SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
united we dream
Trump Spokesperson Affirms Day 1 Plans for Nation's 'Largest Mass Deportation Operation'
"As always, we will go to court to challenge illegal policies, but it is equally essential that the public push back, as it did with family separation," one rights advocate said.
Nov 07, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump is set to begin his promised mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as soon as he takes office on January 20, 2025, even as rights groups are mobilizing to stop him.
Trump national press secretary Karoline Leavitt toldFox News Wednesday morning that "the American people delivered a resounding victory for President Trump."
"It gives him a mandate to govern as he campaigned, to deliver on the promises that he made, which include, on Day 1, launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants that Kamala Harris has allowed into this country," Leavitt said.
"We have a simple message for President-elect Trump or his deputies if they decide to make good on their despicable plans: We will see you in court."
Trump has pledged to conduct the largest deportation in U.S. history, with running mate and now Vice President-elect JD Vance promising 1 million deportations each year. The plan would likely rely on mobilizing federal agencies, the military, diplomats, and Republican-led states while using federal funds to pressure uncooperative states and cities into complying.
The stocks of private prison companies like GEOGroup and Core Civic rose significantly after Trump's win, and private contractors had already been discussing ahead of the election how to build enough detention space to accommodate Trump's plans.
A study released by the American Immigration Council in October found that a massive, one-time deportation program of the estimated 13.3 million migrants in the country without legal status would cost the government at least $315 billion while a 1-million-a-year approach would cost $88 billion a year for a total of $967.9 billion. It would also shrink the nation's gross domestic product by between 4.2 and 6.8%, not to mention the massive human cost to immigrant families, as around 5.1 million children who are U.S. citizens live with an undocumented family member.
The council also warned that such a program would likely threaten the well-being of all immigrants and increase vigilantism and hate crimes.
"As bad as the first Trump administration was for immigrants, we anticipate it will be much worse this time and are particularly concerned about the use of the military to round up immigrants," Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who fought the first Trump administration on family separation and other policies, toldThe Washington Post. "As always, we will go to court to challenge illegal policies, but it is equally essential that the public push back, as it did with family separation."
Exit polls show that 56% of U.S. voters favor offering immigrants already in the U.S. a pathway to citizenship, while Data for Progress found that survey respondents did not favor deportation for 7 out of 9 categories of people who might be caught up in a mass deportation scheme.
The ACLU has urged cities and states to take steps to protect their undocumented residents ahead of January 20.
"They should prepare for mass deportations because those will wreak havoc on the communities," Noreen Shah, director of government affairs at the ACLU's equality division, toldNewsweek. "It will mean kids who go to school and their parents are gone and not there to pick them up at the end of the day."
In particular, legal groups are gearing up for Trump to potentially evoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which authorizes the country to deport noncitizens of a hostile nation. It has only been used three times, most recently to detain Japanese Americans during World War II.
"Many fear that a second Trump administration would seek to use this law to justify indefinite detention and remove people from the country swiftly and without judicial review," Shah told Reuters.
The Brennan Center for Justice has called on Congress to repeal the act.
"This law was shameful and dangerous back when it was created 200 years ago," the center's Marcelo Agudo wrote in October. "It's even more so today. It must be repealed or overturned."
Several other organizations pledged to continue defending immigrants and refugees after Trump declared victory.
"We have a simple message for President-elect Trump or his deputies if they decide to make good on their despicable plans: We will see you in court," Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, said in a statement. "And, we have a message of love to immigrant communities, we see you, we are you, and we will stand with you."
Calling Trump's win "one of the most dangerous moments in our country's history, National Immigration Law Center president Kica Matos said the organization had led a "movement-wide effort to plan for this moment."
"Trump and his allies told us what he plans to do: mass deportations, ending birthright citizenship, ending the right to public education for immigrant children, internment camps, and using the military to hunt down immigrants. We should take him at his word," Matos said.
She continued: "One thing is certain: we cannot and will not retreat. For more than 40 years, NILC has been steadfast in our fight to defend the rights of low-income immigrants and their loved ones. We successfully fought Donald Trump before, and we will do it again."
The American Immigrant Lawyers Association (AILA) pledged to continue working for its clients.
