From Division to Power: Overcoming Anti-Immigrant Narratives and Building Power with Immigrant Communities

“When immigrant workers are driven further into the shadows where they are vulnerable to exploitation and forced to work in dangerous conditions, it lowers standards for all workers, whether union workers or not. When it comes to living wages, prevailing wages, workers’ comp, heat safety – basic commonsense things – we need to march side by side.” – David Chincanchan, Workers Defense Projectiv  

Solutions from the field 

Grassroots organizers are fighting back against anti-immigrant narratives. Their work helps everyday people break free of such narratives and build cross-racial and cross-group coalitions. This has led to sustained organizing and protests to protect immigrant communities and working people more broadly. Even as the Trump Administration’s attacks on immigrant communities drag on, movement groups have managed to delay funding for ICE enforcement operations, pressure airlines to stop flying deportation flights for ICE, shut down certain detention facilities, and draw greater scrutiny to conditions in detention facilities. These efforts have served as a check on the power of authoritarians more broadly: The organizing work in cities like Minneapolis has been instrumental in eroding support for the Trump administration's immigration agenda. 

In order to counter anti-immigrant narratives and build the necessary power to challenge attacks on immigrant communities, our partners are engaging in three main steps: 

Step 1: Create belonging and trust locally through base-building. 

Organizers create a culture of belonging and trust locally through base-building work. Base-building isn't just about reaching more people but about building relationships over time. By consistently showing up, listening to community members' concerns, and creating opportunities for neighbors to connect with one another, organizers demonstrate a commitment to communities beyond just one isolated campaign or issue. By weaving themselves into the daily lives of their communities through canvassing and face-to-face meetings, they lay the foundation for conversations about shared issues and collective solutions. 

“We conduct deep canvassing in neighborhoods, and we aim not to manhandle folks in these conversations. We go outside coffee shops and table. You see us at Sheetz while you're getting gas. We're embedded in communities. We build trust and then get people to understand that it is up to us to build the bigger ‘we.’” – Edwin Stubbs, PASUv 

This daily, consistent presence allows organizers to build trust needed for honest conversations with community members about immigration and the importance of cross-group solidarity. For example, TOP hosts community dinners that bring neighbors together over a shared meal, which creates space for deeper conversations about people's lived experiences. These conversations can help community members recognize that they may have more in common than they initially realize. 

Step 2: Center shared values with intentional storytelling. 

Once trust is built, organizers create spaces to tell stories that allow people across groups to find shared values and common ground. When undertaken with care and consent, telling the stories of people directly affected by anti-immigrant tactics is a powerful organizing tool. Rather than allowing anti-immigrant narratives to define who belongs (and who doesn't) and who might deserve support (and who doesn't), organizers center values like human dignity and belonging to build connections across lines of difference. For example, TOP is building Black and Latino solidarity by exposing how both communities face parallel and sometimes intersecting systems of exploitation, and how anti-immigrant narratives are intertwined with anti-Blackness. 

“The same strategies are used to target immigrants and Black people. Black people are incarcerated, and immigrants are detained and then deported. We try to bring people together, do community dinners, create culture spaces so that humanity can be present while we share our stories and grapple with the weight of what we are all dealing with. We are having deeper intentional conversations around building Black and Latino solidarity and unity, asking where interests align and how we use that to bridge narratives that seek to divide us." – Terrance Koontz, a former Texas Organizing Project staffer.vi

With this shared storytelling, TOP is reinforcing the connections between the struggles of Black and Latino people, and between the struggles of immigrants and other working people. Oftentimes these identities overlap and intersect, as is the case for Black immigrants and for the Afro-Latino community (among others), creating a strong basis for mutual understanding. TOP is furthering this understanding by helping more people see that immigrants are neighbors, coworkers, and fellow parents, and that they have familiar struggles. When others see immigrants as part of their community, the injustices that immigrants suffer take on new meaning and can be linked to their own experiences with discrimination and abuse of power. The learning flows both ways: For example, non-immigrant Black community members gain a deeper understanding of immigrant experiences, while immigrant community members are encouraged to reflect on and challenge anti-Black sentiments in their own communities. Narratives of solidarity across race, ethnicity, and citizenship status open opportunities for collective action rooted in shared values. Workers Defense Project has a track record of centering shared values in their campaigns by focusing on safe working conditions in Texas. Workers Defense directly attributes key policy wins, such as passing an ordinance mandating heat protections and rest breaks for workers in Dallas, to this approach. The Dallas rest break ordinance illustrates this approach in action:  

