 And again, I am Ann from standoutearth. You are in the right place for the no ban, no wall, no raids, webcast, fighting for the immigrant and refugee rights in the age of Trump. And I'm gonna start off by just going through some quick bios on our presenters. And then we will have Yasmeen speak and then Emilio and then Mark. And once again, thanks everybody for being here today. So just a bit about our presenters. Mark Silverman is a senior staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. He has been working for immigrant rights and more just immigration policies in California and beyond since before the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 back in 1994. And he is the grandchild of a refugee. Yasmeen Tayyib is the legislative representative for human rights and civil liberties at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Yasmeen directs the Friends Committee on National Legislations work on a number of human rights and civil liberties issues, including lobbying for increased resettlement of Syrian refugees and resistance to Trump's travel ban. Yasmeen fled Iran as a child during the Iran-Iraq War and came to the U.S. as an undocumented person. And Emilio Vicente is advocacy coordinator of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country fighting for rights and dignity for immigrant youth and their families. Emilio ran for student body president of the University of North Carolina in 2014 as an undocumented and out gay student. Emilio came to the U.S. from Guatemala as a child. Thank you all so much for being with us today. And with that, what I'm gonna do is make some space for Yasmeen here. I'm going to close the webcams of everybody who's not presenting and then we'll bring them back up in a minute. So bear with me while I do that. There we go. All right. All right, Yasmeen, take it away. Great. Can you guys hear me okay? Thank you so much, Ann. And thank you to all of you for joining. So what I wanted to do is just spend the next, just a couple of minutes giving a quick overview of the two executive orders that came out by this administration, famously known as, you know, his Muslim ban and Muslim ban 2.0. And then what I'll do is I'll cover, for the remainder of the time, I'll kind of go over the strategies that our organizations, colleagues and allies have been employing to try to defeat these EOs and they, you know, involve whether it's, you know, congressional strategy, judicial strategy or in terms of public, you know, outcry and protests. And I want to kind of briefly also talk a little about, you know, the response that we had seen to these EOs and how they impact kind of the, whether, you know, these executive orders are successful in the future and how to kind of deal with this moving forward. But just to give you kind of a very kind of brief overview of the EOs. So January 27th was the day when the first executive order came out. This was, you know, known as Trump's Muslim and Refugee Ban. A revised version of that came out on March 6th. So both of these executive orders, what they ultimately would do is they would suspend the entire US Refugee Resettlement Program for 120 days. They would drastically reduce the amount of refugees that the US is able to take in annually from 110,000 to 50,000, which is the lowest number ever in the history of the program. And then in addition to that, the other aspect of these executive orders that has gotten more, in my view, kind of, you know, attention and by the public and the media is the part where it would ban individuals from several Muslim majority countries from coming to the United States. So in the first executive orders, in the first executive order, there were seven countries covered. And then in the second one, it was sex, so Iraq was removed. So currently the list as it stands is Iran, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. So anybody, immigrant or non-immigrant, applying for visas coming to the United States, if either of those orders were in place, then individuals from those countries would not be permitted from entering the United States. And I mean, for the ones of us that work on these issues, and really from what we've all seen in terms of kind of the public outcry and outrage in terms of, you know, our response to these executive orders, it really flies in the face of core American values of welcoming families, of welcoming those for fleeing violence and persecution and welcoming families to come to the United States to start their lives again in safety and dignity. And I mean, we know that this is not who we are as a country. It's profoundly un-American, you know, unconscionable and in fact unconstitutional to target entire people in terms of discriminating against them and not letting them come to the United States simply because of either their national origin or religious background. And then in terms of just kind of differences of these two executive orders, I kind of covered that already, but so this administration in attempts to kind of getting around the hurdles and the courts, they, what they attempted to do in the second one was one, they clarified that it doesn't apply to legal permanent residents and those who currently hold valid visas. As you recall, we had a ton of cases where families were either being detained in airports or being banned from even coming to the United States and these were folks either with visas or were legal permanent residents. The other aspect, the change in the second executive order is that it no longer indefinitely bans Syrian refugees and it also no longer has kind of the priorities, prioritization language in the second executive order for preferential treatment toward religious minorities. And that was in the first executive order and then in some of the court decisions that came out after the first EO that was cited very prominently and kind of supporting the court's argument that this is in fact a Muslim ban because the administration is also prioritizing religious minorities and coming here. So those were, and then Iraq was obviously taken off the list as well and this was in terms of advice and suggestions that Trump had received from folks in the Pentagon. These are, his advisors had essentially told him that if you're serious about defeating ISIS and you shouldn't be alienating the folks that are supposed to work with us and that's essentially why Iraq was removed. But that in fact actually made the case stronger for us in trying to push back and saying that well, this is actually is in fact a Muslim ban and it has no rationale based on national security because you're arbitrarily adding and removing countries. And whereas the first EO came out on January 27th and this administration kept saying this is an eminent threat to our national security and we need an implementation of this executive order immediately, the second one didn't come out until March 6th. So again, just to kind of the context in which these EOs were released and kind of the facts around them, I think have been helpful in terms of us being able to push back and also in terms of how these executive orders will kind of move through the judicial system as well. So first I wanted to talk just briefly about the legislative strategy that FCNL and our coalition partners have kind of devised and responding to these executive orders. So I mean the only thing we could do in terms of legislative action is by having allies in the house and Senate introduce legislation that would essentially rescind, nullify this executive order. And we're talking about the March 6th one because the March 6th one supersedes the January 27th one. So if you actually, if you move on to the next slide. And so the bills that we're dealing or we're talking about is the Senate bill, it's S608, it's introduced by Senator Feinstein and then the one in the house that's introduced by Representative Blofgren. You know, both of them have wide support by the Democratic caucus. We unfortunately don't have support and I don't believe as of today by any Republicans unfortunately. But you know, I think that making sure that our allies on the Hill are very vocal about this executive order and making sure that they continue to speak up and speak out is incredibly important. So for the ones of you that don't have the capital switchboards phone number in your cell phones, I encourage you to put it in your cell phone right now 202-224-3121. We encourage our supporters, allies