Migrant organizations mobilize across the United States to support Kamala Harris

With one month to go before the November 5 presidential election, a coalition of 24 immigrant rights organizations has officially endorsed the candidacy of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. FIRM Action — the political arm of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) — endorsed the vice president on Thursday at a conference attended by several leaders of the civil rights groups from 26 states. “We’re not standing idly by as immigrants continue to be the punching bag of politicians in this election,” said Angélica Salas, FIRM Action Board Chair. “We are responding by mobilizing our families and friends and neighbors and ensuring that they cast their vote at the ballot box and vote for Kamala Harris,” she said, recalling the potential of the migrant vote, which has risen by 3.5 million voters in the past four years.

In the 30 days until the election, these organizations plan to knock on the doors of more than three million voters, go to community centers and use social media to campaign for the Democratic candidate. The threats and insults of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, and his followers have not fallen on deaf ears. “If he gets elected, he will destroy and separate our families with mass deportations. He will end DACA [a program that grants residency to migrants who arrived as children] and temporary protected status. He will close all access to asylum and unleash hate against us throughout this nation,” warned Salas, who also presides over the Californian migrant defense organization CHIRLA.

Trump has intensified his rhetoric against migrants, vowing to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history and blaming them for various national issues, including the rising cost of housing. He has also criminalized migrants, making outlandish claims, such as accusing Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, of eating pets. In response, several organizations have launched campaigns opposing Trump. Salas said: “We are reminding this country that immigrants do have political power.”

By 2022, nearly 24 million citizens born outside the United States were eligible to vote, or 10% of the electorate. In the past decade, this population has grown 32%, a rate that outpaces the growth of the native-born adult population, which was just 8% between 2012 and 2022, according to Pew Research data.

Vanessa Cárdenas, president of the Washington-based organization America’s Voice, acknowledged that the Republican message has sparked fear among the migrant population. She compared the two candidates’ stances on migration, describing them as “rooted in fundamentally different worldviews and visions of America.” She explained: “The Harris vision recognizes that legal and orderly immigration and the stories, dreams, and sacrifices of generations of immigrants are among America’s greatest strengths and enduring advantages. Meanwhile, the Trump vision is filled with darkness and disinformation, demagoguing immigrants in a dangerous and obvious attempt to seize power and divide and distract us on issues of race and immigration.”

Cárdenas recalled the importance of migrants in important swing states, such as Arizona, where 16% of the workforce are migrants, or Nevada, where the entertainment and services industry would collapse without the work of Latinos.

Laura Martin, the executive director of PLAN Action in Nevada, stressed that the November 5 election is “a choice between organizing the future and taking us back to a past of uncertainty that we have already experienced, and to which I definitely do not want to return.” In Nevada — where 14% of voters were born outside the United States — President Joe Biden won the state by a very slim margin, and this year the race is even closer.

Martin, who says that in Nevada Trump is seen as a fraud, argued that “the new Latino vote could be the margin of victory,” since one in five voters is Hispanic. For this reason, she said, PLAN Action is carrying out a massive campaign to call on voters to support Harris. In addition, PLAN is campaigning for several initiatives, such as school boards and abortion, issues that Nevada is taking to the polls, because “those things can have more effect on their daily lives than the role of the president.”

From Wisconsin, the president of Voces de la Frontera, Christine Newman, highlighted the need to mobilize the Latino community in the swing state, where 80% of the workers in its dairy industry are migrants, most of whom are undocumented. Newman defended her support for Harris, arguing: “She knows how to distinguish between members of cartels and organized crime and working families.” “Immigrants are the ones who keep this country going, and we look forward to working with her in the first 100 days of the new administration to push policies for people who have been here for decades and, hopefully, through a legislative Congress that can fix a broken system,” she said.

Fleeing from the past

One of the most widely given reasons for endorsing Harris — aside from what a Trump victory could mean for their communities — is how the first Trump administration hurt migrant rights. Adonis Flores, spokesman for Michigan United Action, experienced first-hand Trump’s deportation policy, when his brother was expelled from the country in 2017. In addition to Latinos, his organization campaigns among the Arab community. “We want to remind them that we have a better chance of seeking policies and help for our families in the Middle East, as well as at the border and here in the country, with Harris as president,” he said.

Theo Oshiro, president of the national organization Se Hace Camino, also recalled the consequences of Trump’s mandate, which separated many migrant families. “We can’t go back,” he said, adding that, as well as campaigning for Harris, “the challenge is to push the administration to ensure justice for the immigrant community.”

“It is a question of survival,” warned Gustavo Torres, president of CASA in Action.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition