Fighting for Our Lives: Immigrants Rising up Against White Supremacy
by Cristina Jiménez

It’s no coincidence that Trump rose to power as increasingly visible movements for Black lives and immigrant justice were building power in communities across the country.
Those under the boot of our racist criminal and immigrant justice systems were beginning to tilt the balance of power and public opinion.
Trump used people of color and immigrants as scapegoats for all of the nation’s troubles, and sold himself to white voters as the man who could get rid of the threats we allegedly pose. In Trump’s worldview, those threats have always been defined as empowered Black and brown people.
Make America Great Again is not just a campaign slogan — it was, from the moment Trump first said those words, a call to arms for white supremacists, a justification for them to come after us with guns drawn and fists in our faces.
Long before the recent events in Charlottesville, it was clear Trump had weaponized white identity, unleashing violence and hatred to advance a vision of this nation where people of color have no right or reason to exist here.
We repeatedly saw and felt the danger throughout Trump’s presidential campaign rallies, where Black and brown young people and immigrants were attacked and harmed. And we have seen it from the earliest hours of Trump’s administration, with his executive orders that criminalized immigrants and labeled every single undocumented person a threat to national security.
The push to enact the Muslim ban, the effort to win Congressional funding for the border wall, the building of more detention camps, the laughing about police brutality, the hiring of more ICE agents to go to schools, churches, and homes to round up immigrant youth and families for detention and deportation: all of this is white supremacy in action.
The President has even lamented the injustice of a man fired for using a Nazi salute. All of this, under Donald Trump, is the official policy of the United States.
Think about it for a minute: if we are treated by the President and his white supremacist supporters as people with no right or reason to exist in a nation built for white people, we can be assaulted and even killed without consequence.
That explains why neo-Nazis, the KKK, and white nationalists act like they have discovered a new sense of purpose under Trump, while those of us in this country who are not white must fight for our lives and defer our dreams of freedom.
It’s why Border Patrol agents feel free to drag young people with a legal right to live here across the border — why immigration agents can frame teenagers as gang members or abuse thousands of us in detention camps every day.
Make no mistake: it’s a matter of life and death for millions of people.
Consider what is weighing on the bodies and minds of immigrants across the country right now: Trump has emboldened right-wing Republican Attorneys General to attack the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), a successful program that has enabled my brother and nearly a million young people — mostly people of color — to obtain work permits and build lives here with their parents and families.
These Republicans are threatening to sue the Trump administration by September 5 if the White House doesn’t kill the program DACA.
Noticeably, Jeff Sessions and other extremist Trump administration officials have not pushed back on the lawsuit threat.
In fact, they have made it clear they won’t defend DACA in court.
And the latest news reports out of Washington suggest that Trump is seriously considering ending DACA.
If DACA is destroyed, close to 800,000 immigrant youth of color will lose their jobs and protections from immigration agents who can hunt us down, lock us in detention camps and deport us. This manufactured blood sport is exactly what the white supremacists crave and what Trump wants to keep going.
As one fearful immigrant mom told me recently, deportation I can survive, but I can’t survive torture in immigrant detention camps.
She knows that Trump and his allies will continue to push hard for increased federal funding of those camps during the upcoming budget debate when Members of Congress returns from recess.
Basic survival is at stake. If DACA is defeated next month, it’s over for many immigrant young people and the families they help support in this country.
Young people like my brother, Jonathan, who with DACA was able to continue his college education and work to help my undocumented parents financially.
People like Abril from Arizona who with DACA is able to work and help her mom buy medicine for her illness.
People like Angelica from Oklahoma who is able to care for her daughters.
The elimination of DACA would open the floodgates on Trump’s mass deportation fever dream.
Now is the moment for white people of conscience to unite with immigrant youth who are DACA beneficiaries, and give us the same fire, intensity, and commitment they’ve put into marching against racism and Trump.
It’s one thing to condemn white supremacy in a quick Facebook status or Tweet or at a protest. It’s quite another to put your body on the line and keep it in on the line for as long as it takes — to lock your arms with us in front of the immigration agents. or in front of an Attorney General who may try to drag us into a detention camp.
So when we ask you to join us at more emergency actions to defend DACA in the days leading up to September 5, show up with us, and fight like hell with us.
White supremacy and white nationalism always been strategies to divide and conquer — to prevent people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds from building broad, inclusive movements that can topple the regimes of racists.
We can’t let Trump pull us apart and keep us separated. Our liberation is bound to each other, and we must create new forms of solidarity that are built to last.
Together, we must demand and rise up for a better country together — a country where people of color in every town, city, and state are given the freedom, security, and opportunity that Trump wants to reserve exclusively for white people.
Cristina Jiménez is Executive Director and Co-Founder of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the United States.
