Here’s a scenario: You’re a U.S. citizen and you want to be an ally to undocumented immigrants. Great! How can you be an active help to people who are being regularly terrorized under the Trump administration? “It's not just sharing an image or a link on Facebook and Twitter,” FWD.us digital campaigns manager Juan Escalante told Daily Kos at Netroots Nation, the largest conference for progressives in the nation. “Although that may also help.”
Escalante knows what he’s talking about: He’s an immigration advocate who has spent more than 10 years fighting for the Dream Act and related pro-immigration policies at the local, state, and federal government levels. Escalante is an undocumented immigrant himself and has shared his personal story on numerous platforms to spread awareness. Escalante talked about what advice he would give his teenage self, how agriculture depends on immigrant labor and why that’s fundamentally a problem, and the terror that comes with driving just a few miles when you are undocumented.
But before we dig into his story, let’s get back to his advice on allyship. Something simple that citizens can do? Pull out their phones and hit record. “If you yourself see anything happening in your community, document it with your phone,” Escalante says in his Making Progress interview. “If you yourself know your rights and the rights afforded to immigrants through the Constitution of the United States, make sure you voice those and inform those around you as well.”
For a variety of reasons, undocumented people may not know their rights. Even if they do know their rights, they may be terrified to advocate for themselves for fear of harm or escalating what’s already a nightmare situation. That’s where citizens can step up.
“Don't wait for someone else to take action. … You have an opportunity to do your duty in this fight by standing up and saying ‘These are your rights,’ ‘This is what I know to be true,’ and ‘This is what I've researched,’” Escalante continued. “Make sure you do so, because the alternative is for people to either get carried away in handcuffs by CBP or ICE, or for nobody to speak up, and for the deportation machine to continue to operate in the way it's been designed up until this point.”
Check out the full interview and transcript below.
Question 1: Big business and big agriculture fundamentally rely on immigrant labor. Why do you think these business leaders aren’t putting maximum pressure on Congress to come up with a viable immigration policy that works for workers and owners?
Over a number of years, we've seen how agriculture and big business has essentially relied on immigrant labor. In my home state of Florida, for example, we see a significant amount of orange groves and, you know, vegetable fields, especially in Southwest Florida, relying on this kind of labor. And before even diving into the immigration issue about legal versus undocumented immigrants, we need to acknowledge first and foremost one thing: It's essentially that these workers are not being paid a fair wage. First and foremost.
And number two, when it comes down to negotiating a fair wage, then we dive into the immigration portion, which is about whether or not these folks are replaceable by this company, whether they're treated subhuman, whether they're not given any sort of rights.
I think one of the most striking things for me is essentially the combination of ag [agriculture] and business and how the profit comes out of it. If you ever visit Florida, they have what they call a mobile museum, and it's basically a trailer like the ones you see carrying lawn maintenance equipment.
What's intriguing about this trailer is that, back in the day, before this story actually broke out in the early 2000s, was that instead of carrying lawn maintenance equipment, they carried people chained to the walls of this trailer. And these were farm workers, people that were either punished or were being transported as part of a smuggling operation.
So, I think when we think about the intersection of business and agriculture and why they haven't reacted as much to the immigration issue as they should is because, to them, you know, oftentimes they just don't recognize the value of these individuals and their families. To them it's just another piece of their puzzle, and if they can keep costs down and if they can keep conditions to a way that's not gonna hurt their bottom line, then unfortunately, we're gonna continue to see the kind of experiences and the kind of horrific events that we see all across these sectors. And it's time for us, as people who are consciously working on both of these issues, to come together and bridge that gap, because ultimately it's not just a numbers issue. It's not just a finance issue. It's definitely a human rights issue.
Question 2: How can organizers convey that immigration is an American issue?
You know, I just came out of a brief conversation with Senator Merkley, who was here at the conference, and I think he said it best. He, obviously, is a senator from Oregon and famously visited, was one of the first, if not the first, elected official who visited one of these detention centers where they're keeping children and they're separating them away from their families. And he basically said that the way that he saw it, to him this is not a political issue. This is just an American issue, in the way that we're spending our taxpayer dollars, in the way that we are essentially throwing away our values as a nation, and that we are forgetting everything that we stood for, right? You know, what exactly do we have the Statue of Liberty for? What exactly do we have the Constitution or the concept of We The People?
It's not we the few, or we the rich, or we the legals, or we the citizens. It's we the people. And it struck to me that ultimately what we're fighting for when we talk about immigration is the soul of this country. People come here, just as my parents did, just as I am here, to fight for a better life and a better opportunity for ourselves while simultaneously contributing to our local communities, to our state, and to this country as a whole.
People often ask me, you know, where am I from? And I often tell them that it's such a loaded question because I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, was raised in Florida for a number of years, now I live in Washington, D.C. And even though I consider myself an American, despite the fact that I don't have legal status or a piece of paper that says so, I often look forward to the promise that this country has to offer.
And I tell people that, when they talk about immigrants, or they see immigrants on TV, or they hear all these falsehoods and misconceptions that are being propagated by the far right or by extremists in terms of … basically, it's propaganda about immigrants and all the attacks that we hear. It's not a representative picture of the people who are working day in and day out, who may not speak English, but believe in the promise of the American Dream that if you work hard, you too can make it in this country.
