Immigration advocates are preparing for Trump 2.0, whose promise of mass deportation is sparking waves of panic and anger throughout the movement.
Even before President-elect Trump’s stunning victory on Tuesday, immigration advocates were facing an identity crisis after decades of relying on Hispanics as their primary constituency and neither political party fully represented their priorities.
“I think part of the challenge … was that the movement was very isolated. The movement is focused on undocumented immigrants,” said Marielena Hincapié, a researcher at Cornell University’s Immigration Law and Policy Program.
“When I ran the National Immigration Law Center, I was the person who said, ‘I’m a Latina, and that’s so much more than just something.’ [Latinos],’ Right? It’s about islanders in the Asia-Pacific region. It’s about black immigrants. But it also has to be that way when we talk about it – or the people directly affected by immigration are not just someone who is undocumented, right? It’s about the spouses of US citizens. They are the children of US citizens. It is the entrepreneurs who rely on them. They are the homeowners whose homes are being rebuilt in Asheville, North Carolina or Florida after Milton.”
Since the first Trump administration, the umbrella organization of immigration advocates has grown, particularly with the rise of Haitian-American civil rights groups and closer ties between advocacy and business through organizations like the American Business Immigration Coalition.
In 2023, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called on Congress to advance a series of bipartisan bills on border security and immigration reform.
“The outdated legal immigration system and woefully inadequate supply of work visas have for years significantly hindered the ability of companies to meet their labor needs. “In addition, the enormous deficiencies of the legal immigration system are a significant factor in the ongoing challenges at the southern border,” Neil Bradley, the chamber’s chief policy officer, wrote in a letter to Congress.
But neither the outgoing, divided Congress nor the Democratic-controlled Congress of the first half of the Biden administration made progress on immigration, a pattern that has persisted for nearly four decades, or on border security, a government mission that, while institutionally stagnant, but what is consistent is the scope and costs have increased over the last two decades.
That’s a painful conclusion for a movement whose primary goals are to modernize and humanize the immigration system and curb the growth of the deportation-detention industrial complicated.
“If you look beyond the binaries presented to American voters this election cycle – a thug or a democracy, harshness or chaos, a ban or a welcome – you see them as false choices that are real, necessary and in many cases “The pressures of irregular migration and the recycling harms of crime and incarceration will not go away on their own, nor can they be expected to do so in a way that creates lasting change.” Todd Schulte, President of FWD.us, an organization that connects Big Tech and immigration advocacy, in a statement.
Trump’s victory sent shares of private prison operators soaring. Investors are betting that his promises of mass deportations and mass internment will come true and millions in taxpayer money will flow to these companies.
As of midday Friday, GEO Group shares were up nearly 75 percent in five days and CoreCivic shares were up nearly 68 percent.
But some remain skeptical that Trump will be able to — or really want to — build the infrastructure needed to carry out millions of deportations.
“Will he deport 20 million people? I really don’t believe that. That’s unrealistic,” said Rob Wilson, president of Employco USA, a national staffing company.
Still, Wilson said companies should prepare for Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids by seeking proper work authorization.
“The good thing is that unemployment is becoming an employer market again rather than an employee market, so employers can be a little more selective. A few years ago, when people weren’t working after the Corona crisis, it was employees who actually ruled the market. And now these are flipped. So I think as an employer you have a little more flexibility,” Wilson said.
That contradicts two core tenets of immigration advocates: belief in Trump’s threats and the fact that the U.S. economy is dependent on illegal workers.
According to Hincapié, Democrats have missed the opportunity to communicate the latter in the past.
“You can just do three bullet points and say that message over and over again to shift the conversation from the border to people that everyone in the United States has a relationship with in one way or another,” she said.
“If you eat in this country, you owe it to the immigrants. When you go to a restaurant. You go, you know, shopping. You have children who need to be looked after. You have an elderly person or a family member who is sick, guess what? Who cares, who rebuilds our cities after climate disasters, are immigrants, and they just didn’t do that, right? They haven’t told who we are and who will be affected by Trump’s agenda.”
Although Trump’s immigration message has been the guiding thread of his political career, his promise to solve economic problems resonated most with voters; According to an NBC News exit poll, 32 percent of voters in key states named the economy as their top issue, while just 11 percent cited immigration.
“As the dust continues to settle on how Latinos actually voted in this election, it is clear that our community cares first and foremost about the economy and the same pocketbook issues as other Americans, such as the rising cost of food, Housing and other vital things. Low.” “Concerns about inflation and making ends meet contributed almost entirely to how Hispanics voted in this election,” UnidosUS President Janet Murguía said in a statement after the election .
Of the 11 percent of voters who prioritized immigration, 90 percent voted for Republicans and only 9 percent for Democrats, showing that Vice President Harris’ immigration policies were much less popular than her positions on abortion or in defense of democracy, the main issue for 34 percent of voters in the survey.
“In a year when the stakes could not be higher, young, Black, brown, queer and working-class communities called on Vice President Harris and Democrats overall to pursue pro-immigrant policies that resonate with the majority of young people.” Michelle Ming, political director of United We Dream Action, said in a statement.
“By refusing to pursue a bold, progressive agenda, Democrats have failed to deliver the message voters needed to prevent an authoritarian from taking back the White House.” We call on the Biden-Harris administration , calls on Congress and state and local officials across the country to leave no stone unturned in this moment to provide vital protections for immigrants. No matter what happens, we are willing to put our bodies on the line to protect our communities.”
For decades, advocates have fought demanding to keep immigration a priority for Latino voters, many of whom have never seen Congress pass significant legislation on the issue.
Although the dispersion of the Latino electorate — gender, national origin, age and geographic differences tell the story of the Hispanic electorate in 2024 — makes it a precarious constituency, in poll after poll, immense majorities of Latinos say they have a way prefer to citizenship.
“The obligatory question is what Democrats could have done to stop the erosion of the electorate that makes up their base, such as Latinos.” For decades, Democrats have been told they can’t be expected to win certain sectors enjoy absolute support. They need to invest in and court that vote, not just look for it during election season. Democrats knew about the decline in support among Latino men. “Still, they had no sense of urgency and perhaps thought they would win the Hispanic vote no matter what, even with a lower percentage,” wrote Maribel Hastings, a senior adviser to America’s Voice, in an op-ed widely circulated in Spanish-language media.
America’s Voice is a leading progressive immigration advocacy group founded in 2008 by longtime attorney Frank Sharry, amid sweeping immigration reform negotiations that temporarily brought together opposite sides of the political spectrum.
The lines of communication between immigration advocates and restrictionists had already been severed before Trump’s first term, and there will be little motivation to close that gap in a second Trump administration.
But immigrant advocates have laid the groundwork for advocacy at the economic level, highlighting immigrants, whether registered or not, as a force in both the labor and consumer markets, and they see an opportunity to engage a broader constituency under Trump concerned with civil rights.
“I know that there is a broader political constituency that we have not yet tapped into and that we need to build with it. And honestly, I would say that there are a lot of people who supported Trump, who voted for Trump, who voted because of the economic problems or for other issues, or because of the strongman attitude, for example, whether the machismo was resulted in us having to bring her back for whatever reason. We have to make them understand,” Hincapié said.
The prevailing frustration and anger in the pro-immigrant world is directed not only at Trump, but also at these voters.
“Despite everything, the people of the United States gave him a second term,” Hastings wrote in her Spanish-language editorial.
“Buckle up, because there’s a lot of turbulence ahead.”
