S8 E4: Attack on Immigration Rights

Episode Transcript

Kanya Bennett
Welcome to Pod for the Cause, the official podcast of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Leadership Conference Education Fund, where we take on the critical civil and human rights issues of our day. I’m your host, Kanya Bennett, coming to you from our nation’s capital, Washington DC. It is no secret that our civil and human rights are under attack by the current administration. We have been talking about it all season. As a result, many of us are feeling unsafe in our communities. For some, feelings of fear often means turning to law enforcement. But what if your fear is the police? Federal law enforcement, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE and Customs and Border Protection, also known as CBP, are anchoring the administration’s anti- immigrant sentiment and aggressive immigration enforcement agenda. The local police and communities across the country are playing a role here, too. With the rise of mass deportations and policies that compel local law enforcement to collaborate with ICE, the lines between immigration enforcement and everyday policing have become increasingly blurred. These moves have turned local police into de facto immigration agents, heightening fear and eroding trust in immigrant communities. And a recent executive order that unleashes the police will only accelerate this shift by further partnering federal agents with state and local, fueling militarized law enforcement and empowering agencies to prioritize enforcement over accountability. Today we are joined by three dynamic guests who represent the leaders, strategists, advocates, and organizers on the front lines here, fighting not just for immigrant rights, but for core democratic principles like freedom, equality, opportunity, and justice. First, let me welcome Vanessa Cardenas, my old friend who is the Executive Director of America’s Voice, an organization building public support and political will to achieve fair and just immigration. Welcome, Vanessa.

Vanessa Cardenas
Hey, Kanya, and thank you so much for having me. It’s really a pleasure to have this conversation with such an amazing group of people. Thank you.

Kanya Bennett
Next we have Bree Spencer, my colleague here at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which is fighting every day for America as good as its ideals. Bree is the Senior Program Director for our justice team, no stranger to the organization and the podcast. Welcome, Bree.

Bree Spencer
Thanks, Kanya. Happy to be here.

Kanya Bennett
And finally, we are also joined by Renata Bozzetto, Deputy Director at the Florida Immigrant Coalition, an organization that brings together over 80 member organizations to build and empower immigrant communities and advance policies that promote dignity, inclusion and equity across the state. Welcome, Renata.

Renata Bozzetto
Thank you, Kanya. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Kanya Bennett
All right, let’s get to it. Vanessa, let me start with you. To open our conversation, I want us to take a step back and examine the bigger picture behind the immigration policies we’ve seen in recent years. Can you walk us through what you see as the core ideology behind the anti- immigrant narrative and how it’s gaining traction in mainstream political discourse?

Vanessa Cardenas
Thank you for that question cause I actually think it’s really important that folks understand what’s behind the policies that this administration is implementing. And at this core, the ideology around these policies is this notion of the great replacement theory, which really emphasizes the idea that immigrants are here to take power from” white real Americans”. And again, this is a belief that is really predominant in the right- wing sort of online ecosystem. And we have seen, sadly, mainstream elected and other leaders really embracing this theory, really starting probably the last four or five years. And I also want to just underscore that this ideology is really grounding all of the efforts in terms of the immigration policies that this administration is advancing. And it is part of, I believe, peace as a strategy that they have been advancing for several years and they’ve also put a lot of money behind it. Last election cycle, they spent over $1 billion on anti-immigration ads, and again, grounded on this idea that immigrants are here to take advantage of our way of life and to really take political power away from, again “real Americans”. And the last point I want to make is that this idea is sort of the justification for everything they’re doing. And they also sort of connected to the idea of invasion that people are coming here again to replace folks, and it is again, an effort to divide and to create fear and demonize and scapegoat immigrants. So we have to really understand that this is, again, the idea behind all of these policies, and they’re really taking advantage of the fear that people have about, again, the changing demographics of our country. So it’s a multilayer strategy. Having said that, I would say that the last sort of few months have shown that Americans are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the policies that we’re seeing, with the violations around the process, and also just seeing the cruelty and the chaos that Trump’s policies are inflicting in our communities.

Kanya Bennett
Thank you, Vanessa, for breaking that down, these thoughts around the ideology here. And so Bree, let me bring you into the conversation and let’s talk about what’s happening on the ground. So these ideological shifts, this idea around replacement, right? This replacement theory. This notion of an invasion of immigrants. These things have real consequences for people’s lives. They’re not just things that we just sort of spew and come without harm. So we’ve seen a growing entanglement between local police and federal immigration enforcement. It’s often framed as it’s necessary for public safety, like Vanessa’s saying to respond to this invasion. But how does this entanglement actually impact our communities and our collective safety?

