
Donald Trump began his foray into politics in 2015 by demonizing immigrants, labeling them as drug dealers, criminals and rapists. His strategy of falsely blaming migrants of color as the cause of most of America’s problems resonated with many voters, electing him president in 2016 and sending him back to the White House in 2024. Now back in power, Trump is fulfilling his campaign promise with executive orders launching the biggest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in U.S. history and immigrant rights groups are organizing resistance.
Among many executive orders issued in his first week, Trump has closed down the U.S. southern border, enlisted the military to assist in the crackdown on immigrants, threatened to prosecute state and local officials who refuse to cooperate with ICE, lifted restrictions on immigration raids in schools, hospitals and houses of worship, suspended refugee admissions and attempted to end birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Amy Gottlieb, U.S. migration director with the American Friends Service Committee, who describes the impact of some of Trump’s executive orders for mass deportation, imposing new draconian immigration policies while immigrant rights groups are organizing resistance during this time of crisis.
AMY GOTTLIEB: The shutting down of the southern border, the you know, sending down of troops, the refusal of allowing people to come in and even request protection is leading to massive crises at the border, which is also going to lead to increased criminal activity, right? Like the actors that are seeking to profit off of migration are now going to have many more chances.
So that’s one aspect of it, the, you know, sort of attack at the border. And, you know, the truth is that all of the rhetoric that we heard in the presidential campaign about immigrants, about how we have to, you know, they’re using language of invasion.
And that’s actually in the executive orders that we are being invaded. So we have an extraordinary amount of work to do to help people understand that the invasion that we’re seeing is an invasion of people who don’t believe that rights should be respected across the board.
So, you know, there’s no invasion that we need to be protecting ourselves from both by having the military at the border.
We have a global, worldwide phenomenon of migration that people move to seek safety, to seek protection, to seek better opportunities, to seek refuge from climate disasters. Many people are stopped on their way here, right? They’re just trying to get in and they’re stopped now. And so we are completely reneging on our commitment as a nation that welcomes immigrants.
We’ve also, suspended the refugee program. So people who had flights booked to come in, who’ve gone through years of a refugee vetting process, are now not able to enter the United States. And that includes people from Afghanistan who’ve been waiting for years to come, and people that we have committed to, people who served as interpreters for U.S. troops in Afghanistan are now denied the opportunity to come in because they’ve shut down the refugee program.
So those are some. But then, of course, there’s the mass deportations that they’ve talked about that they threaten, that we’ve seen all over the news. You know, they really are increasing the numbers. We heard that each ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office now has a 75-person per day arrest quota. Each office has to bring in 75 people.
So does that look like on the ground? I mean, it’s tearing people away from their families. It’s tearing people away from their communities. And what we know for so many years of doing this work is that where communities are not feeling secure or stable, able to be together, able to build their families, able to make a living, that’s where communities become more fragile, right? And things fall apart.
And frankly, what the economic impact will be of these deportations is extraordinary. You know, they’re throwing out numbers like the actual cost to deport people is over $80 billion, right? That’s what it’s going to cost us to send out ICE agents to make arrests, to detain people, to send people back. Billions of dollars that could be otherwise spent towards education, health care, housing, so many things that would benefit our communities.
I feel really, really good about the resistance that we’re seeing. Lawsuits have been filed. There’s already been one court decision on one of the birthright citizenship lawsuits where the judge said, you know, the executive order was blatantly unconstitutional. So the courts are going to be tied up. People are going to be really busy.
And we have heard reports of kids not going to school now and neighborhoods being empty. Stores are empty. So there’s going to be economic impact in so many ways that we are going to have to be able to resist.
SCOTT HARRIS: Please review for our listeners what your organization recently wrote about. And that’s six ways to support immigrants right now in this time of crisis.
AMY GOTTLIEB: You know, there’s things that you can be doing immediately, right? I mean, one is we believe strongly that even though we know that it’s going to be difficult to get any positive legislation passed, policymakers still need to hear from us. So we have an action alert on our website, which is www.afsc.org, where you can send a letter to your members of Congress asking them to stop deportations.
We also have an action alert that’s pushing for a fair pathway to citizenship for people who’ve been here for a long time. So we have materials on our website that can help you understand how to have hard conversations, how to talk about immigration issues with your family, with your friends. You can attend a rally or a vigil or something in your community to show support.
AFSC is also hosting webinars on the third Tuesday of every month. Our theme is really protect, resist and build. We’re going to ensure to protect communities that we’re in. We’re going to resist the policies. We’re going to build toward the vision of the world that we want to see.
For more information, visit the American Friends Service Committee at afsc.org.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Amy Gottlieb (16:03) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page. Learn what other groups are challenging Trump’s authoritarian policies.
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