New From Vanessa Cárdenas: “Two Visions of Immigration and America”

Read on AV’s Substack HERE and access online version of this release HERE

Washington, DC — The following is a reflection from Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, on the current moment.

Read “Two Visions of Immigration and America” on AV’s Substack HERE and find the full essay below:

“President Trump and Stephen Miller seem hell-bent to erase America’s history as a nation of immigrants and have deliberately inflamed and provoked a confrontation in Los Angeles as a pretext for their larger, anti-democratic agenda. When the going gets tough, Trump and Miller always, always return to the topic and find new ways to target and scapegoat immigrants. And once again, they’re using the issue as the ‘tip of the spear’ for a broader assault on American democratic pillars, such as deploying the military in American communities, seizing unchecked executive powers and handcuffing and tackling a U.S. Senator for simply having the audacity to ask a question at a public press conference.

Armed ICE agents in masks, handcuffing political opponents and federalizing the National Guard and deploying Marines to L.A. are all the warm up acts to this weekend’s military parade in the streets of Washington, DC. Troops and tanks will parade in lockstep in front of President Trump on his birthday. What we’re witnessing is an approach perfected by desperate tinpot authoritarian dictators – not American presidents in a flourishing democracy. This flexing of military might is not a sign of strength, but rather their weakness and insecurity.

But since Trump and Miller are so eager to refocus attention on immigration, let’s do exactly that. And since they care so much about imagery and made-for-TV versions of politics, let’s take a wider lens than simply looking at a few square miles of Los Angeles. Let’s zoom out across America.

We see swarms of militarized ICE agents and law enforcement in militarized tactical gear, weapons brandished and masks on, targeting immigrant parents, trusted workers and even kids to try and meet new deportation quotas (see here for visual examples). We see federal agents chasing and tackling farmworkers in the fields of Central Valley; detaining American women who are about to give birth; targeting high school soccer players in Ohio and other Dreamers like Ximena, Marcelo and Dylan. As Philip Bump of the Washington Post notes, ‘ICE detentions of people with no criminal records are up nearly 900 percent over the same period last year.’

Why? As Greg Sargent wrote: ‘Miller and Trump spent the 2024 campaign depicting all migrants as dangerous criminals in order to sell mass deportations to the voters. Now, however, because there aren’t enough dangerous criminal migrants around, two-bit fascist Miller is frantically urging ICE officials to head to the nearest Home Depot and scoop up as many migrants as possible.’

Keep in mind that Miller is now using the response to the raids in L.A. that he helped spark as a pretext to turbocharge even more deportations, including through the $151.3 billion in new immigration funding contained in the big ugly bill pending in Congress. All this despite the harms and costs to American values, communities or our economy.

All of this goes beyond L.A. and beyond the military parade in DC and straight to sharply contrasting visions of our nation and what country we want to be; to two visions of immigration and America that encapsulate two visions about America itself.

As I recently wrote, ‘Is it better for our nation to follow the Trump vision that seeks to seal our borders, criminalize immigrants, slash legal immigration, and seek to deport as many immigrants as possible, including deeply rooted immigrants?’ I’d now add to that formulation an additional point: do we support the Trump vision of deploying America’s military against American communities and weaponizing immigration fears to seize new executive powers and crack down on political opposition and dissent? Forcibly removing, tackling and detaining a U.S. Senator for trying to ask questions of DHS Secretary Noem at a public press event?

I think there’s a better vision that’s aligned with our values and our interests and speaks to the American majority. As a policy direction, it involves a secure and orderly border; a resourced, fair and efficient asylum system; legal immigration channels to sustain our economy; and targeted enforcement against public safety threats paired with a path to legal status, instead of deportation for Dreamers and long-residing undocumented immigrants.

And this vision goes well beyond the contours of a policy debate – it also seeks to unite the nation around common sense solutions, not deliberate chaos and cruelty, birthday parades and military deployments to American communities. It recognizes that political dissent and the separation of powers, due process and habeas corpus, aren’t abstract concepts or archaic notions but instead the lifeblood of a democratic system.

Crucially, these two visions of America shouldn’t be viewed as simply cleaving along partisan lines. There is a strong American majority, including a sizable group of Republican voters, who support citizenship instead of deportation for Dreamers and long-settled immigrants. Who oppose Trump and Miller’s indiscriminate mass deportation agenda. And who believe that state/local authorities should take the lead in responding to protests on the ground, while disapproving of Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard soldiers and Marines to Los Angeles.

Note that even some Republican Members of Congress are joining business owners and community leaders to express qualms over the indiscriminate deportations and the targeting of long-settled workers and family members (see Axios article). And Americans of all party affiliations are wondering why we’re deploying the military to our own communities. They’re asking why we’re tackling U.S. Senators for their speech. And they’re wondering if shifting federal law enforcement money and manpower away from active investigations and toward low-level immigration enforcement is smart and sensible.

What President Trump and Stephen Miller are unleashing on American communities is unpopular, undemocratic and, yes, un-American. It’s incumbent on all of us – no matter our party – to speak out and stand up for a different vision of America.”