Resistance to Trump is more urgent now than in his first term

Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:

Despite the chaos, cruelty, and intentional strategy of the Trump administration to overwhelm sectors affected by its multiple and draconian executive orders on various fronts, not only on immigration, we still see examples of resistance even though the challenges are complicated.

Over the weekend and this Monday, there were demonstrations and even a “day without immigrants” to condemn the Trump administration’s raids and deportations and reiterate the important role that those immigrants play in the economy of the country and its communities.

Many will wonder what difference these types of events will make, and the answer is sowing the seeds of action and of hope, rather than turning our backs on the avalanche of horrible actions from the Trump administration, which affect education, health, the economy, immigration, inclusion, law enforcement agencies, and even the vital help that the United States offers developing countries.

Trump initiated the first flights of undocumented people to the Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Although he affirms that he is trying to expand the center that already exists to process immigrants intercepted on the high seas, principally Cubans, Dominicans, and Haitians, activists have been denouncing civil and human rights violations at this facility for years. The message sent that immigrants are a threat to national security cannot be ignored.

According to the White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, Trump is “no longer going to allow America to be a dumping ground for illegal criminals from nations all over this world.”

For those who didn’t vote for Trump, for the Democrats, and for various sectors and organizations affected by the executive orders, there has been no rest. The Trump offensive has been brutal and constant, because the intention is to paralyze the opposition that still hasn’t recovered from the blow of the 2024 presidential election defeat.

And to tell the truth, the Democrats and many of those sectors still haven’t found their voice, the message, and the strategy to confront a president of the United States whose actions attack the democratic tradition of the nation.

A president who is using government institutions to literally exact revenge on those he considers his political enemies, as he has done with those who investigated and prosecuted those responsible for the bloody assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, incited by Trump and based on the lie that the 2020 elections had been “stolen.”

In the bizarro world of this president, violent criminals whose actions provoked death and destruction on January 6 are pardoned, but the prosecutors and law enforcement agents whose arduous work resulted in the conviction of those delinquents are persecuted and punished.

And Trump pardons criminals, but his raids and mass deportations are not only focused on criminals, as he alleges. Last week NBC reported that at least half of those detained in just one day of operations had no criminal history. Even Puerto Ricans, who are citizens, have been detained by ICE.

His purge of immigrants is also not limited to undocumented people. It was already announced that Trump revoked Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from more than 300,000 Venezuelans, making them vulnerable to deportation.

The cascade of measures has not silenced some voices, who raise them to denounce unjustified dismissals and Trump’s excesses in federal agencies, or those of the groups who are filing lawsuits in the courts to stop Trump’s actions that they consider illegal and unconstitutional.

There are also the valiant individual actions like that of Reverend Mariann Budde, who asked Trump to have compassion toward immigrants, saying that they are not criminals.

Even undocumented people themselves are facing off against Trump. La Opinión reported that an undocumented woman from Puebla, Anely Solís, joined the announced “day without immigrants” in Los Angeles and didn’t send her kids to school. Her children live under the constant terror that their mother will be detained and deported.

But Solís wants her kids to see that their mom “did something good for us as well as the Latino community and fought for people who don’t have papers.”

That’s a lesson for the Democrats: to shake off the electoral defeat and begin to take actions possible from the minority and do more than merely denounce Trump. They can believe that folding in the face of Trump is the best political option, but it is not the humanitarian or morally correct one.

Although it takes time to regroup forces, the resistance is even more urgent now than in the first Trump administration, as his worst threats are becoming reality.