Making a Family Emergency Plan
Marco Reyes has had his green card for over a year now, and he still checks the locks twice before bed. Two decades of living without immigration status built reflexes that don’t disappear with a change in status, and one of those reflexes was never having a plan for what would happen if someone came to the door. His family got lucky. Not every family does. If you’re reading this page, you’re already doing the thing that matters most: thinking about it before you have to.
An enforcement encounter, whether it involves ICE, local police, or something you didn’t see coming, is disorienting by design. People who’ve been through one consistently say the same thing: everything happened fast, nothing made sense in the moment, and the decisions they wish they’d thought through beforehand were the ones they had to make on the spot. A family emergency plan isn’t about expecting the worst. It’s about making sure the people you love aren’t left guessing if something does happen.
This page walks through the practical household logistics of building that plan. It doesn’t cover what to do during an encounter, that’s covered on the ICE at home page, or what happens after someone is detained, which is covered on the detention page. This is the “before” page. The preparation you do now, on a calm afternoon, so your family isn’t starting from zero during a crisis.
Power of Attorney for Your Children
If a parent is detained, the most urgent question isn’t legal strategy. It’s who picks up the kids from school. Who takes them to the doctor. Who signs permission slips. Without a legal document in place, the answer to all of those questions is potentially “nobody,” at least not without a fight.
California offers two tools here, and they’re different in important ways. A caregiver’s authorization affidavit allows a non-parent to enroll a child in school and authorize school-related medical care. If the caregiver is a qualified relative, such as a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or sibling, the affidavit can also authorize broader medical and dental care. A non-relative caregiver is limited to school enrollment and school-required medical care like immunizations and physicals. The affidavit is relatively easy to fill out, doesn’t require a lawyer, and is generally accepted by California schools and healthcare providers. But it’s limited. It doesn’t give the caregiver legal custody of the child, and it can be challenged or may not hold up in more complex situations like custody disputes.
A power of attorney for a minor is broader. It allows a parent to delegate decision-making authority over a child’s care, including healthcare and education, to a designated person during a period when the parent is unable to act. “Durable” means it stays in effect even if you become unreachable. However, a power of attorney doesn’t transfer legal custody, it can be revoked by either parent at any time, and some institutions may not be familiar with it or may hesitate to accept it. For long-term situations or contested custody, a court-appointed guardianship may ultimately be necessary. Both parents should designate someone, and ideally the same person, though that’s a family conversation. The designated person should know they’ve been named, should have a copy of the document, and should understand what it means.
You don’t need to pay a private attorney to get this done. Free legal clinics across California prepare these documents regularly, and many community organizations host “family preparedness” workshops specifically for this purpose. The find legal help page can point you toward clinics in your area. Getting a power of attorney prepared now, while things are calm, takes an afternoon. Trying to get one after a parent has been detained takes much longer and may not be possible at all.
Document Storage and Access
In a crisis, the first thing anyone helping your family will need is paperwork. Immigration documents, identification, birth certificates for every family member, financial records, court documents if any exist. The question isn’t whether you have these things. It’s whether someone other than you can find them.
Start with physical copies. Keep originals of critical documents, passports, green cards, birth certificates, DACA approval notices, work permits, in a secure location at home that a trusted person knows about. A fireproof box or a locked file folder both work. What doesn’t work is a stack of papers in a drawer that only you can identify.
Then make backups. Photograph or scan every important document and store digital copies in a place a trusted family member or friend can access. A shared cloud folder, a USB drive left with someone you trust, even emailing copies to a designated person, all serve the same purpose. The goal is redundancy. If your phone is confiscated, if your house is inaccessible, the documents still exist somewhere your family can reach them.
Finally, make a list. Write down what documents you have, where the originals are stored, where the digital copies live, and who has access. Keep a copy of this list with the person you’ve designated in your power of attorney. The paper trail page covers what documents to keep and why, and the document checklists page can help you figure out if anything’s missing.
Phone Tree and Emergency Contacts
When someone is detained, their phone is typically confiscated. That means every number stored in that phone, the immigration attorney, the trusted cousin, the community organization hotline, is gone unless it exists somewhere else. The single most practical thing you can do right now is write your emergency contacts down on paper.
Your phone tree should include, at minimum, the name and number of an immigration attorney or legal aid organization, a trusted family member who can take immediate action, the school or childcare provider’s emergency line, and a community organization hotline that handles detention emergencies. The find legal help page lists hotlines and legal aid organizations by region.
Write these numbers on a small card. Give copies to your spouse, to the person designated in your power of attorney, and to at least one other trusted person outside your immediate household. Keep one in your wallet. The card doesn’t need to explain anything. It’s a list of phone numbers. But when someone is trying to figure out who to call at nine o’clock at night, that card is the difference between action and paralysis.
