Activists protest the agenda of President Donald Trump during a rally near the water tower on the Magnificent Mile on Jan. 25, 2025, in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The immigration enforcement plans of the new administration are deeply fascist and dangerous to our country. Some of the actions being taken are abjectly illegal, some need to be examined by federal courts and some will quickly be assimilated into immigration enforcement policies nationwide. It’s not clear yet what the future will look like, but the present moment is terrifying, especially to the immigrant communities around the U.S. that are feeling pain that may be unimaginable to those of us with the privilege of citizenship. For many, remaining strong and patient and calm and vigilant right now feels intolerable. As an immigration lawyer, now working under her fifth presidential administration, I have received many calls and emails or had people stopping me in public even, begging me to tell them what it is they can do to be allies. It’s a difficult question to answer and here is my best attempt:
First, find out what support already exists in your community. Please do not imagine that simply because a problem feels newly scary or important to you that there aren’t already folks addressing it. Before planning any actions, allies need to ask themselves if anyone is actually asking them to do it. It’s a question worth considering because of the high likelihood that there is already an organization, rooted in or connected to our immigrant community, that has long been strategizing to help. Explore what these organizations are doing and listen to how they ask you to show up. They may need money or material aid, they may need volunteer help or they may need you to be present for a direct action. Please do not center your desire to do something in that conversation. It creates work for an organization to be focused on you and not the real needs of the community they are trying to protect and empower. Accept that it may not be your moment to do something and commit to being ready when it is time.
Second, remember that mutual aid is not simply about protecting people from deportation. Our neighbors have three-dimensional lives and their needs are as diverse as any other population. There may be an immigrant family in your life who is not asking for your direct aid to protect them from immigration enforcement. They may not even want to share that aspect of their life with you. But they could need other types of support that have nothing to do with their status– perhaps help with rent or child care costs or transportation. You may have never considered the needs of your neighbors before they became the targets of state violence. Hopefully now that you are listening, you can learn about the support they need without projecting your own perceptions on them.
Third, have patience with yourself. The new presidential administration is manufacturing a chaotic and unprecedented crisis, banking on the fact that our responses will also be chaotic. A colleague reminded me recently that EMTs are taught to move calmly and deliberately in emergencies not in spite of how critical the situation is, but exactly because it is so critical. You are not failing if you can’t think of an immediate solution to the traitorous leadership in our country hunting down families in our community. The organizers and activists and professionals who deal with this daily are bewildered and struggling for solutions– there is no reason you shouldn’t be too. Be patient with yourself and with them. Deliberately listening and observing and taking slow steps forward in a fight is activism– and the exact type of activism this extraordinary moment calls for.
And finally, it is absolutely an ally’s job to refuse any anodyne explanations of this terror on our communities as normal, inevitable or somehow mandatory by law. The ecosystem of immigration law and policy and the layers of jurisdictional powers in the United States are extremely complicated. When I first began studying this system, I thought perhaps I would find an explanation for why it had to be so cruel and dehumanizing. Now, as an expert, I can confidently say that cruelty is not an unfortunate consequence of the system functioning properly– it is the point of the system entirely. We are a broken country if we believe that we need to terrorize our neighbors to enforce the rule of law. Do not believe it. More than anything, your neighbors need you to resist that idea completely and be guided instead by your instinct to love and protect the vulnerable people around you. Listen, have patience, give a little more than you think you can and trust those who are leading the fights for real justice across all sectors in our communities.