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Disappearing students off of city streets, sending asylum seekers to third-country prisons, storming sanctuary cities, and even deporting a US citizen child who has cancer. That’s the Trump administration’s “mass deportation” agenda in action. Now, in an effort to stomp out righteous dissent from communities demanding an end to these cruel tactics, the administration's tactics include sending in the National Guard and active-duty US Marines against the very people they have sworn to protect.
These are scary times, and Trump’s actions hurt everyone, regardless of immigration status. When we deny due process to some, it erodes access to due process for us all.
Our job as litigators is to defend our clients in court, regardless of who is in office. We’ve done that under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, and we have already secured critical victories. We know we are on the right side of the law and the right side of history. But we also know that courtroom success is only truly powerful if the community is in the fight with us.
As tensions escalate in Los Angeles and nationwide, we need to stay grounded and educated on how we can best show up for one another. Each of us, regardless of where we live and where we were born, should take a stand today in defense of due process and dignity for our immigrant communities.
Here's what we know about who is being swept up in Trump's immigration dragnet, and what we can all do to push back and keep one another safe.
Undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers
Trump has always focused his attention on those here without authorization — this is nothing new. It’s also not new that this rhetoric lacks any nuance or room for facts. When you paint an entire population as “illegal,” you make it more permissible to strip them of rights or due process. This administration has also been frustrated by what it sees as the slow pace of deportations, and representatives are widening their definition of who is “illegal” so they can deport as many people as possible.
The first thing to know is that seeking asylum is a legal process, and the United States has a legal and moral obligation to ensure that people seeking asylum are not sent back to danger. The Trump administration is ignoring this obligation, and it's using to its advantage the fact that the asylum system is unnecessarily and wildly complex.
As advocates and members of immigrant communities know well, politicians have a long-standing obsession with doing things “the right way” that is not grounded in reality, nor an earnest desire for practical solutions that provide accessible pathways to lawful immigration status.
Caught up in the administration’s broad definition of “illegal” are people who are actively trying to apply for asylum or adjust their legal status by applying for more long-term status, which can take years — if not decades — to achieve, even when they do everything the government asks of them. If you don’t believe us, just look at some of the many examples of people who have been detained and deported when they show up for a check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or to their immigration-court hearings.
This includes people like Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay hairdresser from Venezuela who was unlawfully deported to CECOT, a mega-prison in El Salvador, alongside hundreds of other men. Andry, a client of Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), was seeking asylum in the United States, and our colleagues only learned of his disappearance after they showed up to defend him at his scheduled court hearing and he wasn’t there.
Also caught up in this administration’s definition of “illegal” are unaccompanied immigrant children who may have to represent themselves in court after the Trump administration revoked federal funding for legal services for infants and kids seeking asylum in the US. This unlawful action removed attorneys and legal support from at least 26,000 children for over a month, in direct violation of the law and a federal court order. It’s villainous and morally corrupt, but it’s also a clear violation of federal law under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
Justice Action Center (JAC), ImmDef, and Amica Center for Immigrant Rights have come together with partners and service providers to sue the Trump administration for its failure to provide funding for children’s legal representation, and a court has already told Trump that it must continue to do so.
But the government openly refused to comply with the court’s order for almost a month — just as it refused to comply with another court’s order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Garcia Abrego, just as it refused to comply with yet another court’s order not to remove people to CECOT in El Salvador.
In recent weeks an appeals court denied the government’s attempt to pause the district court’s ruling in our case. Every day that the Trump administration tries to evade its obligations to fund legal representation for unaccompanied children, it prevents kids from having their best advocates with them and compounds the risks and impacts to children and legal-service providers.
People with lawful immigration status
This administration is feverishly pushing its deportation agenda, and in order to do that, its representatives are the ones who are flouting the law: recklessly stripping away lawful protections and yanking the rug out from under millions of people who have overcome tremendous legal obstacles and personal hardship to call this country home.
The Trump administration is both ignoring and trying to remove the rights of immigrants with active lawful status. This includes the 875,000 migrants who came to the United States through a humanitarian parole process Trump is attempting to end.
Many of these individuals came to the US via a sponsorship model grounded in legal authority that has been used by Republican and Democratic administrations alike for more than 70 years. The JAC team is currently fighting the administration’s unlawful attempts to revoke humanitarian parole pathways and strip participants of their lawful status; and JAC and partners had secured critical victories in federal court before the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue with its plans to remove protections from hundreds of thousands of people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The administration is also attempting to remove the protections of hundreds of thousands of people with temporary protected status, or TPS, which has provided a safe and legal way to offer protections for people who need refuge from certain countries embroiled in violence or instability. Litigators and their clients also made significant headway in the courts to block the Trump administration’s moves before the Supreme Court once again allowed the administration to proceed with its cruel agenda.
These are people who have done everything the US government has asked of them, and the government is now failing to uphold its side of the bargain. As we said before, it was never about immigrants just needing to do things “the right way.”
So what can we do about it?
We’ve been hearing from many folks who wonder whether and how this will impact them — and how we can fight back, especially as the president escalates his rhetoric and actions against immigrants and those who vocally support them.
We should all be wary of a presidential administration that is actively and unlawfully seeking to widen the definition of who it considers “illegal” or “criminal” and therefore subject to removal from the US — an administration that is also willing to resort to drastic tactics to remove people from their homes, schools, and communities.
Administration representatives are actively creating a larger class of people to subject to their mass-deportation fantasy, and that should concern us all. It’s already impacting tourists and students with valid visas, naturalized US citizens who have reported being detained upon reentering the country, and US citizen children of undocumented immigrants.
But there is also a whole lot we can do to fight back and keep one another safe. The first thing to remember is that we do have rights — and knowing them is the first line of defense. Immigrant-community leaders have been doing this work for decades, and we should look to them for guidance.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights has an easy-to-access library of actionable Know Your Rights resources in English and Spanish, as does the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Immigrant Defenders Law Center also has a robust compilation of resources and forms for immigrants and their loved ones. Immigrants Rising has shared guidance for undocumented travelers.
For resources in other languages, Asian Americans Advancing Justice has Know Your Rights resources in Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, Chinese, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Karen, Khmer, Korean, Nepali, Punjabi, Urdu, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Thai, and Spanish. Haitian Bridge Alliance is compiling and sharing information in Haitian Kreyol, including specific resources for Haitians impacted by the administration’s attacks on TPS and humanitarian parole. ImportaMí also includes resources in Indigenous languages.
Additionally, there are community groups providing resources and training opportunities throughout the country, including in New York, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Tennessee.
If you are worried about your current or pending immigration status, know that you are not alone. Continue to work with your attorney or a local organization like the ones named above for support.
Our inspiration comes from our many incredible clients, people who courageously choose to hold the president to account in the court of law at great risk to themselves, hoping they can make life better for others like them.
Everyone should take inspiration from these clients. They come from all political walks of life. Some were born here; others have arrived recently. But they believe in the promise of a country where no one — not even the president — is above the rule of law.
Collectively, we must continue to fight tirelessly in court and on the streets to shield our communities from this administration’s brazen attacks. A more just future is possible, but it’s going to take all of us doing our part to make it a reality.