Bree Spencer
Oh, it’s such a good question and such an important one at this critical time. Absolutely co- sign everything Vanessa said about the targeting and what you just raised about language. Like all of this stuff, what the president says, what his administration says, what law enforcement leaders say and do 100% impacts people’s day- to- day lives. What we’re seeing is this type of policing and enforcement from the federal government that is directly connected to the dehumanizing language that’s being used about immigrants right now. So first, I guess I want to talk about that piece because it’s going to cascade into the local piece. We are seeing tactics and conduct from ICE and CBP that are completely unconscionable. They’re unacceptable. They’re not a style or engagement of law enforcement that anybody would want to experience. Anybody. And so when the public sees ICE, all that, we’ve seen so many videos like on social media, on the news, when you see an ICE agent refusing to wait until someone’s lawyer can get there, and so they bust out their car window. When you see ununiformed ICE agents who will not identify themselves, who hide their faces to conceal their identity from the public, jump out on people in the street and pull them into an unmarked vehicle, essentially kidnapping or abducting them from the street. When the public sees that, that is extremely scary. It’s extreme for the individuals, it’s scary for the individuals. It’s extremely scary for the general public who’s worried about their neighbors, their friends or themselves being treated in this manner. And I think that’s where we get to the crux of local law enforcement engaging with the federal immigration agents. The types of stuff ICE is doing is exactly what we were fighting against during the movement for Black lives, what people have been fighting against for decades in police brutality and failure to adhere to due process. And there actually has been some progress at the local level with community and police relationships. Now it’s not perfect. We have a long way to go, right? I don’t want to oversell that piece of it, but 100% this idea that your law enforcement could partner with ICE, even if they’re not currently partnering with ICE, just the idea that in some communities that is happening is impacting community trust in law enforcement. This part I think is so critical. It impacts any system, trust in any public service system. So if you’re afraid to call police, I’m guessing you’re probably also afraid to call fire. You’re probably afraid to call EMS. We’re seeing such encroachment into safe places like universities and courts that ICE is doing. They’re nabbing students, sometimes from political speech. They’re going into… I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so let me tell you, they go into courthouses, they’re going into ours. And that means people are less likely to feel like there’s a safe space they can go to and even conduct regular business of day- to- day. So I think the damage is incalculable. Even if everything stopped today, if this aggressive ICE enforcement and CBP enforcement stopped today, we would have years of digging out from the damage that’s being done already. And I worry so much about the continued damage that will occur from more and more local departments engaging with the federal system.

Kanya Bennett
Yes, just outrageous sort of what we are witnessing across the country. I know you talked about Milwaukee a little bit, home, but you were speaking from sort of a national trends perspective, right? And Vanessa, I want to bring you back into the conversation, but before I do, let me have you, Renata, you’re there in Florida where you know that ICE and local law enforcement are cooperating. We know that this has had real consequences for not just immigrant communities, which is I think something Bree was talking on too and Vanessa earlier in her opening comments. I mean, what does this mean in terms of this trust in local law enforcement? Again, not just immigrant communities, but for all of us.

Renata Bozzetto
That is exactly where our concern is. As Bree very eloquently put, this is really a crusade against trust. And when we don’t have trust, we don’t function. Leading with dignity is incredibly difficult when trust doesn’t exist. Violence thrives and fear thrives when there is no trust. What we are seeing in Florida, let’s be very clear, what is the outcome of these agreements. We are seeing more and more of our neighbors being arrested without having a violent background, without having a criminal background. When our governor was discussing publicly the outcomes of one of the operations that they held in our state called Operation Tidal Wave, they very clearly stated that several of our neighbors who were arrested did not have a criminal background. So what happens when the police, the local law enforcement is tasked with integration enforcement? Simple everyday life occurrences can be devastating for a family. I’m talking about driving with a broken headlight. I’m talking about picking up your kid at school and not having a driver’s license to show who you are at hand being a reason why an individual is further interrogated or detained. This is incredibly troublesome. We are in the context in which we very, very clearly understand that our lives are imbricated. We have more than a million people who just between Venezuelans and Haitians who have a temporary protected status, which means that they went through the appropriate channels to get properly vetted to be in the United States to receive a work authorization to be here and to work with a regulated status and who’re now on the verge of losing that status because of executive orders and administrative actions. And why I am saying this is that immigration is already complex as it is. In the context that the federal government is putting such a crusade against immigrants and shifting laws and shifting regulations and pulling the rug from under people on a daily basis, law enforcement is also tasked with an incredible, dangerous situation, which is discerning who has the right to be here from who doesn’t in a context that they don’t have jurisdictional knowledge to do so. That is part of how we end up with a lack of trust, but also an incredible vulnerable situation for all of us.

