The most diverse Congress yet faces uphill battle to resist possible proposals against Muslims and Latinos, while representing ‘the most vulnerable among us’

As Donald Trump prepares to take office, minority lawmakers in Congress are vowing to fight any proposals that would take aim at marginalized communities across America.



“I did not think that America could possibly vote in a person who was a bully, who ran on a platform of xenophobia and who made excuses for white supremacists,” said Representative Judy Chu, a Democrat from California.

Chu, who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, ranks among the growing but still small coalition of lawmakers of color in Washington. Her job now entails ensuring that Trump’s hardline proposals on immigration and profiling of Muslims do not become a reality, with the president-elect refusing still to explicitly rule out mass deportations, banning Muslims from entering the US and a Muslim registry.

“A Muslim registry would be the first step in even more horrendous actions,” Chu said in an interview. “We only have to look at the Japanese American internment camp experience to see how it all started … so we must do what we can do to stop that.”



As Ruben Gallego, a Democratic congressman from Arizona, watched the returns on 8 November, he too realized the fight he had hoped would culminate with the election of Hillary Clinton had only just begun.

Gallego, the son of Mexican and Colombian immigrants, said his bid to deny Donald Trump the presidency was “very personal”.

Trump’s targeting of Hispanic immigrants, Gallego said, reminded him of the taunts he faced growing up where he was, at times, among the first Latinos to live in neighborhoods populated by disaffected white families.



And now, as a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the 37-year-old lawmaker is vowing not to treat the president-elect as an ordinary occupant of the White House.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Ruben Gallego (not pictured) said his role, and that of the caucus, is to ‘remind a lot of our immigrants that this country is still theirs’. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

“My role as a member of Congress, as a Latino member of Congress and as a veteran, is to make sure that we remind a lot of our immigrants, a lot of our minority citizens in general, that this country is still theirs,” Gallego told the Guardian.

A similar rallying cry has emerged among other minority members of Congress, who through their roles on caucuses established to represent people of color are now wrestling with how to fight back against a president-elect whose “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan bore a different meaning for nonwhite voters.

The 115th Congress, upon assuming office in January, will historically be the most diverse. But despite a record number of minorities poised to walk the halls of the US Senate and House of Representatives – 48 African Americans, 39 Hispanics, and 15 Asian Americans – the legislative branch will remain overwhelmingly white.

Caucuses formed at different periods have focused their efforts on advancing legislation and raising issues affecting the black, Hispanic and Asian populations in the US. Although their influence has been questioned at times, Chu said she anticipates the three groups will have a “strong role to play” under a Trump administration, where debates are likely to emerge over the civil rights of minorities.



For Chu, like Gallego, her fear stems from her personal background. Chu’s grandfather arrived in the US in 1906, four years after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was made permanent.

The law, which was not repealed until 1943, suspended most Chinese immigration to the US and barred the few who were either already living in the country or granted entry from obtaining citizenship. It also required them to be part of a registry and to have papers in their possession at all times or else be deported, even if they were here legally.

“Only the testimony of a white person could save them from deportation,” Chu said.

“So I understand [a registry] could truly frighten people and marginalize them so that they are disenfranchised.”

Much like most of Washington’s politics, however, the tri-caucuses focused on issues affecting minority communities are no longer a bipartisan enterprise.



Republican members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus left amid policy disagreements nearly two decades ago and went on to form their own identity under the Congressional Hispanic Conference in 2003. Just half of the black Republicans elected to Congress since the respective caucuses’ founding in 1971 joined the group. The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus is entirely Democrat, save for one member who identifies as an independent.

Democrats already face an uphill battle opposing Trump’s policies while holding the minority position in both chambers. It will be a similarly arduous task for the relevant caucuses to have an imprint on the direction of the Trump administration, should the president-elect follow through on controversial proposals to build a border wall, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and crackdown on the civil liberties of Muslims.

New York representative Gregory Meeks, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, acknowledged Trump’s opponents in Congress may not be able to change his tactics or prevent his cabinet nominees from being confirmed. But he said the minority caucuses’ role will be to “make sure the voices of the masses – because [Trump] is not the recipient of the popular vote – are heard.

“We have a responsibility to make sure we hold him accountable,” he added, “and we also have a responsibility to make sure we organize individuals like never before.”

Trump is just the latest obstacle on the zigzagging course of racial progress | Margaret Burnham Read more

The overwhelming majority of black, Hispanic, Asian voters cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton. But the Democratic nominee lost in part due to lower turnout among black and Hispanic groups in particular, falling short of the numbers that helped propel Barack Obama to a landslide re-election in 2012.

“If there’s anything that people have learned from this election, it’s that every vote does count,” Meeks said.

The result came as a shock to Democrats, who were left pondering the future of their party after not simply losing the presidency but also failing to regain a majority in either chamber of Congress. It was especially bruising for the likes of Meeks, Chu and Gallego, who traveled the country as surrogates for Clinton.



But after taking the last month to process the election’s outcome, the lawmakers said they have emerged with a renewed determination to stand up for those they dubbed as “the most vulnerable among us”.

“At the core of the United States, we are not a racist nation, we are not a bigoted nation,” said Gallego.

“I’m not disheartened. I’m here for the fight.”