Immigration Reform 2017: Democrats Protest Anti-Immigrant Legislation, Call For Unity In Opposition

Democratic leaders and activists across the country are calling for a united front against any threats to progressive immigration reform brought by President-elect Donald Trump’s White House.

Several politicians made the case for strong opposition to any future anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies at the National Immigrant Integration Conference in Nashville on Tuesday afternoon. Among those who spoke at the event was Pramila Jayapal, an immigration activist and the first Indian-American woman elected to the House of Representatives. Jayapal, who won a congressional seat in her home state of Washington in November, discussed the need for an unprecedented level of grassroots support to block any legislation that could diminish the protections granted to undocumented immigrants and programs like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative under President Obama’s current administration.

Though the future congresswoman has admitted there is a looming threat to immigration reform and integration after Trump’s polarizing rhetoric on the issue, she said thousands of activists are gearing up for battle, the Tennessean reported.

“Together we in this room have moved forward the idea of immigrant integration,” Jayapal told the crowd on Tuesday. “We are going to be a love army for immigrants. We are going to be an army of solidarity, of bringing each other together.”

Trump has promised to deport as many as three million people immediately upon taking office, though it was not immediately clear where the president-elect was garnering those numbers from. His campaign promises mainly focused on stringent immigration policies, including building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and possibly creating a national registry for Muslims entering and living in the country.

Meanwhile, a sprawling immigrant detention center system has continued to lock up as many as 440,000 immigrants annually. The level of deportations have risen under President Obama, who has been seen as a much more progressive politician on immigrant rights than his incoming predecessor.

Also at the immigration conference Tuesday was Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who stressed the need for mobilization at the grassroots level from groups like the Black Lives Matter social justice movement, Muslims, Latinos and other minorities. "I won’t rest until every immigrant in the United States has the same rights as I have," Gutierrez said.