Kanya Bennett
Absolutely, Renata. And I really appreciate you driving home this point about trust. There not being any trust as a result of the actions that we are seeing on the part of law enforcement. Vanessa, let me come back to you. So we’re talking about the consequences of these enforcement strategies going far, far beyond the immigration system. They really touch on foundational democratic rights that we are losing here. So how are mass deportation efforts and aggressive enforcement practices threatening fundamental democratic rights like due process, habeas corpus, free speech, all of those things we trust a democracy to protect and preserve for us?

Vanessa Cardenas
Thank you for the question’cause I think that’s also a very fundamental question. And at America’s Voice, we always say that the attacks on immigrants is sort of the cannery on the coal mine. It’s sort of the tip of the spear to broader attacks on all of our rights and all of our freedoms. And this is not an issue just for immigrants. This is a concern for every American. And I think that the concerns around the process when we have people that are being sent to prisons, for example, in El Salvador with no access to a lawyer, no access to family members, people are being literally disappeared from their communities and they have no way because our government is keeping them from talking to their lawyers, to their family members and then sending them to other countries. So this is such a fundamental violation of what our rights as Americans are. In our constitution it’s very clear that these rights are for all people that are in the United States. So I do want to underscore that this is, again, a really fundamental violation of what we call dear as Americans. And also our worry is that we are already hearing that the Trump administration and specifically the President of the United States, even saying that he’s considering the idea of sending US citizens to jails abroad. So it is not a stretch to again say that this is an attack on all of us. And in my view, the violations that we’re seeing in the immigrant community are test cases. They’re testing how far they can go. And we are already seeing that this administration is not even listening to the Supreme Court. They are not obeying the orders of the Supreme Court and really testing our system of checks and balances. So for us when we say this is an attack on our democracy, it’s not an exaggeration. And that’s why I believe that this fight needs to be broader than just the immigrant advocacy community. And that’s why I am so thankful for The Leadership Conference and other organizations. But this is the fight to really join to protect our democracy because at stake is really our fundamental rights as Americans. And we don’t have a lot of time. What I mean by that is that we need to collectively push back against these policies and we need our leaders, our political leaders to stand up. And I would love to see some Republicans and conservative leaders stand up against this administration because we need their voices, but also just sort of the entire communities needs to stand up to this really, again, abuses of power that we’re seeing. And this is just the beginning. This is what, the fourth month of the Trump administration, and we have a whole agenda that they had already made public in terms of their Project 2025, where they are really laying out all the policies that they want to advance. So I think it is a call to action for all of us.

Kanya Bennett
Absolutely, Vanessa. And there’s so much that I want to explore here. And Bree, I want to talk to you. Vanessa touched on just sort of the implications more broadly, more generally with respect to policing our society in this way. Vanessa also talked about the approach the administration is just sort of taking generally in its defiance of the rule law and what that then means for how we are policed, how law enforcement has a presence here. The Trump administration, as you know, is removing oversight and accountability mechanisms. Anything they can dismantle, they’re doing it. So just today, DOJ formally retracted its intervention in Minneapolis and Louisville. And again, we’re seeing this not just in the immigration enforcement context, but just in the enforcement context of everyone as they live their day- to- day lives and try to figure out what public safety looks like and how we ensure that law enforcement accountability is a part of that. So Bree, I just want you to talk to us a little bit more about what it looks like here to not have DOJ intervention. What does that mean for communities that will continue to sort of fear what public safety looks like, especially when we don’t have these checks that we once relied upon at the federal level?

Bree Spencer
I think part of the point, and this has been discussed a lot in the media and advocacy spaces right now, the confusion and the overwhelm is the point. That’s the goal. And so I think it’s really important when considering any kind of law enforcement, which I will include under that umbrella, immigration enforcement, the forest for the trees. So we’ve got several trees. We’ve got the DOJ dismantling, dismembering and discarding the Civil Rights Division, which is the arm in the country, it is the body in the country that enforces civil rights law. So that is hugely devastating. And it is certainly devastating the law enforcement accountability space because that is a big part. It’s not the only part by any means, but it was a significant portfolio within the Civil Rights Division at DOJ to research, find, get findings together, and then enforce consent decrees, which was the federal government forcing a local jurisdiction to get its act together to stop racial profiling, to stop abusing people. And there’s several things going on with that. We’ve got ongoing kind of middling agreements that were developed that are being dropped. There’s I believe seven cities where the DOJ had specific findings of civil rights violations that didn’t have a consent decree yet. And the DOJ has come out and said, ” We’re not going to pursue a consent decree,” even though at least one of those jurisdictions has, I believe, found officers sexually assaulting people. I mean civil rights violations that are horrific that the government has said this is happening, and now they have said we’re not going to do anything about it, which is outrageous. So there’s the DOJ Civil Rights Division piece, which I think is the key example of undercutting oversight mechanisms, right? That’s the number one example. Then we have the DOJ through this administration cutting$ 800 million plus of programming that is focused on community- based violence prevention, community violence intervention and other type of work, a lot of support for alternative first response and unarmed crisis response, things that are actually making our communities safer in real time. These aren’t tested theory like we’re testing them. These are known to work and are currently working. So the administration’s undercutting community- based non- punishment forms of public safety engagement, cutting oversight for police while calling for through that executive order you named earlier Kanya, the unleashing of law enforcement, calling using language that is dehumanizing to say we need to aggressively police. And that is the forest. It’s not fact- based, it’s not practical, it’s not moral, and it is fundamentally damaging to the way people feel safe, safety itself, how people perceive safety and also how they engage in mechanisms that are provided in public service. I guess I just want to say this one additional thing, which is I just want to name, this has really been on my mind over the last couple of months. In our society, we have one group of people that everyone has sort of agreed upon we can not care about, and that is” criminals”. I don’t even like using that language, but this idea that there’s any group of people who could do anything, that means you can throw them in a building and toss away the key and not care about their conditions of confinement, not care about what kind of rehabilitation or support they’re receiving. That is the entry point for dehumanizing people. And what Trump said is like, ” Oh, there’s this category of people y’all don’t care about. Ah, I’m going to make it bigger. Immigrants can go in there. Homeless people can go in there. People use drugs can go in there. People seeking reproductive healthcare can go in there.” Right? It is an expanding net of criminalization. And to Vanessa’s point, I feel like what is happening right now in the immigrant communities is the test case for putting more people in that bucket. And part of what it will mean to heal and hopefully recover and figure out an America as good as its ideals is going to be reckoning with as a society the fact that we really can’t afford to treat any group of people this way, period, or democracy is not going to last cause people who have a different idea get a toe hold on the backs of those kind of discriminatory practices.

Vanessa Cardenas
Can I make a point that I think is really important in addition to Bree’s amazing insights? There are two things that really drive me insane about this debate. One is that they’re not based on facts, right? Because when you talk about immigration in this country, by far, by far, it’s a story of contributions. It’s about people believing in the best of America and choosing to be here and working hard and being essential to key industries. And it’s a story of success. In one generation people just make so much change in their lives. And it does drive me crazy the way in which we have allowed the right to define immigrants and immigration, and we need to do more about sharing the real story of immigrants in this country and the fact that we need immigration to be economically competitive and for our future prosperity. So I would like to ask everyone who’s listening to do more on that front because there is a really good story to tell, and the best part of it is that it’s based on facts, not on the lies that we are told every day. The second thing that I want to also emphasize about all of these efforts targeting immigrants and the civil rights of all of us is that it is a distraction that this administration is creating because they are not addressing the real concerns of the American people, which is their pocketbook issues, the economy. And the other piece is that while they’re targeting all these programs, they’re actually taking resources away from public safety. So for example, earlier this week we heard that this administration told the FBI that they needed to dedicate more agents to go after immigrants, which I think again, that’s making us less safe. They directed Homeland Security investigators to step away from their duties of going after drug dealers and people that are bringing drugs to the border to focus on again, going after, for the most part, law- abiding immigrants that are trying to improve their lives here. So I think it’s really important also to call out just the hypocrisy around this and the fact that their policies are actually going to make us less safe, less tolerant because of, again, their policies are just to divide us, and again, not based on facts. So just wanted to share that’cause it’s something that drives me crazy about this debate and that we really also need to put a spotlight on those things that they’re doing.