"If implemented, the anti-immigrant policies avowed by candidate Trump will inflict lasting damage to the American economy, communities, and character," AILA Executive Director Benjamin Johnson said in a statement. "AILA and its more than 16,000 members will continue to defend the Constitution and stand against laws and policies that violate due process, undermine civil rights, or denigrate the contributions of immigrants. Our future prosperity depends on not giving up. We must stand together and work towards a brighter future."
Refugees International also promised to continue with its "shared commitment to rights and refuge for people forced from their homes."
"Amid historic levels of global displacement, the incoming Trump administration plans to enact an anti-refugee, anti-asylum agenda that will endanger millions of people—both those threatened by crises overseas and those who have been welcomed as neighbors into communities across the United States," the group's president, Jeremy Konyndyk, said in a message to supporters. "Yet we hold on to hope, even as we are clear-eyed about the daunting struggles ahead."
Knowndyk added: "As we do under any presidential administration, we will work tirelessly with all of you to defend and advance the rights, protection, and well-being of all people forced to flee their homes."
United We Dream, the largest U.S. organization led by immigrant youth, committed to building the "largest pro-immigrant movement this country has ever seen."
"Immigrant young people of United We Dream declare ourselves hopeful and clear eyed about the fight ahead," said the group's executive director Greisa Martínez Rosas. "With Trump pledging to carry out the largest deportation effort in our country's history—ctivating the military to raid our communities, schools, hospitals, and more in order to round up our people into concentration camps—young, Black, brown, and queer leaders who have been at the vanguard of our movement and of creating meaningful change are ready move mountains to protect our communities."
Keep ReadingShow Less
This Election Isn’t About a Perfect Candidate, It’s About Our Futures
Harris will never be my community’s liberator. But for right now, for this election, she is my target. My goal is to stop Trump and his MAGA allies from ever getting close to the White House again.
Oct 06, 2024
I remember seeing the pain in my dad’s eyes when Trump’s Muslim Ban took effect. As a daughter of Mexican-Iranian immigrants, the onslaught of Trump’s anti-immigrant, Islamophobic attacks over his four years in office served as a violent and constant reminder of the ways this country has ruthlessly attacked the lives of the people I love.
As one of the first people in my family eligible to vote, it feels as if I am holding the weight of my entire family, my generation, and my future on my shoulders when I go to the ballot box. Never has my vote been just about me. It’s about what gives my family and my community the best chance at survival.
This year’s election is no different. Each vote matters, and if recent polling shows anything, it’s that this alarmingly close race between Vice President Harris and Trump will come down to the margins. The very real possibility of yet another Trump presidency has left me grappling with what life for my family, friends, and community—many of whom are undocumented—would look like if Trump took office again.
I am under no impression that Harris is perfect; but I am not fighting with her. I am fighting to move her. I will vote for Harris on November 5, but my vote is not a profession of my love for Harris or my approval. It’s about making a deliberate choice to pick the playing field for the next four years that my generation and I will be forced, one way or another, to organize under.
Under Trump’s first term, undocumented people in my community retreated into fear because nowhere felt safe, not even a simple trip to the grocery store. The risk of being pulled over, targeted by the raging enforcement apparatus Trump’s administration fortified, was enough to force many back into the shadows. Thousands of families couldn’t escape Trump's attacks. The detention centers that have existed under both Republican and Democratic presidents alike, swelled under Trump. Everyone was a target: children, parents, grandparents, and more.
To this day, there are children who have yet to be reunited with their loved ones after being ripped from their parents’ arms under Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy. They have lived their childhood years tossed from courtroom to courtroom as many of their parents fight to regain custody.
When I think about this year’s election, I wish I didn’t feel the fear I do about a future life under Trump. But I have asked myself seriously: can my community survive that again, only this time worse?
As someone who grew up with a family of immigrants, I know this is not mere speculation or exaggeration—Trump and MAGA Republicans have a plan to hurt my community. Among many other atrocious policy proposals, the anti-immigrant policies outlined in Project 2025 are designed to tear apart families across the nation– both at the border and in the very states and cities we call home.