Talk through the phone tree with your family so everyone knows the order. Who gets called first. Who calls the school. Who contacts the attorney. Assigning roles in advance means no one has to figure it out in real time.
What to Tell Children
Children in mixed-status families often know more than their parents think they do. They hear conversations. They pick up on tension. They notice when a parent goes quiet after checking the mail. The anxiety they absorb without context is almost always worse than an honest, age-appropriate conversation.
The conversation isn’t about everything that could go wrong. It’s about who will take care of them and that they are loved. For younger children, that might sound like: “If Mommy or Daddy ever has to go away for a while, Tía Maria will pick you up from school and take care of you and keep you safe. You are loved, and we will do everything we can to be back together.” The instinct is to promise that everything will be fine and that you’ll be home soon, but in an enforcement situation no parent can promise the timing or the outcome. Reassure honestly: name who will care for them, make clear they are loved, and say you will do everything you can, without promising a return you can’t control. For older children and teenagers, the conversation can include more detail about the plan itself, where the documents are, who to call, what rights they have at school.
What matters most is that the child hears it from you, in your words, before they hear it from somewhere else. Several California community organizations offer resources specifically designed to help families have this conversation, including guides in multiple languages and workshops facilitated by counselors who work with immigrant families. Your child’s school counselor may also be a resource, particularly in districts with large immigrant populations where staff have been trained on these issues.
School and Childcare Notification
Schools operate on paperwork. If a parent is detained, the school’s existing emergency contact list and authorized pickup list are what the remaining family will rely on to make sure someone can collect the children and communicate with the school. If those lists are out of date, or if the only authorized adults are the parents themselves, the system breaks down at exactly the wrong moment.
Update your school’s emergency contact information to include at least one person outside your immediate household who is authorized to pick up your children and make decisions on their behalf. This should be the same person named in your power of attorney. If your children attend different schools or a separate childcare provider, update each one independently, they don’t share records.
You don’t need to explain why you’re updating the list. Schools in California are used to families updating emergency contacts, and under state law, schools generally don’t inquire into immigration status. If you’re enrolling a child for the first time, the documents page covers what schools can and can’t ask for.
Financial Access if Someone Is Detained
Detention doesn’t pause rent, utility bills, or car payments. If the person who manages the household finances is suddenly unreachable, the family needs someone who can access bank accounts, pay bills, and keep things running. This is a logistics problem, and it has logistics solutions.
If you have a bank account, check whether your spouse or a trusted family member is listed as a joint account holder or an authorized signer. A joint account holder can access the full account. An authorized signer can perform transactions but may face limitations depending on the bank. If neither option is in place, setting one up now is straightforward at most banks and credit unions.
Know where your financial records are stored, including account numbers, online banking credentials, and any automatic payment information. Add this to the document list described in the storage section above. If rent is paid by check, someone needs to know where the checkbook is. If bills are on autopay, someone needs to know which account they draw from and when.
One additional consideration: if someone in your family is detained and is eligible for bond, posting that bond can require access to significant funds quickly. Not everyone in detention is eligible for bond, and some people are subject to mandatory detention with no bond option. Bond amounts vary and can be substantial. Knowing in advance where the money would come from, whether family savings, a community lending circle, or a bond fund operated by a nonprofit, can save days of scrambling during a crisis. The detention page covers more about how bond works and when it’s available.
Keep the Plan Current
A family emergency plan with the wrong phone numbers, an old address, or a power of attorney naming someone who moved out of state isn’t a plan. It’s a piece of paper. Review your plan whenever something significant changes: a new address, a new school, a new attorney, a change in anyone’s immigration status, a change in the designated caregiver’s situation.
Set a reminder to review the plan at least once a year even if nothing obvious has changed. Phone numbers go out of service. Relationships shift. Attorneys change firms. A quick check once a year, updating contacts and making sure documents are still accessible, takes less than an hour and keeps the plan functional.
If your immigration case is moving through any kind of active process, whether it’s a pending application, a court date, or a renewal cycle, treat each milestone as a prompt to review. The plan should reflect your family’s situation right now, not the situation you were in when you first wrote it down.
Next Steps
Start with the power of attorney. If you don’t have one designating someone to care for your children, that’s the single most important gap to close. The find legal help page lists free and low-cost clinics across California where you can get this document prepared, often in a single visit. From there, gather your critical documents, make copies, and store them as described above. Write your phone tree on paper and give copies to at least three people. Have the conversation with your children, even a short one, even if it feels hard. Update your school’s emergency contact and pickup lists this week, not next month. And if you don’t have an immigration attorney or know which legal aid organization serves your area, the find help page is the place to start.
This page is general information, not legal advice, and your situation may be different. Before making any decisions, talk to a qualified immigration attorney or accredited representative. Free and low-cost legal help is available in California.