Kanya Bennett
Thank you for that, Vanessa. Appreciate you interjecting. And want to pick up on this thread that Bree touched on. Vanessa, you touched on it too. But just sort of the federal government really compromising public safety with almost a billion dollars of federal dollars cut in terms of the public safety grants. Bree lifted that. Bree also talked about the reigning in of consent decrees, the reigning in of federal oversight, of police departments engaged in unconstitutional policing at the local level. We’ve also hinted at these investments in private prisons at the federal level that are being used for immigration enforcement and certainly the pocketbook piece. I mean, there’s no shortage of funds that will be generated from that, though for a very few, Trump allies there. So Renata, I want to talk some more about sort of what this means on the ground. What does it mean when you’ve had the federal government take away all of these resources? How are communities going to sort of sustain themselves? How are they going to thrive? People often say that the federal government is one thing over here, but everything is really driven by the state and locals and the federal government can kind of do whatever it wants, but it all has an impact. Everything is connected. Clearly what is happening at the federal level is reaching state and locals. That is the intent here. So Renata, talk to us a little bit about what it means, they’re in Florida, to have the federal government abandoning some of these public safety efforts, some of these law enforcement accountability efforts that we’ve seen previously.

Renata Bozzetto
We have a couple things at play. One is that states should never be tasked with immigration enforcement, immigration legislation, right? This is the purview of the federal government. As the federal government shrinks, it gives powers that are not granted by the constitution to actors that are trying to fill the void, and that just feeds into their effort to create chaos. That’s how we end up with Florida passing laws that are unconstitutional, that have definitions for who gets the right to be here that are incoherent with the definitions that we have in the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which is the federal code. So one is that in the void of federal government, there is so much opportunity for things to go wrong at the state level. And two is that, and what Vanessa said, is the incoherent story that we live, our lived experience and the incoherence of the story that they are telling. In Florida, one in five of us is an immigrant. There is no way that one of us would say that their life is not impacted by immigration even if they are not an immigrant because the reality is we count on the labor, the neighborliness of our neighbors who are immigrants. We are talking about entire industries powered by people that were born outside of the United States. In Florida we are talking about construction, we are talking about healthcare. Lots of our seniors who retire from other states and come build their snowbird life in Florida, they really count on workers who have temporary protected status and are taking care of their health. So at the end of the day, when we have no measures and no protections for people that they cannot plan for their future, they cannot build life thinking that there is security, it trickles down to many layers of an economy. What does it mean for a family that needs to make a decision on whether or not to buy a house today, knowing that they might not have the security to be here and pay for their mortgage? What does it mean when somebody is forcefully removed and their children are American depending on that bread winning income? Those things impact all of us. We tend to think that whatever it is the regulation, it’s pertaining only to immigrants and it’s transforming only immigrants lives. But at the end of the day, there is a business owner who might not be an immigrant but is counting on their employee to show up to work tomorrow. And if that employee is caught because of a broken headlight, it’s impacting an entire system. And that’s part of what is happening in our state. And I don’t think it’s too far- fetched to say that it’s happening in other states too, that even have a less robust immigrant population but are not existing in a vacuum, right? We have interconnected economies. We have interconnected exchanges that are not in a vacuum from a system that really depends on the labor, the participation, as well as the buying power of millions of Americans who were born outside of the United States.

Kanya Bennett
Thank you so much for that, Renata. Let’s start talking some next steps. Let’s give our listeners some action- oriented items. Vanessa, you talked about this a bit when you offered a reflection on really needing to talk based on fact, really needing to get accurate messages out there to the public. So what are the opportunities for shifting the narrative toward a more rights- based inclusive framework? How do we get folks away from the ideology that you talked about earlier in this conversation? Give us some guidance.

Vanessa Cardenas
There is hope guys, and there are silver linings. And as hard as this moment is for all of us collectively, what brings me hope is just to see the unity and the support among progressive communities in this moment, and the increasing understanding to Renata’s point about the essential role that immigrants play in our communities. And based on the polling that we have seen the last few weeks, we are seeing a marked decrease in support for the immigration policies that this administration is advancing. And that is true also among Latino voters, which is significant. So people are becoming increasingly concerned. And we always knew that the mass deportation slogan was a mirage, that once people understand the real human and economic implications of the mass deportation idea, they don’t like it because they see that their neighbors are being caught in the dragnet. And let me also make it clear, not just undocumented neighbors, but legal immigrants, they came here legally are being caught in this dragnet. And even US citizens. We’ve seen many example of, for example, people from Puerto Rico, US citizens who are being caught in this dragnet. So the more people see, again, the real human and economic impact, the less they like what they’re seeing. We also have to think about again, this idea that this affects American families. There are 7 million kids, US- born kids who have an undocumented parent. And we have heard stories from places like Tennessee where there are kids that are afraid to go to school because of all of these threats that they’re feeling that their parents are under. So again, the more people hear the stories, and I think we should do more to elevate the harms at the local level. And also, again, going back to Renata’s point, to also tell the story of how immigrants are important. And I do have hope because we are seeing, for example, business owners starting to speak up. They’re talking about the fact that their workers are not showing up. We are seeing, for example, farmers that are worried whether they’re going to have enough hands to pick their vegetables or their produce. We’re seeing construction companies worried about whether they’re going to be able to have enough workers. So we are starting to sort of see those cracks across our country and we need to be able again, to uplift those stories. And then the other piece, and I think this is the hard piece for progressives, because we are really good at seeing what we’re against. We also have to start talking about what we’re for. And I think that the challenge for us is to start thinking through about what kind of system do we need that’s consistent with our values and our interests. And people need to hear more about our ideas on how to fix our broken immigration system because it’s not enough to say it’s broken. It’s an important point right now and we should be driving it, but it’s equally important, especially as we look to 2026 and 2028 to talk about the solutions that we’re bringing to the table.