Trump is going after everyone. He would aim to strip legal status by ending DACA, TPS, humanitarian parole and other life-saving programs that have supported hundreds of thousands of people who already live, work, and care for their families in this country. The sprawling immigrant detention camps and deportations carried under his first admin were just a glimpse at what he could do under a second term, where he has promised to use the military to conduct nationwide raids in the places where we live, work, and pray to target anyone suspected of being undocumented.
This is the reality I am grappling with as a young voter from an immigrant community. For me, my decision to vote this year isn’t about rallying behind a perfect candidate who, unfortunately, does not exist right now. Vice President Harris is far from perfect. I am outraged by the ways she’s adopted Republican talking points and rhetoric when it comes to immigration, while also ignoring the calls to end the genocide in Gaza and stop sending weapons to Israel that American tax dollars have paid for.
Still, I know the ways I’ve seen how our progressive movement has successfully pushed Democrats before. In 2012, our movement forced the Obama administration to bend to our will when we successfully won the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has protected hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the threat of deportation. Obama didn’t do this out of the goodness of his heart. He did it because our movements demanded it and refused to let up the pressure even while he was in office. This year, we also forced the Biden administration to deliver healthcare access to DACA recipients through the Affordable Care Act and delivered a monumental achievement when we won protections for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens in order to keep mixed status families together. The reality is, these achievements did not come easily nor did they come overnight; they required relentless pressure, strategic maneuvering, and years of being able to move tactically against every political target who sat in the Oval Office. But they have also been achievements continuously targeted by the MAGA right who have stopped at nothing in trying to decimate these life-saving programs.
Vice President Harris is far from perfect. I am outraged by the ways she’s adopted Republican talking points and rhetoric when it comes to immigration, while also ignoring the calls to end the genocide in Gaza and stop sending weapons to Israel that American tax dollars have paid for.
Harris will never be my community’s liberator. But for right now, for this election, she is my target. My goal is to stop Trump and his MAGA allies from ever getting close to the White House again. As a young person whose heritage comes from people who have crossed rivers, borders, and oceans to protect those we love, I have had to channel what it means to move with intention through turbulent waters. Our survival depends on our ability to out-strategize those who seek to oppress us.
I am under no impression that Harris is perfect; but I am not fighting with her. I am fighting to move her. I will vote for Harris on November 5, but my vote is not a profession of my love for Harris or my approval. It’s about making a deliberate choice to pick the playing field for the next four years that my generation and I will be forced, one way or another, to organize under.
This election has made me feel more determined than ever to fight for the future my community and generation deserve. We deserve to have candidates on the ballot who truly reflect our values. Who don’t take years and generations to deliver on our demands. Every day, I am committed to fighting for that future, where the conditions are in our favor, where we have amassed enough people power and political power to make the changes our communities desperately need only faster, on the timeline we set. I am casting my ballot for myself, my community, my generation, my country, and for the future I believe to be possible.Keep ReadingShow Less
Rights Advocates Frustrated Over Harris' Messaging on Migrants
"Banning asylum and punishing people seeking safety only causes more chaos and dysfunction at the border, and more refugee deaths," said one advocacy center.
Sep 29, 2024
While fearful of what a second Trump administration would mean for immigrants, rights advocates this weekend sounded the alarm over messaging on the southern border from Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.
The vice president traveled to Douglas, Arizona on Friday for her first campaign trip to the U.S.-Mexcio border. There, she met with Border Patrol agents—she was photographed walking with them next to a barbed-wire-covered wall—and delivered what The New York Timescalled "one of her party's toughest speeches on immigration and border policy in a generation."
After Harris' address, the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS)
expressed agreement with her that "we need to build a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system," while also warning that her "proposed border policies would do the opposite."
"Banning asylum and punishing people seeking safety only causes more chaos and dysfunction at the border, and more refugee deaths," CGRS said. "We want real solutions to the humanitarian challenges at our border, too. But these policies of cruelty and exclusion fail us, every single time."
CGRS urged Harris to embrace the #WelcomeWithDignity Campaign's policy
solutions: restore access to asylum at the border; support existing systems and launch new ones to receive and integrate people seeking safety; create a more effective and timely immigration system; and strengthen refugee resettlement programs and other pathways to the United States.
