Targeting Immigrants Won’t Make America Safer | Opinion

President Donald Trump deployed California National Guard troops to Los Angeles this week, without request from local authorities, in response to protests against recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. The decision represents a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on immigrants and political dissent. Through mass deportations, expulsions, unlawful detention, and erosion of freedom of expression, it is using authoritarian practices to silence opposition to its agenda. It’s putting all of us at risk.

The Trump administration’s treatment of our immigrant neighbors is not just cruel; it’s a calculated effort to weaponize federal power against all of us, especially the most marginalized. This isn’t about law and order; it’s about fear and control.

That effort is on display from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. This week, as the Senate works on its version of the reconciliation bill, we’re calling on lawmakers in both chambers to reject Trump’s budget bill, which would fund a machinery of cruel and mass deportations. We also urge Congress to take immediate action to ensure constitutional and human rights apply to all people in the U.S., regardless of immigration status, by revoking the Alien Enemies Act, protecting the right to protest without fear of detention or deportation, returning those who were wrongly removed from the U.S., and fully restoring the right to seek asylum.

The stakes are too high for silence or inaction. The raids, mass deportations, family separations, disappearances, and retaliation against student protesters are not isolated incidents. They form a deeply concerning pattern of authoritarian practices, which include sending immigrants to a prison in El Salvador without due process; retaliating against cities and states that protect their immigrant communities; detaining and deporting U.S. citizens; locking protesters up and threatening deportation; and allowing ICE agents into schools, churches, and hospitals. All of these actions send a chilling message to immigrant communities and U.S. citizens alike: no one in the U.S. is safe from state-sanctioned harm.

Immigrants and dissenters must not be used as pawns in the game of politics. Human rights—such as the right to a fair trial, access to asylum, legal representation, and protection from torture or forcible removal to a country where a person may face harm—are guaranteed under both U.S. and international law. When the executive strips these rights from some of us, it sets a precedent that puts all of our rights at risk. The next target could be any of us.

The administration’s recent use of the Alien Enemies Act to disappear more than 200 people to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento Contra del Terrorismo, a facility widely criticized for its violent and inhumane conditions, raises serious legal and human rights concerns. Families and attorneys have been unable to contact their loved ones who are being detained. Disappearing people to a prison in a country that is not their own, without due process or legal recourse, is a blatant human rights violation. This dangerous precedent should alarm anyone who believes the rule of law must serve justice rather than entrench systemic inequality.

Under the Trump administration, even holding U.S. citizenship or lawful immigration status does not shield anyone from being detained and expelled. A clear example is the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who was targeted after participating in peaceful protests for Palestinian rights and has been jailed in an ICE processing center since early March. Make no mistake: organizing and participating in protests is not a crime. Freedom of speech and assembly are protected rights, and using immigration enforcement to silence dissent threatens each and every one of us.

ICE has become increasingly brazen in its tactics. It uses agents in masks and plain clothes to terrorize communities and arrest our neighbors, detains people in overcrowded and cruel detention centers, targets activists, violates due process, and tramples on other human rights.

The system that is now targeting and brutalizing immigrants of color has a long history of targeting and brutalizing Black, brown, and Indigenous communities across this country. Even the term “invasion,” which the Trump administration uses to stoke fear and justify inhumane policies, evokes the white supremacist great replacement theory. As long as the government continues to prioritize militarization, incarceration, and deportation while relying on racist policing and targeting immigrants, communities across the U.S. will not be safe. We must prioritize human dignity and public safety. We need long-term, transformative solutions to our predatory immigration system which currently promotes brutality, surveillance, and incarceration.

We call on the White House to end the deployment of the National Guard; change course on its immigration policy; stop its fear-mongering, racist, and xenophobic rhetoric; and bring an immediate end to its attacks on basic human rights. In addition to requesting that the U.S. government immediately return the people it illegally removed to El Salvador and revoke the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, we also demand that lawmakers comply with the decisions of the U.S. Judiciary by immediately halting all plans for mass detentions and deportations, and reestablishing the right to seek asylum at the United States’ southern border.

Instead of investing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into cruel policies, Congress should invest in solutions that uplift all of our communities. The Senate must vote no on President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which would gut life-saving and essential programs like Medicaid, Social Security, food assistance for families, and student loans in favor of Trump’s deportation machine.

Immigrants and people seeking safety make our communities safer, richer, and more vibrant. Now is the time to stand in solidarity with our immigrant family members, friends, and neighbors to uphold human dignity and the principles of justice and fairness for all.

Judith Browne Dianis is Executive Director of Advancement Project. Paul O’Brien is the Executive Director at Amnesty International USA.

The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.