Kanya Bennett
Absolutely, Vanessa. And Bree, I’m going to come to you, but I want to go to Renata first. Bree, I want to talk to you about the sort of bigger picture, what we stand for point that Vanessa touched on. But Renata, I want to talk to you about sort of the coalition strategies, the legal community organizing strategies that you’re taking there in Florida to resist or mitigate what is happening with the administration and possibly what can be replicated in communities throughout the country. So talk to us a little bit about that, Renata.

Renata Bozzetto
Sure. And thank you so much Vanessa, for the call to action and invitation that we can’t just focus on what is broken, we really have to fix it. So in Florida, we continue to build networks of support and coordination with lawyers. Legal representation is a major issue. Even before crisis, most immigrants would go to court without legal counsel. We have efforts from the administration to cut legal counsel and support for children. Imagine this, three- year- olds going to court and speaking to judges without an attorney. This is incredibly cruel. So we have a crisis of legal counsel access and legal representation. So we continue to collaborate with immigration lawyers, but as well as other lawyers. There is an issue of state estate planning, the guardianship for kids. There are lots and lots of legal matters that require attorney support. There is a lot of confusion about the current loss and fastly shifting contexts, right? As I mentioned, temporary protected status just as an example, one day people have it, the other day they don’t. The other day they have it, the other day they don’t. This is incredibly confusing for community members who just want to do the right thing. And the vast majority, and I can say with confidence, nobody is in the shadows by choice. People want to do the right thing, but they have to have the opportunity to do so. And a shifting environment doesn’t allow for that. We need to have the security of real comprehensive immigration reform, real safeguards and commitment from Congress to deliver to people the opportunity to seek the best opportunities for themselves and for communities that they choose to call home. So legal is one. Advocates. We need to make sure that we are paying attention at what local law enforcement is doing and documenting that. The very insidious part of collaboration between local law enforcement and ICE is that more and more immigration enforcement happens in the private sphere, and that’s dangerous. That is what we learned before, that every time that rights are violated in the dark, it becomes so much harder for us to stand up for each other and protect each other. So we need people to observe what’s happening and document cases in which they are showing up without badges, they are covering their faces, they are yanking people out of their homes. We need to be very clear that our neighbors are being kidnapped. We need to be very clear that people at this moment have disappeared, that their families is still searching for their loved ones. That’s where the crisis is so intense and where people can help knowing that, which car did you saw being parked on the road? Was there a license plate? Did you see a uniform? And look for hotlines to report. There are plenty around the country. We have one in Florida that we use. There are plenty immigration enforcement reporting hotlines, and those are important so we can track those activities.

Vanessa Cardenas
Can I just underscore what Renata said about solutions and the fact that people want legality? I would say 98.9% of people who are undocumented want a path to legality. They want to follow the rules. And we saw that with the parole program that the Biden administration implemented, that when we give a legal pathway to people, people will get in line. And the problem right now with our system is that there are not enough legal pathways to make sure that we are having the workers that we need in this country. So part of the solution is having reforms to our legal immigration system so people can come here with the visa and not with the smuggler, as well as legalizing the people that have been here for a long time, in some cases, decades. But what’s good about that is that based on all the research that we have done through the years, we know that the majority of Americans actually support that. They do have concerns about the border and they do not like it when there’s chaos and a lack of control at the border. But they do support this idea of both having control at the border and having a functional system and legalizing the people that are here and creating legal pathways. So in terms of how do we move forward, I think a combination of those ideas presented as solutions to the moment we’re living in is really, really important.

Kanya Bennett
Thank you, Vanessa, for offering that. And Bree want you to continue this closing piece around, yes, naming that the system is broken, both Vanessa and Renata have said that, but also this, what are we going to do about it? What is the alternative? So much of the conversation we’ve been having today really centered on fear, but I think that it can also focus on possibility. And I’m hearing our guests say just that. So Bree, talk to us about what true public safety can look like. And again, not just for immigrants, immigrant workers and families, but really for all of us. And what does it take to get us there?

Bree Spencer
Thank you to Vanessa and Renata for those fantastic remarks because I think that’s exactly right. There is hope, there is possibility here. We’re starting from such a low bar in terms of how people are being treated and what’s being done, that there is absolutely room to run in the right direction. You know what I mean? So I would say this first. When I get really overwhelmed, when I get scared, when I get nervous, I try to go back to key touchstones for myself on what to look for if we have to build something new. And it kind of goes back to what I said before and what Vanessa also reiterated, this idea that what are the facts? What are the truths that the facts bear out? This is something from British philosopher. And finally, love is wise and hatred is foolish. So using those three say, okay, what are the facts? What is practical? What is moral? And they don’t have to be in that order. But I think one of the things that gives me so much hope is so many of the non punishment based solutions to systematic problems we have, whether it’s the immigration system, whether it’s a criminal legal system, what is practical, what is moral and what is fact- based are all the same thing, which is centering humanity and human dignity, centering civil rights and due process, centering transparency, to Renata’s point. What happens in the shadow is not okay. Especially I’m just going to say as somebody who works a lot with law enforcement, law enforcement and secrecy are a bad combo. Sunlight’s the best disinfectant. So let’s go with that, right? So we know those principles are true, and I’m thinking about we have our Vision for Justice policy platform, which is a comprehensive re- imagining of the criminal legal system that is fact- based, practical and moral. And it really centers around, like I said, transparency, human dignity, civil rights, due process, rehabilitation and prevention. And I think there’s so many parallels between how the immigration system is run and how the criminal legal system is run, where the problems lie in those two systems, the root systemic issues of racism and classism and the xenophobia that occupy both of the systems right now and that need to be addressed. So I would say definitely agree with there is a way forward. There is a better way to do things that is possible. And then in terms of fighting back right now and fighting for an America as good as its ideals, focusing local and state makes a lot of sense right now’cause the federal government, as we’ve been discussing for this whole hour is a disaster right now. And so particularly at the local level. So I’m on the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, I’m an oversight commissioner for police and fire here. And I can tell you because of that role, it does matter when community members come to those meetings and say what they want or what they don’t want. We’re having a public debate right now about the use of facial recognition technology in Milwaukee and whether or not the police department should have that tech. 30 people showed up to a meeting within the last month and said, ” No, we don’t want this in our community. It is hugely impactful.” And so I really encourage people to start thinking about where on the local level they can show up at governance meetings. That means maybe common council or city council meetings, subcommittees that deal specifically with public safety and law enforcement. If you have an oversight board at your city or your county, you can go to them. But making your voice known and letting elected officials know you are not okay with how things are moving. And there’s a lot of different and good toolkits out there. I want to flag some really good resources from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. They have really fantastic resources around a lot of things, but specifically 287( g), which is a subsection of the 1996 immigration bill that was already mentioned. It’s one of the levers of influence that the Trump administration is using right now to get local and state law enforcement to do ICE work. And there are a lot of places in the country that are not doing this agreement. And so you should find out where you live if your city or county is participating in 287( g). And you can either go to elected officials and say, ” We don’t do it and I don’t want us doing it, and here’s all the reasons why.” Or you can go to them and say, ” We do it and we want out,”’cause anybody can get out of that agreement. Any of the memorandum of agreement is you can void it from any party. So there is pathways to direct policy advocacy right now at the local and state levels. Also, watch out for your state legislature. We got a lot of very conservative state legislatures who are targeting cities that are more racially diverse and trying to say things like, ” Hey, there’s a bill in Wisconsin that they’re trying to move that’s trying to say, hey, all the sheriffs have to participate in 287(g).” This is the kind of thing that you can push back on locally. And then finally, I would say don’t abandon the federal level altogether. Continue to call your elected representatives in the federal government and let them know how you feel about what is going on, what you’re seeing, what is not okay, and what you’d like them to do differently.