to call Congress every day and let them know that you oppose any policy from this administration that would discriminate against Muslims, refugees or immigrants and in terms of this executive order, this refugee and Muslim ban. And if you go on to the next slide actually and there's a short script that you can just tailor it and we continue to encourage our network to contact Congress about this even though as of right now, thankfully, we've had a number of favorable decisions. One on March 15th, the night before this executive order was supposed to go into place, a Hawaii federal judge has issued a TRO and this is a temporary restraining order meaning that this executive order is not able to go into effect. And that's where we are right now. As of this moment, the Trump administration has not decided whether they want to appeal that case but they have filed for an appeal from a case that came out of Maryland which put a kind of, it didn't, the injunction that came out of the Maryland court only covered the travel ban and not the refugee ban. And the administration has already indicated that they are going to be appealing that. So that's kind of where we are at the moment in terms of, in terms of legislatively, in terms of where we are in the courts. And if you switch to the next slide and, so the next part of the presentation I just wanted to take a few minutes to also discuss and I wanna make sure that we have ample amount of time at the end that we can actually take your questions in any way that we can be of assistance to you. So, I mean, a huge part honestly in terms of the successes that we've had with the Muslim and refugee ban and a lot of the other policies that I've seen being pushed forth and advanced by this administration. The reason why in my view the American people have been successful is because we've been speaking up. We've been out in the streets organizing, mobilizing, protesting, whether it's flooding, the phone lines with our representatives, our senators flooding their congressional offices, organizing town halls in the district, whether it's organizing rallies or protests. I mean, that is so incredibly critical. And as you see in terms of the Ninth Circuit when they made their decision immediately after the first executive order came out, that was part of their rationale is that they saw that the chaos in the airports, but what they saw was this kind of immense and just motivation and goodwill from the American people where hundreds of thousands of people across the country were going to airports and welcoming immigrants and welcoming refugees and Muslims. And just seeing this outcry I think was so incredibly important. And just to give you quick examples of what FCNL and some of our coalition partners have been doing in response to these executive orders. So immediately, so that week when the first one was issued and we knew it was gonna be coming down, you know, during that week, the last week of January, earlier in the week, we actually had a couple of immigration enforcement executive orders come out and then the Muslim refugee ban ultimately came out on Friday. But FCNL and in addition to United Retrieve, costs on a number of organizations, we immediately organized a protest in front of the White House that Wednesday that week when these executive orders were you know, rumored to be coming out, we had within a couple hours notice of organizing this protest in front of the White House, we had several hundred folks that showed up. And then similarly that weekend when the Muslim refugee ban had come out and I worked with organizers at an organization called Peace for Iran. It was literally a handful of us that organized this massive rally at the White House over 10,000 people ended up showing up and Senator Kamala Harris and a couple other members of Congress came and spoke. And that to us was really phenomenal. That to me was very heartwarming and seeing, you know, my community, my neighbors, coworkers, friends, you name it, coming out in defense of, I mean, this is my community that's being attacked. You know, I'm Iranian-American so my family and relatives live in Iran. So under these executive orders, they wouldn't be able to come to visit me whereas traditionally that they have been, they would come here, you know, for birthdays or weddings or graduations. So I just wanted to highlight that aspect because I think that anytime many of our communities are being targeted and Amelia and Mark will also speak about this in terms of the rates happening across the country. But I think it's so incredibly important and that's a lesson that we need to take with us in terms of what has worked in response to these policies and these executive orders. Even when the second one was handed down on March 6th, we again immediately organized and mobilized and had a rally in front of the White House and what was, to me, what was really important about that was seeing our coalition partners come together, organizations that traditionally don't work on, you know, refugee or immigrant rights issues. So, you know, human rights campaign, I mean, there are so many LGBTQ organizations that came so many faith organizations. And in addition to, you know, the chair of the Democratic National Committee who wanted to come out and stand in solidarity with activists saying that this is un-American and we're gonna be fighting for our communities. So, yeah, so I just, I wanted to make sure I covered that a little bit because, you know, I wanna ensure that moving forward that we, you know, we keep the momentum going, that we don't become complacent and realize that any time any of our communities are under attack, we need to be speaking out and speaking out. So. Terrific, Yasmin. Did you want to pull up any more of the slides before we close or should we hold it there for now? I mean, so we can go through, I mean, the rest of the slides are just pictures of some of the protests and, yeah. Let me just get down to those and some of the impact, yeah. Right, right, yeah. And I mean, the one, you know, an angle that we've been taking in terms of trying to appeal to Republican offices, and I just saw that one slide about how this is impacting Iraqi translators. And again, you know, signifying to them that the folks that had helped us, you know, you are targeting them as well. And they're not being, they're not able to come to the U.S. either. Even though Iraq has been removed from the trouble then, the majority of Iraqis that actually come to the United States come through the U.S. refugee resettlement program. So they are absolutely still targeted. And then in terms of who we're turning away, it's the most vulnerable. I mean, when we're talking about, again, a refugee ban throughout the entire duration of the Syrian Civil War, the refugees from Syria that have resettled in the U.S., more than 80% have been women and children. I mean, women and children. So making sure that we highlight that with, especially offices that are, I would say not really on our side on this issue in terms of the majority of the conservative offices. And then the other thing we're doing in terms of reaching out to Republicans is one, trying to look at this from, again, a religious freedom perspective. And also, you know, we're working right now in trying to organize a bipartisan briefing on Capitol Hill for that reason, trying to see if we can actually get a Republican to co-sponsor and have it be an educational briefing talking about how these executive orders would actually impact families and their constituents. Okay, terrific. Yasmeen, thank you very much. We're gonna, most of the questions until the end, but while I transition to Emilio, there's one that would be a great one to answer now. Someone has asked if you can repeat the number for calling congressional offices. And I'll go ahead and pull up Emilio's webcam and all that. Sure, so it's 202-224-3121. Great. All right. All right, Yasmeen, we'll shut down your webcam for now and bring Emilio in. Thank you very much and sit tight. All right. All right, Emilio, thank you. I'm just gonna get your slides over here. All right, we're ready. Awesome. Well, first of all, thank you all so much for giving me this opportunity to talk with you a little bit of what's going on on immigration. And I also wanna thank other panelists for also talking about what they're doing and especially in this moment and what Yasmeen went over. We know that the Muslim ban, a lot of these other executive order specifically towards enforcement on immigration within the United States, a lot of them are connected. And a lot of it is driven by fear and hate and on our end, we've been trying to do our best to show solidarity because we understand that an attack on one community is an attack on another community. And more than ever, we have to be united because again, all of these issues are practiced directly and indirectly. So I wanna thank Yasmeen for all of the amazing work that she's doing and that other folks are doing to raise awareness of the impact of the executive orders targeting Muslim communities. So today I'm gonna be speaking about immigration within the US and what's going on there. And to do that, I wanna talk a little bit about some of the strings or many of the strings of undocumented youth. We have been very strong and I think a really good indication of that is a few years ago, we were able to get the Obama administration to enact this policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, PACA, as some of you might know about. It's a program that essentially protects undocumented youth from deportation. They must meet certain qualifications. If they meet these qualifications, apart from being protected from deportation, it also gives them the ability to get a work permit, which again is very important for many people. That happened because undocumented youth were tired of being targeted by the Obama administration. And this is one of the most consequential immigration policy that's happened in a very, very long time. And as we transition into the Trump administration, that's obviously changed. And right now we're looking at more enforcement policies, executive orders. And so a lot of people are wondering, what can we do to protect our communities? Immigration rates, deportations are nothing new. Unfortunately, the Obama, up until now, had one of the worst histories of deportations. Obama, under his administration, deported more than 2 million people. Most of them were not people who usually would have earned priorities for immigration enforcement. And that's important to keep in mind, because as many of us continue to fight the more enhanced deportations that are happening now, it's important to acknowledge how the system that allows for mass deportation, if that happens, or hopefully it doesn't, how that came to be. And so I'm gonna first talk about sanctuary cities. Maybe some of you have heard about this term sanctuary cities. If you're looking at, if you're on your screen, you can see a map that I found online that basically shows different places across the country that in some way or form are friendly towards undocumented people, migrant people. There isn't a definition for what a sanctuary city place is, but essentially a city or location can consider themselves sanctuaries by not letting local immigration enforcement to cooperate with, to not by not letting local enforcement cooperating with immigration enforcement officials. And there are many ways that that usually happens. There's a program called 287G. It's an enforcement program that federal immigration enforcement uses to try to collaborate with local police enforcement. And we don't think it's a good program because it endangers communities, the roads, any type of trust between survivors of domestic abuse and it makes communities in general unsafer. There are currently over 633 counties across the country that have some type of policy that is friendly towards undocumented people. And in some way, shape or form, advocates on their behalf and it's limiting any type of collaboration with immigration enforcement. And one thing that we're thinking about on our end is as we think about sanctuary cities and especially, again, as we recognize that the Trump administration isn't just targeting undocumented people, we know that he's targeting Muslims, we know that he's targeting black communities, communities of color, women, the LGBT community. One thing that we're also trying to do is expand the definition of what it means to be a sanctuary place of not just safe for undocumented people, but also safe for all of the people in the community and making sure that people are inclusive. So as all of us continue to talk about sanctuary policies, that's something that we're trying to figure out. How do we make that possible? And yeah, if you can go to the next slide. And so as we look more directly into what's going on specifically on immigration enforcement, could you go to the next slide? Thank you. So we're seeing especially now that a lot of people who shouldn't be priorities for deportation, being priorities for deportation. If you're relatively new to the topic of immigration, in the past we were able to stop the deportation of people if we could make their cases public. Many of us who are undocumented strongly believe that the more publicly you are with your story and with your status, the safer you are because most likely there's a group of people around you that will come to your aid if you ever need any, if you ever get in trouble, if you ever get detained or the deportation proceeding starts in your case. And after somebody has been detained and they are being threatened with deportation, we usually launch petitions, hold rallies and pressure the people who are targeting someone to speak out to prevent that person's deportation. And we are seeing that it's harder and harder to do that. And if you're again on by computer, you are probably seeing the picture of Guadalupe Garcia de Rios who has been in the country, who was in the country for over, I believe, 18 years. And she had an immigration case. She was caught using papers to be able to work in the country. And she had to go every year before immigration to check in and see that everything was the same. She had been going on every year for the past eight years. And usually after those check-ins, immigration said everything's okay, you can go back. But this past year, that wasn't the case. Instead of letting her go, she was detained. And her deportation proceeding started even though she wasn't a priority for immigration to come after. And usually the work that immigration enforcement works is that they have these very broad definitions of what priority means. They usually have been going after people who might have committed a small infection of, say, driving without a license or having been stopped and having a telegate that's not working. And if they go through the immigration proceedings and immigration so you get them before they go out of jail, essentially that usually starts with deportation proceedings. And it's been harder and harder to get a lot of these people who are not, who most of us would never consider criminals. And again, the administration overall usually uses the talking point of we're focusing on criminals. That in itself is a very broad term. A lot of people use the term criminal and it kind of like paints this picture of like, oh, we're getting rid of the bad guys. Usually that's not what's happening. And it also creates this emphasis on good immigrant versus bad immigrant. And so now this administration, it's been harder and harder to fight a lot of these cases. So on our end, and I think a lot of advocates across the country are trying to, we think our strategy on how do we protect our communities in this moment of urgency. And if you can go to the next slide. And this is also all happening while we've been seeing more executive order on the border and enforcement on the employer. So, Immigration ICE, which is Immigration Customs and Fushment is an agency that usually is what we would consider federal immigration agents. They're the ones who can essentially detain someone. We've seen that through the recent executive orders. Definition of who can be detained has brought in exponentially. In the last memo that the Department of Homeland Security issued, we saw that essentially it's going to be easier for them to detain anyone who's documented in the country and not having to emphasize if that person in their mind is a category, is a priority for enforcement. And so that's scary for a lot of us because that essentially means that many of our communities are at more risk than ever of being detained by immigration and the deportation proceedings starting on that person. We seem to do the executive orders that really wants the construction of the border while between the US and Mexico. We've also seen the reintroduction of secure communities. Secure communities is a federal program that essentially promotes a collaboration between local enforcement as well as immigration enforcement. As well as another program called 287G, which again is more collaboration between local enforcement and immigration enforcement. And through these executive orders, we've seen more attacks on sanctuary communities, cities, actually yesterday the Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who as a senator was never friendly immigrant, friendly, he's been very, very strongly anti-immigrant. He has been leading a lot of the Department of Justice's work on how they're gonna be prioritizing immigration. And yesterday they actually announced that any jurisdiction that considers themselves a sanctuary place will get their funding revoked as long, I believe as long as if it's under the funding that they would get from the Justice Department. And so you might be wondering why they're trying to do this. It's obviously a tactic to intimidate places, cities from contradicting the government and trying to intimidate them and to not being friendly towards undocumented immigrants. And so this does obviously make it harder for a lot of different cities to be more outspoken. But again, a lot of us are continuing to push our local cities to be more friendly towards undocumented people. And we've also seen through the executive orders, a punishment on family reunification. And what I mean by that is, so in my case, I came to the US at the age of six. My dad already lived in North Carolina and me and my mom came to be with my dad when I was six. And in this new administration and in their priorities for immigration enforcement, they're essentially saying that if somebody gets caught at the border, specifically minors who are sent from their families, many cases because they might be in danger in their hometowns or because they wanna be reunited as a family, if that young person gets detained at the border, that that can also stop the deportation proceedings for the guardian or for the parent that's sent for that young person. And they're trying to categorize it as if it was human trafficking. Obviously it is not in most cases. In most cases, again, it's about family reunification. And so again, all of these things are clearly, you can clearly see a pattern of intimidation, very harsh tactics and honestly abuse of human rights on many of these fronts. Could you go to the next slide? Thank you. And so going back to this program called Deferred Action, again Deferred Action is a program that is meant to protect and documentate from deportation and the ability to be given a work permit. Yeah, could you go back to the number five? Thank you. I'll quickly do both of them. So two quick cases of people that we know again, the administration, Sir Donald Trump so far, his administration, has, when he was running for president, he said that he was gonna rescind this program called Deferred Action. He hasn't done that publicly. He's been very cautious. He's been publicly, he said that he's sympathetic towards undocumented youth who came into this country at a young age that he respects us. Many of us are skeptical of that and we're skeptical of that because we believe that it's a strategy to try to create a wedge between us and our parents of focusing on just those of us who are young at the expense of our parents and we also know that he doesn't really mean that and we know that he doesn't mean that because of the two cases that I'll quickly go over. If you're looking at your screen, you're seeing the picture of Daniel Ramirez Medina who was an undocumented youth who had Deferred Action. Immigration detained him while they were raiding his dad's house, looking for his dad. Daniel was detained in this process and he was detained because immigration saw that he had a tattoo that they assumed was a gang tattoo. Daniel, and we believe that that was never the case but again, they used that as an excuse to detain him. They also doctored his immigration documents when he was being processed and because of all of this, his Deferred Action, his protection has been revoked and this has all happened while he has a three-year-old son and he actually spent his 24th birthday in detention. His birthday was, I believe, two weeks ago so imagine being 24 year, turning 24 and being in a detention center. So again, this is one of those cases. We know that the administration overall isn't serious about immigration and that they are targeting most other people in our communities. The next slide is of another case of Daniela who's from Mississippi. Her, she also has Deferred Action and her house was raided by immigration in Mississippi and they took her, I believe, her father and she was obviously very scared and threw out all of this and one thing that I forgot to mention about the Deferred Action program is that it's a program that has to be renewed every two years. She was in the process of renewing her Deferred Action and immigration knew this and she was at a press conference speaking out against the raid that happened at her house and immigration followed her after that press conference and detained her. She was detained for a few weeks and after a lot of outrage from the community, she was eventually released. But again, as you can tell, we're seeing this more and more of immigration trying to intimidate people for speaking out and calling them on what their unjust policies that they're doing. And so you've kind of heard a little bit of like all of these like different things that are happening right now on immigration and if you go to the next slide, next or final slide, this is where we would love all of your help. We know that we can't do this work alone. We know that we can't, it can't just be undocumented people advocating and one thing that we've all learned from being involved in immigration is that, well, it has to be those of us who are directly impacting and needing the work that we need allies to be on our side and strongly speaking out against these policies and also joining us on the front lines. And some of the ways that you can do that is by joining our Migrida Watch hotline. Our Migrida Watch hotline is where you can report if there has been an immigration raid in your city nearby. One thing that has been very hard, especially since the new administration came into power is that we get a lot of rumors of a raid of raids happening across the country. And as you can imagine, that puts a lot of fear in our communities. A lot of people don't wanna drive if they hear that there is a raid down the street. And many, in some cases, they are rumors. And so we strongly encourage anyone to pass the ability and isn't gonna be detained by immigration to check and see and be able to confirm if a raid is happening near where you live, if you hear of one and informing people in your community. And one way you can do that is by calling our hotline. It is 844-363-1423. And again, you can call this hotline at any point and we will make sure to pass on that information to anyone who lives in where a raid has been reported. We also strongly encourage all of you to keep in touch with us and stay informed of what's going on by texting here to stay as one word to 877-877. We use our texting line to pass out information of relevant issues happening in your communities, local to your community, as well as whenever we have a big event going on nationwide. And another way that you can join us in our advocacy and in our fight for dignity and respect is by joining our here to stay network. It is a new network that we created recently. We've seen a lot of interest from people all across the country asking us, like what can I do more directly to support the work that all of you are doing? And so we're asking anyone who wants to join our efforts to join and who is an ally to join our here to stay network. Essentially what we're gonna be using this network for is if we know of a case nearby, say for example, Houston, if people in that area have signed up to do any type of rapid response needed on the ground, we will message and if there's a deportation case happening in that locality, we will pass that information to people on that line and letting them know that this is happening. And that's another way that all of you can join us. If you're not on your screen, you can go to actionnetwork.org-forums-immigrants