Question 3: How can allies best support the undocumented community in the era of Trump?
Allyship is such an important piece of the work that we, that is done on immigration. I think one of the most important aspects of it is understanding the conditions, right? Both the ones that are visible and invisible to us.
One of the main people that I often, that I look toward is Alan Dornan. This is a gentleman that walks two miles every single day on behalf of immigrants and Dreamers. He carries a sign. He has all kinds of medical conditions and he takes time out of his day, even though he's elderly, to walk this two miles and inform his local community of what he does and why he does it. And what's so important about Alan's story, at least for me, is that here's a man who is retired and out of one day of watching a random clip on C-SPAN understood that people in this country are continuously being attacked by the president of the United States and his administration from all levels.
And it's not just the immigrants that the Trump administration points out to us as criminals. It's everyone. People in his community, students, it's the people that he interacts with on a regular basis across his hometown of Hartford, Connecticut. And to see Alan recognize that at such a fundamental level is nothing short of inspiring. I think, for me, right in this specific moment in time, we're being confronted with a lot of choices and a lot of crises before us.
Most relevant, obviously, in the minds of people is the family separation that's happening at the border. A lot of the detention centers that we continue to see operate at a profit on behalf of immigrants being kept in cages continue to also be in the minds of people right now. But, you know, as we're recording this, I mean, there's ICE raids that have been announced by the Trump administration in the coming days, and what I tell allies, often and time again, is that they need to understand that they also have a very important role to play into this.
And it's not just sharing an image or a link on Facebook and Twitter, although that may also help. They need to inform themselves of their rights and what they can do to essentially hold these agencies accountable and help immigrants escape these situations.
If you yourself see anything happening in your community, document it with your phone. If you yourself know your rights and the rights afforded to immigrants through the Constitution of the United States, make sure you voice those and inform those around you as well. We see videos and interactions come out all the time on social media about U.S. citizens who essentially go through a checkpoint and, because they know their rights, they're able to protect those passengers from a wrong search and seizure from Customs and Border Protection.
When we see CBP agents boarding a bus, we see citizens standing up and saying you don't have to comply, because under the Constitution of the United States, you are afforded the following rights. Those kinds of interactions, while it may be uncomfortable for people on a regular basis because they're confronting law enforcement agents, are so critical to the understanding that you have a role in what is happening in today's America under this administration and under this mass deportation agenda.
So, don't wait for someone else to take action. Make sure that, if you are a U.S. citizen and you have an opportunity to do your duty in this fight by standing up and saying ‘These are your rights,’ ‘This is what I know to be true,’ and ‘This is what I've researched,’ make sure you do so, because the alternative is for people to either get carried away in handcuffs by CBP or ICE or for nobody to speak up and for the deportation machine to continue to operate in the way it's been designed up until this point.
Bonus Question: If you could give advice to your teenage self, what would it be?
When I was 16 years old, this is before DACA was a thing or before President Obama was inaugurated into office, I had a job at a local ice cream store.
I was still in high school, I was a junior and I didn't have a driver's license, but part of living in Florida, as it is in other states across the country, is that you have to drive. It's not a choice. It's a necessity. It's a must. Public transportation is not reliable. It doesn't get you to point A to point B in a feasible amount of time.
And, you know, my teenage self basically drove in a very small rectangle across the community. I called it my own little sandbox because I knew every inch of every route that I would have to take to avoid police, speed traps, anything that I knew at specific times of day where I could get caught up in a bad situation, or if there was a broken tail light that I had not noticed, or if I got rear-ended or in a fender bender, or anything like that, that will keep me safe from encountering law enforcement and being pulled over and questioned about my immigration status.
I share that story mainly because it's such a small thing. I mean, my job at the time was not more than two, three miles away from my house. But the fear of driving those three miles there and back was so intense that I would just grip the steering wheel so hard from the point that I left my house to the point that I parked my car to then appreciate that I had not been pulled over and stop worrying about that specific moment, about not being pulled over, to then start worrying immediately again about whether or not my employer would find out about my status and fire me.
So, you know, I think the only advice that I have 15 years later for a younger Juan Escalante is basically that there is a lot of the small stuff to be worried about, but compounding it or worrying about it in such small faces to the point that you are almost incapable of feeling anything else but fear at every single hour of the day is not a strategy to grow, to learn, to move forward, and it's not a strategy to overcome anything that may stop you from driving forward real change.
So, ultimately, obviously I've overcome a lot of that, but if I had to do all of this all over again, that would probably be like top line in my head. That this paralyzing fear is real. Risks have to be taken, but we can't stop ourselves from actually moving forward.
And I'm happy that I've conquered a lot of this kind of stuff because now, you know, I may be what some people may call an older Dreamer in this movement and in this fight, but I take great pleasure in somehow having learned and overcome those experiences. Because the amount of information that I've gathered or experienced, I'm able to hand out to much younger Dreamers or DACA recipients who are struggling to get on a plane, or board a bus, or take a trip or a vacation, or even drive to a local store because they're so uncertain about the raids, about everything that's happening in this country, and for me, I do my best to make sure that I use my own experiences to appease them to some degree or another.
Because I understand that even though I have gone through this and I'm able to speak about it, no amount of words can essentially put them at ease, either. But I find comfort that I at least can provide them some comfort, which was unavailable to me when I was growing up.