What you need to know about the fight for immigrant lives under a Biden administration

Next Wednesday, Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the next president of the United States.

All week long, immigrant organizers from Cosecha have been taking action to send a clear message to the new administration: we need permanent protection, dignity, and respect for the undocumented community now.

For four years, Cosecha has been building a strong base of undocumented immigrant leaders. We learned the painful lessons from Obama’s failure on immigration. We fought against Trump’s racist policies and attacks on our community. And now, while the Biden administration says they will stand up for immigrants, we know we are going to have to organize and fight to win the things we need.

Here is what you need to know about Biden when it comes to immigration:

The old strategy on immigration reform won’t work

The Democratic Party playbook on immigration has been clear for decades: expand militarization at the border and divide the community between the “good” and “bad” immigrants.

Historically, Republicans create the tools to criminalize and deport immigrants and Democrats expand them. While Bush created ICE, Obama became the president to use the agency to deport the largest number of immigrants in US history. Trump’s inhumane policies and changes to the judicial system put our communities in danger, but it’s only a matter of time before Democrats use and expand those same tools.

At the end of the day, whether they talk of protecting Dreamers or TPS holders or some other segment of the community, undocumented families like mine will continue to get torn apart by detention and deportation until we acknowledge the Democratic strategy has failed to delivery permanent protection for ALL immigrants.

We won’t negotiate away our dignity and respect

During the Obama era, immigrant organizers spent countless hours lobbying in the halls of Congress for legislation that promised to give our people crumbs. For years our community trusted others, like the Democratic Party, to come to our rescue and stop the attacks on our families.

With every morsel we were offered, we had to compromise parts of ourselves. We were told we had to bring more ICE agents into our communities to apease the white supremacists on the other side, that we had to choose between legalizing our undocumented youth or our parents, but couldn’t have both.

Today we see these as the false choices they are. My parents and so many others remain at risk of being kidnapped by ICE, and so we commit to fight for more.

Despite unprecedented challenges, we’re ready to fight

Forgotten by the government before and during this pandemic, we have kept at work cleaning the buildings, running the factories, building the roads, and harvesting the fields.

Now, we are bringing our fight to the streets, to city and town centers, state houses, libraries, and displaying our message on bridges.

From New York to New Mexico, immigrant actions this week by Cosecher@s and advocates represent a unified force for the 11 million and our commitment to keep up the fight against a legacy of bipartisan attacks on immigrants.

This inauguration week, working class undocumented people around the country are setting the standard for how we deserve to be treated — with permanent protection, dignity, and respect.

Sign on now to support immigrants taking action across the country this week.

In Solidarity,

Brenda