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The alt-right movement is building the infrastructure to divide and disappear our immigrant and Native communities from public life. One key strategy to stamping us out is to enact a vast web of violent legislation aimed at increasing racial profiling and policing of Black and brown people in the very places we call home, from Texas's notorious Senate Bill 4 to Georgia's HB 1105 to Oklahoma's HB 4156 to Iowa's SB 2340 to Arizona's HCR 2060, all of which contain the same intent of racial terror formerly enshrined in Arizona's original "show me your papers" law known as SB 1070.
As directly impacted undocumented immigrants and Native people, we know we belong. We call these lands home. Our communities have deep roots that intertwine throughout time—some of us were born on these lands since time immemorial, and some of us moved here, forced to overcome state-led violence, genocide, climate disaster, shame, theft, and erasure.
We see the state-led plot to try to erase us unfolding, and we are ready to fight back. Our homes and traditional lands have no room for racism and fascism. Throughout every generation, white nationalists and fascists have repeatedly tried to uphold their dark fantasy for the United States: a violent and exploitative way of life where only the few are worthy of free, autonomous futures at the expense of the majority of working people and brown, Black, and Indigenous communities.
It is no surprise that Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) is leading the charge to end DACA nationwide and deputize cops into the deportation force. These state-led political directives to racially profile, target, and deport our communities en masse harken back to the early 1900s when Texas armed the Texas Rangers with political authority to remove Native and immigrant people from their homes to allow for white settlers to occupy Native lands. Texas Rangers propped up borders under the ideological belief of Manifest Destiny, which falsely proclaims that white people are divinely ordained to settle on and take land that was not theirs, often through deadly violence.
More than a century later, we can see clearly how white nationalist policymakers are ready to bring this terror into the modern age through legislation aimed at targeting Black, brown and Indigenous residents. A ballot measure being proposed in the state, known as HCR 2060 , which replicates the state's infamous SB 1070 law, would persecute Black and brown Arizonans and explicitly threatens to target thousands of immigrant young people protected under DACA. Arizona state lawmakers are notorious for collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who have already confirmed that they have access to the home addresses of DACA recipients, which would allow them to swiftly hunt down immigrant families if the rightwing ideologues on the Supreme Court terminate this lifesaving program.
Native people are not immune to these racist tactics. Under the order of the federal government's 1819 Indian Civilization Fund Act, law enforcement in states like Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Washington descended on the homes of Native families to seize their children, separating families as recently as the 1970s. Today, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt in Oklahoma continues to reject the state's constitutional obligation to honor Tribal treaties granting self-determination for Native communities. Instead, Stitt has invested economic resources into weaponizing state and local police to racially profile and target Native people.
Despite these threats against our livelihoods, our communities are tapping into our culture to sustain one another and organize for change. We are called to do the sacred work of protecting water, earth, and Tribal ways of being, and we dare to envision a new way of life with bold resilience and faith. We know from our cultures what sustainable, caring, and restful communities and societies look like. Societies that uplift humanity and Mother Earth.
While the ultra-right continues to target Black, brown, immigrant, and Native communities in an attempt to control our bodies and force us into the shadows, we are undeterred in our fight for racial justice. In the very states where the ultra-right is trying to stamp us out, we are marching, sharing our stories, and mobilizing people to take action to make their voices heard this year and beyond. We will not allow the minority of extremist politicians to dictate our futures. We know we have what it takes to care for one another and seed abundance within the places we call home, our institutions, and Tribal lands when we come together to celebrate our collective values of dignity, liberation, and respect for humanity and the natural world.
Our lives matter, and we take our future into our own hands. We are called to remind our communities, including our state and local elected officials, that the futures of Natives and immigrants are woven together into the tapestry that is our shared home. We have been here since the beginning of time and see our paths headed to a horizon of equity and justice for all—and that we are not going anywhere.
We are here to stay and unafraid to fight for our freedom to move, thrive, and determine our collective futures. That is what a multi-racial democracy looks like.
Greisa Martinez Rosas is the executive director of United We Dream Action (UWDA), the political and electoral arm of United We Dream and a national network led by immigrant youth and youth of color fighting for dignity and justice.
Judith LeBlanc is a citizen of the Caddo Nation. She has been the Executive Director of Native Organizers Alliance (NOA) for eight years.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
