It is the size of a credit card, comes in 19 languages and is in the pockets and purses of millions of immigrants.
The red card, as it is known by its bearers, lists a collection of practical tips and legal rights for immigrants who might find themselves targeted by federal agents.
Though the card has been around for almost two decades, interest in it has exploded over the last month amid a wave of anti-immigrant edicts from President Trump during his first days back in the White House. The nonprofit Immigrant Legal Resource Center has received orders from across the country for several million cards, a demand its printing contractor has rushed to meet.
Eliseo, a carpet installer in Northern California, keeps one in his wallet and another in his truck’s glove compartment. His wife, Maria, stores hers in the sleeve on the back of her cellphone. Their 13-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, has distributed them to classmates.
“You show agents the card,” said Eliseo, a father of three who has been in the United States for decades. “It does the talking.”
Like other undocumented immigrants interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition that he be identified by only his first name.
Every person in the United States, regardless of immigration status, is guaranteed certain protections under the Constitution. The card highlights some that are particularly relevant to undocumented immigrants, including the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and the Fourth Amendment right to refuse entry to the home unless an agent has a warrant signed by a judge.
But as fundamental as those rights are, they have created friction in the fight over how the country should address illegal immigration and how the authorities should treat the millions of undocumented people who live and work in the United States.
For many of those immigrants, asserting the rights outlined on the red card could be the difference between being deported and staying in the country. For Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies trying to deliver on the president’s pledge to carry out mass deportations, those same rights are a roadblock.
“They call it ‘Know Your Rights,’” the president’s so-called border czar, Thomas D. Homan, said last month on CNN. “I call it, ‘How to escape arrest.’”
Immigration was a defining issue for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and he returned to the White House promising a crackdown. In the administration’s early days, ICE highlighted immigration raids and deportation flights, but federal agents have struggled to meet the president’s expectations. Mr. Homan and others have blamed local officials, immigrant-rights groups and the news media for hindering enforcement efforts.
Though deportation actions have yielded fewer arrests than promised, they have nonetheless stirred widespread fear and spurred efforts to ensure immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, understand their legal protections. Organizations have been holding “know-your-rights” sessions to teach immigrants that they can withhold personal information and refuse to sign any documents. The proliferation of the red cards underscores the growing anxiety, and the expanding efforts to counter it.
Since the election, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, which is headquartered in San Francisco, has received orders for about nine million cards, more than in the previous 17 years combined. Most of the orders are from nonprofits that provide them to schools, churches, clinics and food banks, which then distribute them to immigrants.
Caryn Shapiro, a high school teacher in Columbus, Ohio, said that she had handed out cards in nine languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Pashto and Ukrainian. “The kids, no matter what their status, are terrified of ICE,” she said.
On a recent day, the printing company contracted to produce the cards was churning them out by the hundreds of thousands. “Our whole staff is working on red cards,” said Troy Jones, who co-owns the company, Printed Union, in San Jose, Calif.
In one room, a printer was spitting out 12,000 sheets per hour, each with 84 cards in Chinese. In another room, boxes of cards labeled “Ukrainian” and “Russian” sat side by side on a rack. Stacks in Arabic, Farsi, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Punjabi and Tigrinya were ready to be packed, and the first batches in Amharic, Khmer and Portuguese would soon be shipped.
A computer generated labels for orders — to both red and blue states. “It’s literally every single state you can imagine we are shipping to,” said Mr. Jones, after taking a call from a nun in Minnesota requesting 250 in Spanish. “People need these as fast as possible.”
Immigrants from Alabama to Alaska have been packing information sessions. TODEC, a legal-aid organization in Southern California, has distributed about 500,000 cards and held a training class this week titled, “The Power of the Red Card,” which drew 300 participants.
“The red card is a very, very powerful tool,” Sandra Reyes, an educational coordinator at TODEC, said at the session.
“You might get nervous if an agent stops you,” she said. “Just take the card out and read it, or hand it over without uttering a word.”
After attending a TODEC event last month, an undocumented construction worker said that he was stopped by agents en route to church on Feb. 2.
When the worker, Luiz, 40, was asked if he had “papers” he handed the agents the red card and said nothing, he recalled. After he was ordered out of his car, the agents pressured him to disclose his immigration status, Luiz said. He said he remained silent and shook his head when asked if he had been in trouble with the law.
Luiz said that after they reviewed his Mexican identification card from his wallet, the agents checked his record and let him go. “The red card saved me,” he said. “I tell all my friends, just show the card and shut up.”
Mark Silverman was a lawyer with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center when he hatched the idea of the card in 2006, after a spate of immigration raids at workplaces fueled fear among immigrants.
The goal was to make the card small enough to slip into a wallet or a pocket. It was intentionally red, a color associated with “Stop” and that calls to mind the card that soccer referees use to eject players.
“I never predicted that the card would have such a long life,” said Mr. Silverman, who retired in 2018, “or ever be in such great demand.”
In California’s Central Valley, a fieldworker named Felipe was driving three co-workers to harvest lettuce on a recent Sunday before sunrise.
When agents pulled them over, Felipe, a 49-year-old immigrant and father of three children born in the United States, grabbed the card from his dashboard.
The agent scrutinized it and looked annoyed, Felipe said.
Another agent pressured the men to divulge their immigration status. Felipe produced only his California driver’s license.
“What do you want from us?” he recalled telling them. “We aren’t criminals. We have rights.”
Soon the men were back on their way to work.
