We must stand up to Trump’s authoritarian state

With the election of Donald Trump in 2024, we are in the midst of unprecedented and troubling times for the Latino community. The Trump Administration is specifically targeting Latino communities and racial profiling Hispanic and Latino families. These military-style raids, with masked and unidentified enforcement, are separating children from families and are simply un-American.

America is a country built by immigrants with the promise of freedom, equality and the pursuit of justice. The Trump Administration has made a mockery of that as it moves the United States toward an authoritarian state.

Our immigrant community is full of hard-working people who have come to this country to make a better life for themselves. A study by the independent think tank California Budget and Policy Center, published last year, found that undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue in 2022 despite being shut out of the programs their taxes fund.

In California, undocumented immigrants contributed $8.5 billion in state and local taxes in 2022 — which would rise to $10.3 billion if these taxpayers were granted work authorization, according to the study.

Instead, the Trump Administration has painted undocumented immigrants as criminals, “killers, rapists and drug dealers,” and used that as justification for sending in the National Guard and conducting military-style immigration enforcement agents into cities such as Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Chicago — unsurprisingly, cities run by Democratic administrations.

They continue to claim they are arresting “the worst of the worst” criminals. But the data, as documented in a study by the Brennan Center for Justice published in May 2024, does not support the claim that the United States is experiencing surging crime caused by immigrants. In fact, many studies have shown lower crime rates among immigrants compared to natural-born citizens. Instead, it is often hard-working, tax-paying members of our community who are the ones being taken away from their families — sometimes in the middle of their workday.

What’s clear is that the Trump Administration is using illegal immigration as a tool to further divide our country and to attack Democratic states and cities — he is inciting division. Standing up to Trump is not just about standing up for our values or political differences, it’s about protecting all Californians, including our immigrant families.

With a Republican majority in Congress and a Trump-packed Supreme Court, the American system of checks and balances in the federal government has broken down. What has emerged is a system of checks and balances in which states and cities are serving as the check on the Trump Administration. States are challenging the Trump Administration through the courts. Over the first six months of this presidency, the California attorney general filed 37 lawsuits against the federal government.

We must stand up to Trump — in the courts, at the ballot box, and on the streets to protect our immigrant families and communities. Trump has been terrorizing communities and breaking families apart. We must not let this continue to happen. We have an obligation to protect our immigrant families against the actions of this federal government and protect our people.