If ICE tries to arrest immigrants at government offices, how will employees respond?

One Monday in February, an employee of the state’s Department of Human Services, which helps Tennesseans access benefits like Medicaid, got an unexpected meeting invitation in her inbox.

In the meeting, a supervisor told the employee and her colleagues to expect visits from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She says they were told to give ICE agents access to private back rooms without asking for a warrant, and to refrain from asking agents to show proof of their identities.

“I am horrified,” she told WPLN News. (The employee asked WPLN for anonymity because she fears retaliation at work.)

She says she spoke up and encouraged her colleagues not to comply with the new rules: “‘Are you joking? We absolutely do not have to do that,'” she said. “So, I told my coworkers, ‘We don’t have to do that.’ And my supervisor said, ‘Yeah, there’s some stuff I can’t say.’ And then she yielded the floor to me, so that I could tell them.”

The employee says she has alerted local immigrant rights activists, telling undocumented Tennesseans to interact with Human Services online or on the phone, rather than in-person at state offices.

Doug Russo, who leads Rose Immigration Law Firm in Nashville, says the employee is correct — the instructions from her supervisor give ICE more leeway than federal law requires. People are allowed to ask ICE agents for badges to prove their identities, and to ask for a warrant signed by a judge before allowing them into private spaces.

“It’s not the state’s job or the local government’s job to do. It’s not their job to help ICE,” he said.

But Russo added that the employee could still be disciplined or fired for disobeying her managers.

In an email, a Human Services spokesperson told WPLN News there had been no ICE raids on the department’s offices, but did not answer questions about what employees were told.

The Nashville mayor’s office said that, in the same situation, Metro employees would behave differently. They are supposed to ask for identification and then call Metro Legal. Russo says that response is closer to the letter of federal law.

“That’s basically what we would advise to our clients,” he said. “Confirm that it’s an actual ICE agent, confirm the purpose of the visit, and then immediately contact us.”