During the speech and on social media, Harris emphasized combating drugs. She said: "As attorney general of California, I prosecuted transnational criminal organizations that trafficked guns, drugs, and human beings. I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Today, I visited the U.S.-Mexico border and spoke with Customs and Border Protection officials about our progress to secure our border and disrupt the flow of illegal fentanyl into our nation."
She also took aim at her GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump, for his infamous family separation policy and for killing a bipartisan border bill. While the Republican attacked the legislation so he could campaign on immigration and promise mass deportations, progressives in Congress and rights advocates opposed its "extreme and unworkable enforcement-only policies."
The Democratic nominee also vowed to strengthen asylum restrictions that President Joe Biden imposed in June, which are being challenged in court by critics including the ACLU. The administration's policy change has been followed by a drop in border numbers but also "rampant rights violations," according to migrant rights groups.
Pushing back against Harris' framing that asylum-seekers simply need to go to legal entry points rather than crossing the border unlawfully, Christina Asencio, a research director at Human Rights First, explained on Friday that the border bill would do what the June asylum ban has already done: suspend processing at ports of entry unless people obtain an appointment.
"Human Rights First has documented the life-threatening harm families with children and adults face in Mexico while forced to wait up to nine months for an appointment [through] an app that's only available in three languages," she added. "This is not a solution."
In a social media thread highlighting reports of agents "removing asylum-seekers who explicitly communicated their fear of return in violation of refugee law" since the introduction of Biden's ban, Robyn Barnard, an attorney with the group, said:
Human Rights First and others have interviewed asylum-seekers who expressly requested asylum, relayed their past persecution, explained their asylum claims, showed agents their injuries, had anxiety attacks, sobbed, and begged to be heard, but were ignored.
Other families recounted that not only were they not asked whether they had a fear of return or why they came to the United States, they were not even allowed to speak.
Harris' pledge to toughen the June policy followed Thursday reporting by CBS News that the Biden-Harris administration "is planning to soon issue a regulation to cement the sweeping asylum restrictions it enacted at the southern border" earlier this year.
In response to the reporting, the immigrant youth-led group United We Dream (UWD)
declared, "There's no other way to say this: Turning your backs on people seeking asylum is WRONG and it keeps us stuck in the past with failed policies."
"Communities nationwide agree that our immigration system must be humane, efficient, and fair above all else. Those seeking safety deserve respect and dignity," UWD said. "Our message to the Biden-Harris administration remains clear: We will organize—now and in the future—against any attempts to gut asylum and put our people's lives on the line."
UWD also pointed to a September 4 letter in which it led over 80 groups in warning Biden and Harris that the bipartisan Border Act of 2024 "would cause irreparable harm to our asylum system, our standing on the global stage, and most importantly, it would cause countless deaths at our borders and in other countries."
While many immigrant rights advocates are frustrated with both Biden and Harris, multiple groups continue to support her candidacy—given that the alternative is Trump—and even some critics praised certain parts of her Friday remarks.
"It was good to hear [Harris] recognize the need for more asylum officers and immigration judges, which are a must to tackle asylum backlogs and enable timely asylum decisions," said Eleanor Acer, director of Human Rights First's refugee protection program. "Real solutions like these are needed, NOT bans and bills that cut due process and deny access to asylum."
Immigrant rights advocate Erika Andiola, "who has lived through some of the most traumatic experiences because of our broken immigration system," said that "I was so glad to hear her talk about our undocumented community and a promise to fight for a path to citizenship."
"I'm so glad to see Harris pushing back on Trump's scapegoating of immigrants," she continued. "I wish she would have also talked about his plan for mass deportations and the consequences that could have. Consequences not only for our immigrant community, but also for millions of mixed-status families and our economy overall."
The advocate also expressed sadness over her "promise to criminalize reentries" and urged Harris to "move away from starting the conversation on this issue speaking about drugs and criminal activity at the border," stressing that "yes, those are important issues for voters, but conflating security with human migration just creates more fear in the public about our people."
"We must change the narrative about our immigrant community," she argued. "We must show the humanity, tell the stories, and detangle the problems we as immigrants face from the need of the American people to feel safe. Immigrants, we are part of the fabric of this country. We are your neighbors, classmates, and coworkers. That's where the conversation should start."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular