Donald Trump has been elected to a second term on a platform steeped in white supremacist, Christian nationalist ideology—a platform that promises to weaponize the full power of the state against the communities and values Muslim Advocates lives to serve.  In the last Trump administration, our communities endured extreme targeting—cruel and demeaning by design—including the Muslim and Africa bans, family separation and detention, and an open embrace of the undercurrent of white nationalism in American political culture. This year, the Trump campaign promised to pick up where it left off, including mass deportation, closing the border, and piling onto the current Administration’s increasingly draconian limitations on asylum—something Muslim Advocates and our partners strenuously oppose.

Immediately before the election results came in, staff from Muslim Advocates were in San Diego and Tijuana. Working closely with trusted partner organizations on both sides of the border—including Al Otro Lado, Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, and the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans—we provided critical rights advisals to newly arrived migrants from Muslim-majority countries who are facing cruel restrictions on the hallowed right to seek asylum or are otherwise facing discriminatory surveillance. The violent anti-Black and anti-Muslim racism endemic across U.S. law enforcement agencies like the Border Patrol exacerbates the vulnerability of those trying to find safety within the United States.

This is what we do to fight systemic oppression, build power, and demand shared well-being for the most vulnerable among our communities. Preserving our safety and freedom is a shared project, as is our commitment to resisting all that this political moment threatens: ongoing and expanded support of genocide in Palestine, an open embrace of authoritarianism, repression of dissent that decries racism and oppression, bans on immigration, and unrelenting targeting of immigrant communities and of anyone with Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and/or South Asian (“BAAMEMSA”) identities.

Whatever lies ahead for us, we are committed to the power and wellbeing of our communities and to fighting alongside them. None of us is in this fight alone.