Roasting MAASIN’s ICE Safety Plan: Liability Laundering Disguised as Care
- Edward Francis
- Jan 26
- 4 min read
There are documents that are clumsy. There are documents that are misguided. And then there are documents that are so reckless they quietly dare catastrophe to prove them wrong.
MAASIN’s ICE Safety Plan for marching groups falls squarely into the last category.
MAASIN (the Marching Arts Safety & Inclusion Network) is an advocacy organization focused on safety, equity, and inclusion within the marching arts. Because its materials are often treated as best-practice guidance by drum corps and marching organizations, documents circulated by MAASIN carry real influence — and real consequences.
This is not a critique of intentions. It is a critique of design, power, and consequences.
Because when youth organizations start circulating quasi–incident-response doctrine for federal law enforcement encounters, something has gone profoundly off the rails.
The document may be viewed below:
1. This Isn’t “Awareness.” It’s Operational Doctrine.
The plan does not merely say “know your rights” or “contact legal counsel.” It instructs staff and volunteers to:
identify ICE and alleged collaborators
collect and transmit structured intelligence (size, action, location, uniform, time, equipment)
initiate internal risk assessments
record law enforcement encounters
refuse entry unless a judicial warrant is produced
escort people to designated “safe zones”
manage detainment scenarios while restricting information flow
That is incident response. Not education. Not preparedness. Incident response.
And it is being handed to:
band directors
caption heads
volunteers
chaperones
instructional staff
People with no law-enforcement training, no legal authority, and no institutional protection.
2. The Core Contradiction: “Don’t Engage” vs. “Engage Correctly”
The document repeatedly tells readers not to engage with law enforcement — and then immediately provides scripts, prompts, warrant language, recording guidance, and escalation protocols.
You cannot have it both ways.
You cannot tell people:
“Never engage with ICE if you can avoid it”
and then provide a step-by-step guide for how to engage just enough to ask questions, refuse consent, record, move people, and coordinate responses.
That contradiction is not a typo. It is a structural failure.
3. The Quiet Racism Built Into the Threat Model
This plan sends a clear, chilling message to the very communities ICE primarily targets — people of color, immigrants, and mixed-status families:
You are in danger here.
By circulating a formal “ICE Safety Plan” inside youth arts organizations, the activity is effectively announcing that ICE presence is plausible, expected, and imminent at rehearsals and shows. That message does not land evenly.
For white, citizen families, this reads as abstract preparedness. For targeted communities, it reads as a warning flare.
It quietly tells them:
your presence may attract enforcement
your participation may put others at risk
your safety is conditional
your body is the variable that requires contingency planning
That is how people get culled without anyone saying the word exclusion.
When a parent sees this document, the rational response is not reassurance — it is withdrawal. When a performer sees it, the rational response is fear. When a staff member sees it, the rational response is avoidance.
No one has to say “you don’t belong here.” The message is already delivered.
This is how structural racism operates: not through explicit prohibition, but through risk displacement that predictably drives marginalized people out of shared spaces.
And the most damning part is that this exclusion is achieved under the banner of safety.
4. The Liability Laundering Problem
MAASIN includes extensive disclaimers stating that:
this is not legal advice
laws vary by location
organizations should consult counsel
MAASIN assumes no responsibility
And yet it distributes a template that requires people to make real-time legal judgments under stress.
This is liability laundering.
The risk is displaced downward:
from governing bodies to individual organizations
from organizations to staff
from staff to volunteers
from adults to environments filled with minors
If something goes wrong, everyone will be told:
“You should have consulted counsel.”
That is not protection. That is abandonment.
5. The Unspoken Catastrophe Question
Here is the question no one wants to answer, so let’s answer it.
What happens if:
one child is detained
one child is injured
one child is separated from their group
one child panics and runs
one child is killed
At a rehearsal. At a show. On a tour stop.
Who owns that?
The volunteer who followed the template? The staff member who called it in? The organization that tried to comply? The governing body that distributed the plan?
Because history is very clear about this: when tragedy happens, institutions point down, not up.
Do you really think the activity survives that?
6. What This Document Accidentally Admits
By circulating this plan, MAASIN implicitly admits:
youth arts organizations are politically exposed
legal protection is inadequate
touring groups are vulnerable
governing bodies are not providing structural defense
And instead of responding with:
centralized legal teams
institutional advocacy
coordinated policy resistance
public refusal to normalize enforcement at youth events
The answer offered is:
“Here’s a template. Good luck.”
That is not leadership, that's a punchline. Except at the end of this hilarious joke, kids can die.
7. This Is How Normalization Happens
Once documents like this circulate, the extraordinary becomes routine.
Soon it’s:
“Did you review the ICE plan?”
“Who’s on watch?”
“Which room is the safe zone?”
And suddenly, the activity has accepted a reality that should have triggered collective refusal.
That’s how harm gets baked into culture.
8. Final Word
This is a plea, not a flourish.
I'm calling on MAASIN to withdraw this plan immediately.
Not revise it. Not clarify it. Not add another disclaimer. Withdraw it.
Circulating an incoherent, racially loaded, quasi–incident-response template to youth arts organizations places unacceptable legal, ethical, and physical risk on minors, staff, and volunteers. Good intentions do not neutralize bad design. And this design is dangerous.
If governing bodies believe that federal immigration enforcement is a credible risk at rehearsals, shows, or tour stops, then the correct response is not to deputize volunteers with half-baked protocols. The correct response is institutional action.
That means DCI should suspend operations for the season while credible, centralized protections are developed — including real legal counsel, uniform policy, insurer-backed guidance, and public refusal to normalize enforcement at youth events.
Anything less is an admission that the activity is willing to gamble with children’s safety and workers’ lives to keep the tour rolling.
No show is worth that.
Withdraw the plan. Pause the season. Do the work properly — or don’t do it at all.
Comments