November 7, 2024
NEW YORK- The Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) today said that it will continue its fight against the mass deportation machine when Donald Trump returns to the White House in January.
“Donald Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations and has consistently used dehumanizing and criminalizing language to justify plans for immense cruelty to communities of color and marginalized people. In the coming years, state and local governments will play an outsized role in establishing protections for immigrant community members. Courts will be pressure tested to protect our rights. Nonprofit organizations and communities will bear a heavy responsibility to mitigate the planned harm to immigrants and their loved ones and we are ready to take up the fight for justice,” said Immigrant Defense Project Executive Director Marie Mark.
“The people we work with need support right now. IDP must and will step up during this moment of pain, fear, and uncertainty. Our fight to protect immigrants is a fight for racial justice. We know that when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is supercharged, the communities most impacted are Black and brown immigrants who are most likely to be targeted by both local police and by ICE, often facing the double punishments of the criminal and immigration legal systems,” Mark said. “We will use all the legal and advocacy tools at our disposal to defend community members targeted by Trump and his deportation agenda.”
Many people who have lived and worked in the U.S. for decades, as well as newly arrived community members, are facing a moment of deep instability and fear. This includes people without current immigration status, people in non-permanent status such as those with Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and the hundreds of thousands of people currently in deportation proceedings and/or with pending applications for immigration benefits. These community members and their loved ones must be supported with legal assistance and realistic education about the risks they must now navigate. We must also demand local and state policies that protect, not criminalize, them.
For many others, including people not born in the United States who have residency or U.S. citizenship,people who speak English with an accent, and people of color, the intense hostile rhetoric leading up to the election has threatened their security. These community members deserve advocates to fight for and with them, and access to clear information as policies change.
Those supporting immigrants directly, as attorneys, advocates, and other allies, even if they themselves are safe, find themselves in another kind of crisis. The demand for their work is at an all time high, as are the stakes. These community members need resources to do this work and access to information about creative strategies and the government’s reaction to resistance.
The Immigrant Defense Project has a clear mission: to end the current era of unprecedented mass detention and deportation of immigrants. We believe every person has inherent worth and dignity.
As 2025 approaches, IDP will:
- Provide immigration defense legal strategies to community members.
- Partner with criminal defense attorneys to provide early interventions that prevent deportations.
- Support legal service providers providing free representation to immigrants.
- Develop and update actionable Know Your Rights community education materials based on real world immigration policing tactics.
- Counter dehumanizing and criminalizing narratives that feed anti-immigrant policies.
- Litigate to narrow the reach of harsh immigration laws and challenge harmful changes to existing legal interpretations.
- Defend existing policies that protect immigrants at the state and local levels and fight to advance and pass the legislative solutions we need.
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About the Immigrant Defense Project
The Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) is a New York-based nonprofit that works to secure fairness and justice for immigrants in the racially-biased U.S. criminal and immigration systems. IDP fights to end the current era of unprecedented mass criminalization, detention and deportation through a multi-pronged strategy including advocacy, litigation, legal support, community partnerships, and strategic communications. Visit www.immigrantdefenseproject.org and follow @ImmDefense.