Last July, after negotiations with Senator Bernie Sanders, the Biden campaign placed Mijente director Marisa Franco on the campaign’s “unity task force on immigration.” What did that task force accomplish? We excerpt here from Franco’s broader analysis of the Biden policy commitments that resulted from the task force’s deliberations.  

Going into these task force negotiations, we knew we were going to have to push Biden past his comfort zone, both to reconcile with past offenses and to carve a new path forward. That is exactly what we did, unapologetically.

A Biden presidency will stand in stark contrast to Trump’s policies, starting with: 

•        Establishing a 100-day moratorium on deportations that includes a full scale ICE audit. 

•        Ending private detention.

•        Ending 287(g) and similar programs that force local law enforcement to take on the role of immigration enforcement. 

•        Guaranteeing free health coverage to all people regardless of immigration or economic status during a public health crisis like COVID-19. 

•        Retiring old slogans and solutions that have not served us and do not meet the moment.

For years, Mijente along with the broader immigrant rights movement has fought to reshape the narrative around immigration towards racial justice and to focus these very demands. We expect Biden and the Democratic Party to implement them in their entirety. There is no going back. Not an inch, not a step. We must only move forward from here. We will continue organizing. We will keep demanding an end to surveillance, an end to all immigrant detention, the abolition of ICE, and the defunding of police. 

Mijente, a political, digital, and grassroots hub for Latino and Chicano organizing and movement building, launched in 2015. In 2016, we unseated one of the most racist sheriffs in the country with our campaign against Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. After that, we endorsed and ran a campaign to elect Stacey Abrams for governor of Georgia. Our work in that race increased the Latino vote by 300 percent in 2018. We have a long history of grassroots organizing and movement building outside of the electoral sector and have become nationally recognized leaders in the immigrant rights movement. Check @conmijente or Mijente.net to join us.