Immigrant rights organizations in the Valley are in a mad dash to alert immigrant families of their constitutional rights as President-elect Donald Trump promises to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history.

Trump pledged during his presidential campaign that he would pursue mass deportations of immigrants. He’s also threatened to eliminate legal pathways to citizenship and end programs like Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and DACA.

In wake of the election, local immigrant rights groups and community organizers and advocates have vowed to protect immigrant families in the Valley from Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.

One way they say they’re doing that is by distributing thousands of small red cards that detail for immigrant families their constitutional rights in the event they encounter immigration agents. The red cards include reminders that constitutional rights apply to everyone, regardless of someone’s immigration status.

“The red cards are an important resource around know your rights and the constitutional rights of everyone, regardless of immigration status,” said Allison Davenport of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC).

What the red cards say

Red cards can be obtained for free from immigrant rights organizations, such as Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative (CVIIC).

People have constitutional rights regardless of a person’s immigration status simply by being on American soil, Davenport said.

Those rights include:

▪ The right to remain silent if a person has contact with a law enforcement official.

▪ The right to not open the door to their homes to a law enforcement official.

▪ The right to due process.

▪ The right to have a day in court and to be represented by an attorney.

Davenport said immigrant rights organizations will do their part to make sure “every community member across the valley, in our most rural and isolated communities are armed with this information and prepare to protect themselves and their families.”

The Red Cards help people assert their rights in many situations, such as when ICE agents go to a home, according to the ILRC, and are available in 13 languages including Hmong, Punjabi, Spanish, Tagalog and English.

California prepares for Trump

Davenport said the first Trump administration imposed a harsh public charge rule (a ground of inadmissibility to deny a green card, visa, or admission into the United States to a person), attempted to terminate DACA and pursued “hostile policies.”

She expects there will likely be executive orders and policies that create fear and barriers to legal status once Trump takes office.

But one thing immigrant families can rely on is that California has greater protections for the undocumented than other states, Davenport said.

Some of those include offering AB60 licenses and IDs for people who can’t provide proof of legal residence in the country, as well as the California Values Act that limits the cooperation of local law enforcement agencies with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Gov. Gavin Newsom also has called a special session for this month focused on “bolstering California legal resources to protect civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate action, and immigrant families.”

Whether Trump follows through on his promise for mass deportations once he takes office Jan. 20 remains to be seen. A large-scale deportation effort by Trump would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, according to some experts.

Sukaina Hussain, deputy director of strategic initiatives at the California Immigrant Policy Center, said the election’s results “caused a wide array of emotions among vulnerable communities, including pain, grief, and anger from immigrant families in the Central Valley.”

“Trump’s previous administration has taught us that he intends to keep his racist, harmful promises and do much, much worse,” said Hussain, who is an immigrant and a Muslim.

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