The push issued Wednesday in the form of two immigration-related executive actions signed by President Donald Trump figures to spark a strong pushback from immigration groups throughout Southern California.
“Today, the average undocumented American should be very fearful of these new policies,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
“But we’re also telling our community that they also can be prepared, and they can protect themselves.”
What immigrants can do to fight the executive orders is as vague as the orders themselves.
Trump, who campaigned on a promise to build a “big, beautiful wall” to stop illegal immigration from Mexico, signed orders to begin construction of the wall and to withhold federal money from sanctuary communities that protect the undocumented.
But Trump’s orders did not say how the wall would be financed. He also didn’t say how much money, or from which cities, the federal government might hold back.
Some undocumented immigrants viewed the orders as the start of a longer confrontation and expressed a willingness to engage in that fight.
“I have to put as much on the line as possible,” said Pedro T., a 27-year-old who said he overstayed his visa after being brought to the United States from Mexico as a young boy.
The resident of East Los Angeles said he is an activist with the California Dream Network who has been shielded from deportation under former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
He won’t give his full name because he believes the undocumented will be targeted by the Trump administration.
“We have more to lose here,” he said. “We’ve been working here 20 years to pay bills and to provide a life and future for ourselves.”
Salas and others have been presenting “Know Your Rights” programs for undocumented immigrants throughout the region. The goal, she said, is to give people tools they can use “so that they can stay here with their families.”
Others urged undocumented immigrants to remember that they have rights in immigration court.
“Even if they do come in contact” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they have the possibility of fighting their deportation, said Javier Hernandez, director for the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice. “We want to make sure to remind folks of that.”
Other immigrants face a different fight.
Today, Trump is expected to sign an executive order that will suspend immigration from Muslim-dominated countries.
For Muslim asylum seekers at Access California Services in Anaheim, that news was bleak.
“What will my sister and I do here by ourselves?” asked a tearful Saja Sala, 22, who said she and a sister came to Orange County two months ago from Baghdad. Her parents, a brother and three other sisters remain in Iraq, awaiting visas.
“If my family can’t come here, we’ll have to go back,” she said. “It’s miserable in Baghdad, but I cannot live here without my family.”
Others were saddened to hear of the new rules.
“When we heard about (Trump’s executive orders), all of us started to cry,” said Yusuf Omar, who came with his wife and one of their daughters from Syria earlier this month. His other daughter remains in Jordan, where she and her children landed after fleeing Syria.
“I don’t know what we’d do,” Omar said. “All I want is to see my daughter again.”
Others wondered if the rules aimed at Muslim-dominated countries will survive legal scrutiny.
“You cannot abandon people based on their religion,” said Nahla Kayali, executive director of Access California Services. “That’s not what American values are about. Passports don’t say what religion people belong to. So how will immigration officials determine who’s Muslim? It’s not right.”
Banning Muslim refugees from entering the country does not help counter violent extremism, said Erroll Southers, former FBI special agent and director of USC’s Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies program.
“Statistics show that refugees indulging in terrorist activities is extremely rare,” he said.
He pointed to a study by the Anti-Defamation League that shows that of the 52 extremism-related deaths in the U.S. last year, 38 percent were caused by white supremacists, 37 percent were a result of domestic Islamic terrorism, 19 percent were linked to anti-government extremism and 6 percent were tied to anti-abortion extremism.
“We need to be more concerned with homegrown violent extremists,” Southers said. “We need to step away from this notion of ‘otherism,’ that someone from another country, race or religion is going to pose a threat.”
