Donald Trump’s transition team is preparing for multiple immigration-related executive orders on Day One. Immigration advocates say they’re ready — or at least as ready as they can be.
“We have been prepping for months, and I think in particular, as compared to the first Trump administration, I think we’re coming in with much more sort of organization and preparation for what we think is coming,” Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, told NOTUS.
“We’re clear-eyed that this is going to be an incredibly anti-immigrant administration,” he said.
Wofsy said the ACLU has been working with other groups preparing to defend immigrant rights and push back against some of the new legal ground the administration is expected to tread, particularly on birthright citizenship. But that doesn’t mean immigrant rights advocates aren’t still bracing for surprises.
“We have more experience, but unpredictability,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel at MALDEF. “Because government under Trump is characterized by chaos, [it] makes you pause about whether you’re prepared.”
Multiple immigrant rights groups said they’ve been working for nearly a year on preparations for a Trump presidency. Most were hesitant to elaborate too much on their plans, not wanting to give away their strategies or give the Trump team any ideas, but they’re prepping for multiple possibilities on birthright citizenship, ICE raids and detention.
“We have strategy conversations and conversations with interested folks who might be the ones to serve as plaintiffs in challenging,” Saenz said. “We’re not alone. There are progressive attorneys general in states who are also poised, other nonprofit organizations also poised to act.”
One difference from last term is that many advocates don’t feel the Democratic Party is on their side — but they are hoping they can get the public to be again.
“We’re certainly on our own, politically speaking,” said Eric Lee, an immigration lawyer who argued a case in front of the Supreme Court last session and has started a nonprofit to defend the rights of visa applicants.
“The Democratic Party has abandoned whatever pretense it once claimed as a party that defends the rights of immigrants,” he continued. “The question that this poses is, where will the resistance come from? And the answer, I think, has to be from the population at large.”
Trump is playing the white chess pieces. We’re playing the black chess pieces. We’ve got all our moves being planned out. We’re anticipating what type of opener he will use.
During Trump’s first term, moves like the “Muslim ban” and a zero-tolerance policy that resulted in family separations drew widespread criticism and protest. Eventually, it felt like the tide had turned against the administration, and some of those policies were walked back.
This time around, according to one Gallup poll, a majority of Americans are supportive of cutting immigration rates for the first time since 2005. Forty-seven percent of respondents were in favor of deporting all people in the country illegally. But once Trump’s immigration policies actually go into effect, multiple advocates and lawyers told NOTUS they believe public opinion will begin to change.
“Once the pain and cruelty of the policies are more apparent and demonstrated, I think then there will be a shift,” Sameera Hafiz, the policy director at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said. “But it’s too bad that we have to go down that road.”
Lee pointed to a recent ICE raid in Bakersfield, California, which drew some backlash from the community.
“Many people who voted for [Trump] didn’t vote to have their neighbor or their child’s friend at school or their coworker on the assembly line grabbed by ICE and thrown out of the country,” Lee said. “Trump’s policies will shock even many of his would-be supporters and voters as they become reality in so many communities across the country.”
“That is what’s going to really stop Trump,” he added.
Advocates said that when it comes to Trump, it’s never clear what to expect until it’s happening.
“The Trump folks are right now engaged in a campaign to try to scare people. So they’re overstating what they’ll do,” Saenz said. “Certainly there was lots of trepidation in 2017, but lots of things didn’t happen that he promised.”
Saenz said that his organization is taking the long view. He said politics is cyclical, and the country has experienced conservative waves when it comes to immigration before and “will not be viewed positively by history.”
Now, they will wait to see what comes next.
“Trump is playing the white chess pieces. We’re playing the black chess pieces. We’ve got all our moves being planned out,” Lee said. “We’re anticipating what type of opener he will use.”
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.