Immigrant rights groups ready to challenge President-elect Trump’s policies

Immigrant-rights organizations from across the country are resolute on one thing: they will fight back against any of President-elect Donald Trump’s policies that target migrants.

Trump won the electoral college and the popular vote — the first time for a Republican since 2004. He made immigration a major part of his campaign, and he vowed to deport millions of immigrants who are in the country without authorization.

Trump is also expected to target the U.S.’s refugee resettlement program and has said he would end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country illegally.

“We’ve been preparing — we have the legal tools, we have the advocacy tools and, more importantly, we have people,” said Maribel Hernández Rivera, the director of policy and government affairs for border and immigration at the ACLU.

She called Trump’s proposals “cruel,” adding, “we are ready” to challenge Trump’s policies.

Murad Awawdeh, the president of the New York Immigration Coalition, told NPR the country “already survived one Trump administration, and we believe that we are preparing ourselves to do it yet again.”

Awawdeh is looking at a three-prong approach: protests, local legislation, and lawsuits. Rights groups are also stepping up ‘known your rights’ trainings.“This time I feel that we are better prepared and know what to expect and are ready to fight his racist deportation agenda with our members and allies,” he said.
 
Hernández Rivera and other advocates said when Trump first got elected in 2016 there was a lot of uncertainty about his immigration plans beyond pledges to build that “big, beautiful wall” along the southern U.S. border. But because Trump this time has been so public about mass deportations, they have been able to start organizing.

Rights groups have crafted a federal advocacy plan while the ACLU state chapters have been working on a strategy to create a firewall from the Trump administration. She also said the organization is also ready to mobilize its four million members to “protect immigrants.”

Disappointment with Democrats

One of the organizations that knocked on doors on behalf of Democrats in swing states including Pennsylvania is CASA, a national non-profit that advocates for migrants.

Gustavo Torres, the organization’s executive director, told NPR blue-collar immigrant workers who belong to CASA today are expressing disappointment in the Democratic Party’s strategy and policy on immigration and that the Harris campaign failed to articulate or promote clear immigration or border policies such as pathways to citizenship. When the issue came up during the race, Harris would criticize Trump for scuttling a bipartisan border bill.

“They have been promised for the last 25-30 years immigration reform and that never happened,” Torres said. He added that Democrats failed to fulfill their reform promise when they controlled the House and the Senate under former President Barack Obama’s first term.

Torres said many of his members say they feel tokenized by the Democrats.

Murad Awawdeh, with the New York Immigration Coalition, also expressed discontent with how the White House adopted restrictive immigration measures ahead of the election.

For instance, President Biden implemented a ban on most asylum claims at the U.S. southern border — a policy almost indistinguishable from one Trump implemented during his first term.

Trump also created the Migrant Protection Protocols which required migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait for their court appointment in Mexico. And he implemented Title 42 which expelled migrants at the border for public health reasons during COVID-19. Biden kept that program for two years.

“The Republican Party really spews the rhetoric and then the Democratic Party actually puts that rhetoric into policy,” Awawdeh said. “It is unfortunate, but it was not a complete shock.”