So a lot of hyphen forms, hyphen, immigrants are here to stay. And I'm sure that we're gonna be sending out this information through email as well. And again, thank you so much for your time. Great, Emilio, hang on there for one moment and you're right, we'll send this info out to everybody. So if you're not on by computer and can't see these or just wanna make sure that you catch them right, we'll send them out to everybody who RSVP'd. And while we transition to bringing Mark up, let me just give you one question, Emilio, from someone. We have someone who is asking, if you would recommend applying for DACA now for someone would be applying for the first time, would you recommend that? As an organization, we're strongly advising against recommending as a first time applyer, simply because Trump has been, what he's publicly said that he won't RSVP DACA, the truth is we don't know, he's very, very unpredictable and we don't know what he's gonna do with that information. So our organization and many other organizations are recommending against applying if you're a first time person applying for the program. That's a good question. Yeah. Great, thank you, Emilio. Okay, Emilio, sit tight and we're gonna pull up Mark and Mark's PowerPoints. Okay. So Mark, I'm gonna send you a webcam request and I think you have to activate your audio. I think you're muted for right now. How do I activate my audio? Ah, you've done it. You're there, maybe you were never gone. You were just, I just hadn't heard you yet and I'm gonna send you another webcam request. Share my webcam, can people see me? I don't think we can see you yet. Well, they don't have to see me. Organizer, would you like to share your webcam? Share my webcam now, okay, okay, okay, there I am. Good, give me just a second to get our dust settled here and just one more minute, get our slide a little bigger for everybody. All right, everybody, great, Mark, take it away. Okay, thank you very much for the invitation. It's a delight and an honor to be on this webinar with such a distinguished co-panelist. Next, oh, just about me, senior staff attorney. Yes, as Ann said, I started in about 1983 as an attorney, but I was very precocious and of course I started as an attorney when I was 12 years old. The work right now supporting undocumented immigrants and their citizen children and supporting them actually means collaborating with them, not helping them, collaborating with them to build political power so that we never again have a president like our current president from either party and we build power to bring about long-term immigration justice as well as justice in general. Next. Okay, one of our immediate tasks is the level of fear has been already mentioned in the undocumented immigrant community, including their citizen children and beyond goes from a lot strong fear all the way to panic. Perfectly understandable panic given Trump's cruel rhetoric and his executive actions which so far for immigrant undocumented immigrants in the interior have very few teeth. And so our message that goes better in Spanish but forms the acronym TIPS which immigrant leader who told me to use it said that monolingual Spanish speakers use it all the time is calm, informed, prepared and safe. Especially if you use a family protection plan. And it's our belief that the immense majority of undocumented immigrants face a very small chance of being detained and a extremely minimal chance of being deported if they follow a plan of family protection plan. The two groups that are at high risk are people with crimes, especially serious crimes and the highest risk are people like Guadalupe and unlike 95% of undocumented immigrants who already have deportation orders. So that's one of our messages now coupled with working with the organizations that invite us to work with them to increase grassroots involvement. Next, now what have we learned from our work before? In California, one landmark date was 1994 which was Proposition 187, an anti-immigrant proposition by the very unpopular governor, Pete Wilson who was running for re-election and rode the backs of scapegoating immigrants especially Latinos and Mexicans and he won re-election but then, next, but Proposition 187 which was virtually completely overruled in the courts. But it did have its major effect in the long term. I call Proposition 187 the Pete Wilson Citizenship Promotion Act of 1994. Why? Because it resulted in a immense increase of legal permanent residents especially Mexicans who had a very low rate of applying for naturalization or citizenship in California to apply for citizenship. It also encouraged activism amongst those who were born here, Kevin de Leon, now the president of the California Senate got active in the campaign against Proposition 187 when he was a boy, I think even before he was a teenager. It really helped to trigger huge political changes in California, not by itself. Next, but with a very important step in that direction. Now this is too small to see but if this email is sent to you, you'll be able to look at it in detail. These are all the California package of pro-immigration, integration laws in California. I'm just gonna point out a few of them. These all happened after 1994 when political power of Latinos and their supporters and immigrants started increasing in California, partially as a reaction to 187. Look at in 2001 the AB 540 was passed that guaranteed in-state tuition for undocumented students if they met certain requirements. It's interesting. It passed even though as we will see, driver's licenses were not enacted because this is a group like the Dreamers, as Amelia was saying, for whom the public was sympathetic to, people who came as children. And I would just like to say, speaking of the Dreamers, that groups like United We Dream and other Dreamer organizations created history in 2012. It was the first time in American history in which a major change in immigration policy resulted from a campaign led by the immigrants themselves and that's DACA. This moved to, on 2013, interestingly, this was not done by Ann. She took this slide from someone else and this one to the driver's license for unauthorized undocumented immigrants. First it was a sign of the growing power of Latino and immigrant voters. It was passed under desperate Gray Davis, even more desperate than P. Wilson, who was facing a campaign to throw him out of office which was successful. And so he, the first governor, after all governors, Democrats and Republicans, had vetoed the license laws for years. He signed it in a desperate attempt to get Latino votes. The thing says, inaccurately, that it was repealed under Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, technically it's true. It was repealed. The author of the bill advocated its repeal because there was so much public sentiment against licenses for undocumented immigrants that the author and others feared a referendum which would have overturned it and made it hard to get in the future. The point is, even though the office holders that were much more pro-immigrant by then in the legislature, public sentiment was still lagging behind. Next. Okay, here's kind of a banner now. It's a little hot. And it shows the shift from then 1992 to 1994. The Republican governor then. Now we have had Democratic governors with the freak exception of the Republicans' great weight lifter, Schwarzenegger, who was not anti-immigrant, incidentally. And you see the nine out of 10 GOP presidential wins by the Republicans in California from 48 to 92, six out of six Democratic wins since 92. And there's some other statistics there showing that shift. That's part of the shift. It also represents the California paradox. It's great what's been done in California. It's been great work, which I'll talk about some, but the California paradox now, we need to focus on this some, is that California now is irrelevant for presidential elections because everybody knows the Democrats will win. So in California, in order to have, we need to develop models in California from our work in California, share them with other states, and I'll suggest some later in this presentation. Next, again, here shows that politics in California since Prop. 87, the great increase in Latino representation in the state legislature. Next, what did we have and what did we build in California to make this possible? Next, part of it was Prop. 187, and the work that was done opposing 187 and