On April 15, Senate Democrats called to restrict funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a move that would significantly disrupt the Trump administration’s plans for immigration enforcement.

"We cannot support the appropriation of funds that would expand this administration’s unnecessarily cruel immigration enforcement policies, its inhumane immigrant detention systems, or its efforts to build the president’s vanity projects," Democrats wrote in a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The senators called for a rejection of the Trump administration’s request for additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and limits on DHS funding for immigrant detention and deportation.

So far, 20 Democratic senators have signed the letter, including 2020 presidential contenders Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker.

The letter followed an April ICE raid on CVE Technology Group in Allen, Texas, the largest worksite raid in the last decade. More than 280 workers were detained, leaving families scrambling in the aftermath. “Right now, I'm the only support for my family," Erica Salvador, one of the workers caught up in the raid, told NBC New York. “I had too many years here, I had my life.”

The Trump administration has pursued significant changes in immigration policy. In the first year of Trump’s presidency, he signed a 2017 executive order that rescinded Obama-era guidelines on which immigrants should be prioritized for deportation. Trump’s new deportation priorities have granted ICE significant leeway, with significant consequences: As outlined by the executive order, anyone who enters the country “illegally” is considered a “significant threat to national security and public safety” and is a priority. As a result, ICE is emboldened to pursue virtually any immigrant in its path.

Immigration raids sow terror that those impacted say can be hard to move past, even for people who avoid detention and deportation. In the weeks and months following a raid, businesses shut down and families struggle to pay their bills. Children of immigrants face post-traumatic stress disorder and other adverse health outcomes. Entire communities are affected, regardless of immigration status.

Emboldened further by the Trump administration’s increased support, ICE has scaled up its enforcement campaign. The agency has been accused of targeting immigrant rights organizers (which it has denied) and denying migrants in detention proper medical care. Where persecution has intensified, so too has resistance. When the news broke of family separations, parents occupied ICE offices with their children for “playdate protests” to highlight the cruelty of the policy. The protests quickly spread, with encampments outside of ICE offices across the country. As noted by movement journalist L.A. Kauffman in *Waging Nonviolence*, researchers at the Crowd Counting Consortium have tracked more than 20,000 separate demonstrations between January 2017 through May 2018, involving as many as 16 million participants. As Kauffman writes, “that’s more people protesting than at any time in U.S. history.”

So, as ICE stokes fear in immigrant communities, how can activists fight back?

1. Get educated.

There are lots of misconceptions about our immigration system. One pervasive myth is that the U.S. is deporting only people who have committed crimes, targeting threats to public safety. After Trump’s campaign promise to target so-called “bad hombres,” a record number of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record have been arrested.

The logic is circular: Crossing the border without documentation is designated as a federal crime put in place by lawmakers, preemptively criminalizing any immigrant residing in the U.S. without documentation. What this means is that it becomes a crime to enter the U.S. without the proper paperwork, allowing the administration to frame anyone it detains as a public safety risk. Combined, “illegal entry” and “illegal reentry” have become the most federally prosecuted offenses in the U.S. Faced with these charges, often unaware of their options, migrants are pressured to accept plea deals and waive their right to trial, according to the American Immigration Council. This conviction can later be used as the basis for future deportation proceedings.