Vanessa Cardenas
Can I just say plus, plus, plus to everything that Bree said. And really quickly,’cause I know Renata wants to add something. So all politics are local, and that’s still true. And we should also thank our local electives when they do the right thing. They shouldn’t only hear from us when we are upset. They should also be hearing from us when they did the right thing. And that’s really, really important. And the other piece, it’s really important to broaden our tent, meaning we need more faith voices, we need educators, we need business leaders, we need union leaders in our fight. So building that coalition at the local level to help us amplify our message is also really key.

Renata Bozzetto
Thank you. And my plus, plus is that not only demonstrating at the local councils and to the federal government, but demonstrating to our neighbors that we are uncomfortable, that we are deeply uncomfortable with the dismantling of our democratic systems. The issue is very often I am talking to people and they are saying, ” I am so uncomfortable and nobody is doing anything. I don’t see people rising up to the level of dismantling. There should be masses.” There won’t be masses if we are not demonstrating. Demonstrate publicly. Demonstrate in your social media. Call your neighbors. Make it very clear that you are one of them, that you are uncomfortable with this shoe because we need to have this understanding that we are not alone.

Kanya Bennett
Absolutely. And let me plus plus, plus, plus all the things that have been said in here and lift our amazing guests as well. Thank you so much for this informative and engaging, this very thoughtful discussion. Thank you for the action items that you’ve equipped our listeners with. There is a lot to learn from this episode and then a lot to do. So again, thank you so much for your time, your energy. Vanessa, thanks for being here.

Vanessa Cardenas
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure and hopefully we can have more conversations like this.

Kanya Bennett
Renata, so happy you could join us today.

Renata Bozzetto
Thank you. It was great.

Kanya Bennett
And Bree, wonderful to have you here today. I know where to find you always, but wonderful to have you on Pod for the Cause today. Thanks for hopping in.

Bree Spencer
Thanks, Kanya. And I just want to say, and I’m going to try to start saying this more often and all the meetings I’m in. ” Hey, it’s day 66 since the United States government sent 300 people to El Salvador without due process. And that’s completely unacceptable.” So that’s something we can’t forget about. I know there’s a lot of movement to get Kilmar Abrego Garcia back. I think that makes a lot of sense as the initial case because the Trump administration has admitted that they made a mistake in sending him there. But I think it’s really important to the point I was making earlier about criminalization. Like it does not matter what any of the people who went to El Salvador did or did not do. Everybody who is in the United States is supposed to get due process. There are no real Americans and fake Americans. There are people that live in America and everyone deserves access to their civil rights.

Kanya Bennett
Absolutely, Bree. Thank you for naming that. And it has not stopped. It has not stopped. Just yesterday I know two folks at least were sent to South Sudan. So look, this should not be commonplace. This should not be common practice. And so Bree, appreciate you naming that because until to Renata’s point, until we get out there and start challenging what’s happening, it’ll keep happening. And we saw it again just yesterday. Thank you again.

Vanessa Cardenas
Thank you.

Bree Spencer
Thanks Kanya.

Renata Bozzetto
Thank you, Kanya.

Kanya Bennett
As today’s episode made clear, the fight for immigrant justice is deeply connected to our broader struggle for civil rights, economic security, and democracy. Here are three actions you can take right now, all of which are linked in our show notes and transcript. Stay informed. Civil rights protections still stand no matter what executive orders say. Read The Leadership Conference’s open letter to the private sector to learn how federal civil rights laws continue to protect us all and why it’s critical to hold institutions accountable. Two, raise your voice. Watch our 100 days press conference on the administration’s attack on civil society. From public safety to education to the legal community, the administration has impacted us all. Sign the pledge to defend our rights and our democracy. And three, take action. We are still fighting for America’s families in the federal budget process. Tell your members of Congress to reject cuts to healthcare, nutrition, and education that would pay for tax breaks for the ultra wealthy. Thank you for joining us today on Pod for the Cause, the official podcast of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Leadership Conference Education Fund. For more information, please visit civilrights.org and to connect with us, hit us up on Instagram, X, Bluesky, Threads and TikTok, we’re everywhere, @civilrightsorg. Find us on Facebook and YouTube at The Leadership Conference. You can also text us. Text Civil Rights, that’s two words, civil rights, to 52199 to keep up with our latest updates. Be sure to subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five star review. Thank you to our production team, Michelle Hodgins, Shalonda Hunter, Dena Craig, Taylor Nicholas and Oprah Cunningham, my colleagues at The Leadership Conference. And shout out to Podville Media, our external production crew. And that’s it from me, your host, Kanya Bennett. Until next time, let’s keep fighting for an America as good as its ideals.

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