As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, immigrant and civil rights groups have been preparing for what promises to be a challenging period, drafting legal briefs, coordinating messaging, urging immigrants to get legal aid and stockpiling cash to lawyer up.
"We saw firsthand the devasting impact of the first Trump Administration: Numerous attempts to close the border, the dismantling of the refugee system, limits on the due process rights of our clients," said Melissa Lopez, executive director of Estrella del Paso, to Border Report recently. "We are preparing ourselves for another attack on immigrants."
On Thursday a coalition of immigrant, civil and human rights groups joined the fight by calling on President Joe Biden to adopt measures that would protect vulnerable immigrant populations from the sweeping immigration enforcement Trump has pledged, as The Hill reports. These measures would include providing temporary protections and addressing procedural bottlenecks that put immigrants at risk.
"Our immigrant communities are at a crossroads as President-elect Trump threatens to make his campaign promises to return to a cruel and chaotic immigration system a reality," the groups wrote in a letter to Biden. The organizations added that:
"The lives of American families — our neighbors, small business owners, farmworkers — hang in the balance so we urge the Biden-Harris administration to meet the urgency of the moment with immediate actions to protect vulnerable immigrant families, TPS holders, Dreamers and others who are at risk of mass deportation and family separation"
The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are initiatives that provide legal protections to hundreds of thousands of individuals but have faced uncertainty due to previous efforts by Trump to scale them back. Advocates argue that accelerating renewal processes and enrollment for TPS and DACA recipients could shield them from the heightened deportation efforts anticipated under Trump.
Advocacy organizations are also mobilizing to inform immigrant communities about their legal rights and available resources through workshops, legal aid, and psychological support, as El País reports. Additionally, these groups are calling for a united effort among unions, universities, businesses, and local governments to create supportive environments for immigrants.
"There's no doubt Donald Trump will impose far-reaching changes on our immigration system, dismantle legal pathways and reshape immigration enforcement as we know it" reads the letter from the coalition. "There's no time to waste."
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