the work, the political work that happened from two types of organizations, immigrant-based groups, mainly Latino, but also Asian, and also organizing groups, especially faith-based groups like PICO and IAF. The ripple effects from this amnesty, the amnesty or the legalization also had a great effect because the people who got legal permanent residence status in 1991 became eligible to vote five years later in 96. We're still seeing this in other states, Colorado, New Mexico, and a number of others, North Carolina. And for example, when political work in Texas is extremely important, when political work in organizing turns, along with the demographic change, turns Texas purple in presidential elections, I think it's a whole new ballgame. I think it will make it virtually impossible for the Republican Party to oppose immigration reform, and we need to be pressing on both parties. Next, yeah. Okay, I'm gonna focus on this. There was a lot of legislation, but this was the key one, the one that the immigrants themselves cared about the most by far, licenses. Ever since licenses were taken away in 1995, kind of when the legislature, a Democratic legislature voted against it because they were scared of losing their elections. This has been the main campaign. This also connected to the related campaigns like against car impoundments, very successful locally and with some state legislation because except if you live in the People's Republic of San Francisco with a decent public transportation, you can't survive well without a car. Finally, in 2013, AB 60 essentially gave licenses to unauthorized or undocumented immigrants. I wanna make a couple of points. One reason, as I said before, that it didn't pass was public sentiment. It was also vetoed by every governor, including every Democratic governor, with that freak exception of Gray Davis because he was desperate until it was signed by Governor Brown. There's a couple reasons. It was why it finally passed. It was the political movement, the organizing, especially of immigrants themselves and their family and the supporters. It was messaging, showing how license for undocumented was good for public safety. And it was also leverage. And I'm gonna point out one thing as a message, very good organizations supported licenses. But there's groups that I call licenciados con licentias. Doesn't translate exactly well, but professionals that already have their licenses. And those very good organizations, none of which I'm gonna mention, were essentially opposing or not supporting driver license bills because they created licenses that weren't perfectly the same as those of for regular licenses. They were licenses with a mark. And as one immigrant leader from San Jose said, you can put the whole alphabet on my license. I need a license. I need a license to avoid deportation. I need it to not have my car impounded. And this happened right toward the end. Right, the author of AB 60 was persuaded to withdraw the bill because it didn't create equal licenses, completely in contra against what the immigrants has been undocumented, immigrants whatered. And there was a grassroots campaign on especially on the radio, organizations, the former author Seville, pressuring the author of the bill and the Democrats to bring back the bill. And because with licenses with a mark because that's what the immigrants needed and wanted. And because the immigrants themselves pushed and their organizations, the bill was brought back and it was passed and it's been an enormous benefit. So that's a lesson I think people can learn. Next, let's take a quick look at the big marches. Maybe it started in 2006 in reaction to the criminal, the bill that proposed nationally to criminal immigrants. It was enormous. I should be a little jealous because until then, the biggest demonstrations in modern US history were in the anti-war movement that I was a part of, class of 1968, but the biggest numerical demonstrations and total numbers were by the immigrants. These are where the demonstrations were in the country. Next, and here's a lesson that we learned while the slides coming up. Immigrants, especially Latinos felt attacked. And at a certain point in those massive demonstrations, there were at some point, there were large, large numbers of Mexican flags. I understand it, people were defending themselves against these attacks, but it had a very negative effect because people said, you know, why are these people, they don't wanna become part of our society. You know, it had a short-term negative effect. That overall was a good effect because people got mobilized and organizations started registering to vote, et cetera. And during those same demonstrations, the leaders, maybe the Latino leaders, promoted switching to American flags. So there were mainly American flags that we see here. That's a message, moving away, messaging in such a way to win over the broad public opinion. Next, hopefully this is the last one. Okay, finally, I would say, I said when I was talking, there's models that can be exported to other states and done nationally. And one of the key ones is the role of U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants in so many ways, six to seven million current and future voters. These children have a bridge between their immigrant parents and their friends who are white, black, Latino of many generations, et cetera. So, and I'm working with a group that are in LA and in the Bay Area that are promoting the organizing of these citizen children with their family members. There's a Facebook page you can join. You don't have to be a child of immigrants to join. And so I would really, this is one of the vehicles that I think is gonna be extremely important in building immigrant power in our society to bring up justice for immigrants. Thank you. Great, Mark, thank you very much. Sit tight. I'm gonna bring everybody, all of our webcams up here. And while I do that, let's talk about the first question that I wanna ask all of the presenters to talk about, is this identity question that Mark raised and this interesting challenge for organizers and advocates of getting the right, or how you deal with the optics of the pride that people have in their heritage, while also the room to show that they are wanting to become integrated into American society, in some cases, American citizens. Let's talk about that a little bit. I'm gonna pull up my webcam too. I'm gonna pull up my webcam. I'm gonna pull up my webcam too. Okay, everybody seen here okay for now? Okay, great. And thank you all again for presenting. And Emilio and Yasmin, let's hear you a little bit on this identity question. Oops, sorry, I was on mute. So in what sense though, Anne? Well, I'm just wondering if this, if this is an issue that is coming up as you are working with people, as you are advocating for people, I mean, it's sort of interesting. In this country, we have a lot of ethnic pride. We have just a bunch of St. Patrick's Day marches and people are waving Irish flags or we have other kinds of opportunities for people to celebrate both their heritage where their families may have come from as well as where they live now. But then it seems like it can become an issue during immigrants rights demonstrations and I'm just wondering, and refugee rights demonstrations and I'm just wondering any thoughts that you have on that? I mean, I think that diversity is our greatest strength even when we're talking about in terms of diversity within the immigrant refugee communities. And you see it in terms of folks that are showing up and demonstrating with us and supporting us, even in terms of, and I mentioned this earlier in the sense that the groups that are kind of part of our coalitions and are now helping and standing with us to resist some of these policies. And I mentioned Human Rights Campaign, but when I thought about it, I was like, we have a ton of immigrants and a ton of refugees that are part of the LGBTQ community. So obviously they're gonna be out there demonstrating with us and standing with our brothers and sisters. So yeah, I mean, I've never honestly seen any sort of issues in terms of the different kind of ethnic or backgrounds of various immigrant refugee communities and how that complicates the issue. I think that actually makes our argument stronger in the sense that it shows that we are so incredibly diverse and this is what America is made up. Yeah, I would also agree. I haven't seen