ships and access can push elect­ed lead­ers to step up.”

At school boards, teach­ers have used their lever­age to get sanc­tu­ary poli­cies passed, declar­ing schools to be safe zones.

Unit­ed Teach­ers Los Ange­les is part of a coali­tion push­ing to strength­en Los Angeles’s role as a sanc­tu­ary city. UTLA has already worked with the school dis­trict to ensure that teach­ers and oth­er school dis­trict staff do not track stu­dents’ immi­gra­tion sta­tus, and that ICE offi­cers can­not enter schools with­out per­mis­sion from the superintendent.

UTLA held a ​“Know Your Rights as Edu­ca­tors” forum in Decem­ber, where teach­ers got infor­ma­tion on Deferred Action for Child­hood Arrivals, Obama’s ini­tia­tive for undoc­u­ment­ed res­i­dents who came to the Unit­ed States as chil­dren. Union lead­ers facil­i­tat­ed dis­cus­sions of what con­cerns teach­ers were hear­ing from stu­dents and how the union could help build com­mu­ni­ty net­works to defend immi­grant families.

An emerg­ing sanc­tu­ary cam­pus move­ment is call­ing on col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties to declare their cam­pus­es as safe places for all stu­dents and cam­pus work­ers, regard­less of immi­gra­tion sta­tus. In Decem­ber, North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and work­ers orga­nized a del­e­ga­tion ask­ing the uni­ver­si­ty to declare the col­lege a sanc­tu­ary and sign onto a set of prin­ci­ples writ­ten by din­ing hall workers.

The fight ahead

We’re liv­ing in daunt­ing times, but all of us can start some­where. The Laun­dry Work­ers Cen­ter is start­ing, Aran says, by reach­ing out to work­ers with a mes­sage of courage. ​“We are explain­ing that they are not alone and we’re going to fight togeth­er and united.”

“There are going to be polices that make us feel that every­one has to retreat to their own com­mu­ni­ty and defend that,” says Valdez. ​“Sol­i­dar­i­ty amongst com­mu­ni­ties is what’s going to be key to defeat the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and not let our­selves be divided.”