During the final years of the first Trump Administration, even as polls showed he would lose his 2020 re-election campaign, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) began implementing a long-term strategy to defend Texas from anti-immigrant attacks, maintain California’s pro-immigration policies and develop strong federal anti-criminalization champions.
The ILRC understood that Texas would be the testing ground for racist and hateful policies that would lay the groundwork for Trump should he become president again.
Days after President Biden was sworn into office in 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star (OLS), an unconstitutional and deadly Texas law enforcement scheme that has wasted billions of dollars to target migrants for arrest, jail, and deportation. Abbott proved he was willing to sacrifice Texas’s Black and Brown communities to test how far he could push OLS as Trump and his cronies took notes as they planned for his comeback.
The ILRC, along with our partners across Texas, began educating local, state and federal lawmakers and alerting communities to be prepared for anti-immigrant attacks. This work was critical when Trump won the presidency again in 2024 and immediately set out to effectuate his mass deportation agenda, using Texas as his blueprint.
The Texas Legislature continued passing hateful laws aimed at targeting anyone suspected of being undocumented for detention and deportation. Another law required most counties to enter into 287(g) agreements with ICE, making local police officers de facto ICE agents. ICE enforcement actions began taking place across the state, causing widespread fear and driving immigrant communities underground.
The ILRC and our partners never wavered and continued to grow the opposition to the mass deportation agenda across the state, working to create positive change to defeat anti-immigrant policies. Communities learned the power of their collective voices to stand up and fight back. This work was tedious and arduous but has contributed to the effort that has ushered in new leadership for Texas that we hope will lead to compassionate and meaningful change for the state’s diverse communities and become a blueprint for positive immigration policies across states still governed by hateful and racist laws.
Meanwhile in California, the ILRC worked with state lawmakers to ensure funding remained in place to protect immigrant communities. The work of ILRC and our partners led to the creation of the Immigration Legal Fellowship Project to develop the organizational capacity of legal service providers in underserved rural and regional areas of California. We continue to find creative ways to push back on plans to repurpose warehouses and other facilities for immigration detention.
The ILRC along with so many movement partners around the country continues to conduct in-person and virtual Know Your Rights trainings to groups, lawmakers and advocates nationwide, making sure our communities are prepared if they are stopped by federal enforcement agents.
The ILRC’s webinars, trainings, briefings and publications have continued to ensure legal practitioners and community advocates are kept up to date on the ever-changing policy landscape, both federally and in California and Texas.
We demand our leaders–local, state and federal–be bold in their demands and call on them to use the powers they currently have: federal lawmakers must use their oversight capabilities to hold those who have enacted harsh and hateful laws to account; state lawmakers must undo punitive policies currently in place; and, local leaders must step up since change always starts at the grassroots level.
Elected leaders must push for legislation that repeals harmful laws that have strengthened ICE’s current authority to detain, deport, and remove our immigrant community members.
Elected leaders must end policies that have blocked access to immigration benefits for low-income communities or color, and they must strengthen policies that protect immigrant community members from racial profiling, criminalization, and deportation.
The ILRC is incredibly proud of the contributions we have made, along with others, to educate communities that hateful and racist policies should never be accepted as normal. And we will continue to do this work in our goal to build a democratic society that values diversity and the rights of all people.