that as an issue. I think that usually the people that push back are like, oh, but like, so when I've talked to like anti-immigrant people, they've been like, oh, but these people don't wanna simulate or they don't wanna learn our culture. And I wanna, I tend to question that like, what is culture, who's culture and like what culture? I think it's important to remind is a Eurocentric culture as well, because like you mentioned, like St. Patrick's Day is celebrated, but I would say that there's a history of antagonizing other cultures that make people feel uncomfortable and yeah, I think overall diversity does make us stronger and it does, like I'm proud to be from Guatemala, but I'm also proud to have grown up in the United States and I can do both things at once. Usually kind of like, it's not like I can't set an end or like, yeah, so I think we can do a lot of these things at once too. We've got a wide range of questions, one of them is really specific that I wanted to try to fit in here and somebody is asking if they would be protected from a raid if they had filled out a particular ice form, ice form G28. Okay, well the G28 form is a form of representation before both CIS, the benefit part of DHS as well as before ice. It's an interesting question. It's signed not by the person, it's signed by the attorney as well as the person. It has certain benefits, the tricky, and one organization I know in Southern California would like to get attorneys to sign thousands of them. There's some problems with that from the attorney's point of view. The main protection, someone would have representation immediately and the attorney could intervene. Another practical thing, let's say I'm justly, I'm arrested in Los Angeles, ice will wanna ship me out to the desert in Arizona or some other place, move me away from my family, et cetera. A G28 isn't sure for our guarantee but it's a very strong argument to leave my client here, I'm representing him here. So it's a good thing. Working it out, the practicalities, we're working out now to do it on a large scale but it's definitely a good thing. Milio, did you wanna add anything on that one? I think Mark just session on that point. I mean, it's more of just immediate representation. It doesn't really guarantee that you're not gonna be detained and or the deportation proceedings isn't gonna start but you'll have a lawyer or some legal representation that can help you out. Okay, great. Here's a kind of a big picture question for everybody. Is it worth focusing on the federal level when the House and Senate or GOP dominated? I think local efforts are key but penalizing sanctuary cities is really a threat at the same time. Yeah, I'm gonna let someone else talk. So I can answer but in terms of the work that we're doing on refugee advocacy and the travel ban. So obviously because these executive orders, you know, I mean, they're executive orders. So the only way we can get them rescinded is through legislative action by Congress. So I mean, that's why we focus obviously at the federal level but I did wanna just note that in terms of making sure that we have folks organizing in their communities, in their district is incredibly important. I'm gonna ensure that Amelia can talk a little bit about this in terms of the work that he's been doing but so I'll just give you again a quick example. So anytime that we are anticipating negative action from this administration, we are constantly and I think we, so FCNL, we co-lead and started this national coalition and sort of refugee resettlement. We started it with MoveOn.org a year and a half ago and right now it's the largest coalition that supports refugees and it's made up of over 120 organizations ranging from labor, chemical rights groups, human rights groups, refugee, you name it. So through this coalition, we try to also mobilize communities at the grassroots level across the country. So we have obviously various organizers and contacts across the country and anytime we're sensing that an executive order is either coming out or if the date that it's gonna be implemented is on such and such date, we wanna make sure that we get folks in kind of large communities heading to the airports and protesting. So I only mentioned that because everything we do, obviously if it's focused on federal legislation or actually at the federal level, we always need to have support at the grassroots level and folks organizing across the country. Yeah and so on our end, we are doing a little bit of both focusing on what's happening in Congress as well as what's happening locally. We're focusing on Congress right now through the enforcement budget. So these executive orders are gonna need to be funded and so part of my job is to help figure out how we prevent that from happening because a lot of, again, Congress is gonna have a lot of say in how many billions of dollars are gonna go towards the border and other enforcement policies and that's where we would also love your help and if you know where you're representing the enforcement that understand and advocating, calling them to vote against these bills that will further militarize the border and terrorize communities. At the local level, we're focusing on sanctuary cities and other campaigns that again give people at the local level of power and making sure that their communities are safe because there's still many things that localities can do to be more welcoming, inclusive to immigrant and not just immigrant communities but communities in general locally. Emilio really hits a nail on my head with this one and I think it's kind of, Emilio knows the details better than me but I think it's kind of this thing of opposing the appropriations of money Trump's, and I'm speaking mainly of immigrants in the interior, the capacity for ICE to really ramp up deportations depends on getting more money. It's critical to oppose this. Now, we have a strong basis with, especially in the Senate. It's one of the things that's gonna make the biggest difference about whether carrot tops really gonna be able to ramp up the deportations like he and his base one. Great, Mark, I know that you have to leave in just a minute. Is there anything that you wanna add and then I might have Yasmin and Emilio take one more question after you're gone? Is there anything, Mark, you wanna say before you go? The only other thing, speaking of President Trump, he's been the best organizer I've seen since he was in promoting, especially among communities who are not immigrants. And I think it's a wonderful opportunity for us. Just like we turned 187 around, it's a wonderful opportunity to building understanding and power. And I'll try and call in as I'm walking to my next appointment. All right, Mark, thank you very much and I'll connect with you later. Yasmin and Emilio, sit tight. I'm just gonna close down Mark's, let's see. Okay, great. So let me see. We have a lot of questions. I just wanna try to get a couple more in. Is there any way of knowing that a deportation order is coming? It's hard. If it's an individual case, immigration usually starts to proceedings and will notify the person. And if the person is able to have like some type of legal representation, they're usually able to assess and figure now like how the likelihood of a deportation order coming. What we're seeing right now is that, so there's been a lot of raids and that's kind of like where a lot of like the community is uncertain and scared and understandably because raids are unpredictable. There are many times there are strategies used by ICE to terrorize. And that was kind of harder but I think on a deportation order, it's still hard. And again, it varies from case to case. There's one chose, there's one chose. There's no comment about the third picture. I wish we had. We all wish that it was easier to see some of these machinations going on, don't we, so that we could help people be more secure. There's kind of coming back to this first issue kind of of cultural identity and fear. I think I wanted to just give you both a chance to talk a little bit more about this winning over hearts and minds. So Mark was talking about changes in California. After Prop 187, there was this very immigrant, anti-immigrant proposition. It really never got enforced. It got stopped in the courts pretty much immediately and then ended up kind of inspiring the exact opposite in California in that now California is incredibly progressive in terms of rights