“There was a 25-year-old construction worker in the area who died [in 2015]. He started to feel sick at work, asked his supervisor to take a break, and was denied – and a few hours later, he was dead. He suffered from heat illness, which caused organ failure. His younger sister, who was a child then and is grown up now, came forward and shared his story, and she stressed how if heat protections for workers had been in place, he would still be alive today. Humanizing the workers we’re talking about is critical to building shared values.”  – David Chincanchan, Workers Defense Projectvii

Facing significant opposition from construction industry lobbyists opposing the heat safety protections, Workers Defense spent a year and a half fighting for the 2016 ordinance in Dallas. After the preventable death of a construction worker, the Dallas City Council passed the ordinance four months later (though it was later repealed by the conservative-backed “Death Star" bill in 2023).  

In this instance, telling the story of a tragedy was the linchpin in passing the ordinance despite the opposition of the lobbyists. Workers Defense and their allies emphasized that this 25-year-old worker could have been anyone’s friend or relative. He could have been of any race or immigration status. The lack of policies protecting workers from excessive heat is what killed him. The story David shared highlights that changing the way immigrants are seen by centering their humanity can have profound policy implications.  

Step 3: Emphasizing collective safety and well-being as a counter to anti-immigrant messaging 

 Anti-immigrant messaging works by isolating people from each other. Base-building and storytelling by movement groups do the opposite – they connect people across difference and help them recognize their shared interests and common humanity. Together, this work lays the foundation for a powerful counternarrative: collective safety and well-being. Rather than treating safety as something that can be achieved by targeting immigrants (it can’t), this message emphasizes that communities are safest when everyone belongs, has their rights protected, and can thrive. 

Messages of collective safety and well-being name that ICE presence in the community makes everyone less safe, that an attack on one group is an attack on all groups, and that ICE cannot take away our neighbors and community members without a fight. 

“At a recent TOP meeting to discuss a campaign that would depend on building a deep and strong coalition of Black and Latino communities, some of our Black, non-immigrant members expressed that ‘It might be immigrants right now, and even if we ourselves are not immigrants, as Black folks, they’re coming for us next. We don’t feel safe. The ICE attack feels like it’s against all people of color.’” – Sofia Lopez, Texas Organizing Projectviii

This understanding of shared vulnerability can also help organizations connect immigrant justice to broader fights for racial and criminal legal reform. TOP has recently folded its immigrant justice work into its Right 2 Justice campaign, recognizing that immigrants and non-immigrants are treated similarly, with the end result that people of color are being locked up. 

These messages are even more powerful when paired with collective action. Our partners are taking a range of actions to support immigrant communities, including sharing know-your-rights information in community spaces, organizing protests and marches, supporting rapid-response efforts, and coordinating legal support for individuals who are detained. For example, TOP has been sharing know-your-rights information at flea markets, bus stops, and other community spaces since last year, and it recently joined WDP and other Texas power-building organizations in a march protesting the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. 

By helping people see that immigrant justice and community well-being are interconnected, this counter-narrative strengthens the broad, multiracial coalitions that are needed to advance policies that protect workers, expand rights, and invest in communities. In this way, the narrative of collective safety and well-being is not only a powerful antidote to anti-immigrant hatred, but also the foundation for building the power needed to materialize lasting policy change that benefits people of all backgrounds and statuses. 

Conclusion 

While anti-immigrant narratives continue to be weaponized to uphold systems of injustice and erode democratic norms, there are clear paths forward. Grassroots organizers and movement groups are advancing a powerful counternarrative of collective safety and well-being, grounded in solidarity and shared values and paired with action. The work of these leaders shows us that when we center those most impacted, foster deep relationships across lines of race and class, and invest in long-term movement infrastructure, we can resist division and build lasting power.   

Overcoming this authoritarian moment requires us to confront the white supremacy that animates it. Grassroots organizers are already showing the way forward by building the coalitions and advancing the strategy required to do just that.