that immigrants holds and rights that undocumented and documented people hold. And so everyone's kind of hoping that that will happen nationally, that there will be reaction against what is happening now with the travel ban, with the rates, with the talk of building a wall. And so in California, there were these two things. There was a whole bunch of new people being able to vote because of a national asylum program that came online and in California that brought a bunch of people within a couple of years onto the voter rolls and then that's still having these impacts nationally and this is the thing that might turn Texas purple. But then there's also the winning the hearts and minds and getting more and more people organized, immigrants and allies. And so I'm just really interested to have you both talk a little bit about what you're seeing already in terms of how people are inspired, people showing up at airports without necessarily that much organizing in place and other things that you're seeing that show not only that some people are already making that move to fight for immigrant and refugee neighbors as well as immigrants and refugees fighting for their own rights, but also down the line, what are you seeing is gonna help move more people to join those ranks and support your efforts. Emilia, do you wanna go first? Yeah, yeah, sure. So I think that's something that undocumented people have been very effective at doing is sharing our stories. And I think it doesn't just apply to undocumented people, but we've seen again and again that the more personal that you can get, but somebody especially who's anti-immigrant, the less likely they are to call you illegal to your face because you humanize the concept of what illegal alien or these other terms that they use you. Once people recognize that, hey, actually I'm talking to you and you're not that different from me, I've seen that work a lot again and again of people being more receptive to listening. So I think that's something that we've been doing for the past maybe 10 years of telling our personal stories and it sounds kind of cheesy, but it's been very effective. There's even a curriculum on it. It's the story of self, us and now by Marshall Ganz who's a renowned community organizer and came up with this really good framework. And that's been very helpful. I think that as we move forward, and especially, I know that y'all, the audience that we might hear what Hacker today is more about the environment and making those connections, right, bringing different movements together of like, immigration doesn't just impact undocumented people or immigrants, it also impacts the environment. And vice versa, most of the people who are impacted by the environment are people of color, people who are poly fleeing dangerous places. And so, I think as we see more, like Mark said, Trump is probably one of the best organizers that we have so far, like motivators, right, and like getting people to like really want to do something. And I think this is an opportunity for all of us to educate ourselves more about different issues, not just about the issues that we care about and making those connections and reaching out to other groups and yeah, figuring out how we can work together. Because I think that that's been effective in the past and I think that's what's gonna protect a lot of communities this now more than ever. I mean, I absolutely agree. So, what we've seen that has been phenomenal is, and again, all of us I think have mentioned the fact that in order for us to defeat the policies of this administration, we need to be united, we need to constantly be showing up for one another, whether if any of our communities are attacked, we need to be there speaking up and speaking out. And the point that Amelia made in terms of organizations that care about climate issues or in the environment, I mean, Sierra Club, perfect example. The last rally we had, they blasted it out all over Twitter, they told their network about it, their folks showed up at the protest in opposition to Muslim Band 2.0. So, I mean, I think that this administration, Trump thinks that we're gonna be working in silos, he thinks that each day he's gonna be attacking one community and we're gonna be confused and distracted. But I think that what's important is that for folks to realize that in order for us to be successful, to be victorious, is that we need to continue to show up and we need to be there for all of our communities. And this again, regardless of the issues folks work on, organizations they work at, I think that as long as we put up a united front, then I honestly, I am very hopeful. In terms of the next four years. And in California, it took, we should note, it took a long time for us to get to where California is now. Just even looking at that one slide, there are a few pro-immigrant pieces of legislation that passed in the years right after. And then a whole bunch as you get about 10 years out and really significant months, like driver's licenses and like the ABC, AB 60. And so just wanting to get both of your take, last question on, as you're hopeful and looking ahead, or Yasmin is feeling hopeful. We'll ask Camila who is feeling hopeful too. What's the, what timeframe are you hoping that we're on in terms of getting really progressive policies in place for immigrants and refugees and just kind of recognizing and seeing the power and empowering our diversity the way it has happened in California? Yasmin, you wanna go first? So maybe I'll clarify my level of hope. So I'm hopeful in terms of us being able to defeat disastrous discriminatory on constitutional policies, but I do think that in terms of our fight in the next few years, it's going to be very challenging. It's going to be very tough in terms of pushing and advancing progressive policies. I mean, in terms of at least the issues that I work on, which is primarily refugee advocacy and really countering Islamophobia, the fact that we have a Republican controlled Congress, executive branch, it makes it incredibly hard for us to really advance any sort of progressive policies. So I'll just leave it at that. I think that it is going to be challenging with this administration. Yeah, I'm hopeful. I'm very hopeful because if I don't have hope, I don't know, I don't know what's gonna get me through the next four years or hopefully not longer, but whatever that timeframe is. And I'm hopeful also because I've seen, like you mentioned, a lot of people who haven't been as involved before becoming more involved now. And I think one good thing that Trump has done is made a lot of people realize the inequalities that many communities have faced for a long time and now more people are taking action. And I think we have to be thinking about the long term because if we're looking for short-term victories, that's gonna be very hard to accomplish. And I think the work has to be long-term because otherwise there's gonna be a lot of burnout. And I think that's something that I think all of us are trying to also figure out how do we remain hopeful in an avalanche of executive action after executive action and figuring out how I think at the end of the day, we have to be accountable to the communities that we're working with. And yeah, I think it's a long-term battle, but I think it's one that we're gonna win because I think most people are on our side. So that's what makes me hopeful. Terrific. Before, last and before I let you go, somebody asked, Yasmin, could you share the name of the coalition that you're working in? And it might be one that you noted includes United We Dream 2. Somebody said that the really big coalition, they wanted to know the name. Yeah, so if folks are interested in joining, how can I, I mean, should I just share the email with you and can you send it to... Yeah, if you send that to me and then I'll send it out with the link to the recording and all that, that's a great idea. And yeah, I'll touch base with all the presenters and... All right, great. Hold on, just one more minute, Emilio and Yasmin, and I just wanna follow up and thank you after we let the others go and to the audience, thank you so much for joining us today. And I'm gonna go ahead and let you go, and but Yasmin and Emilio, stay put. And I look forward to getting everybody, the recording and the other pieces of info that you're asking for. And once again, thank you for joining today. Thank you so much. Thank you all.