All Hands On Deck, ACLU Mobilizes to Defend Civil Rights from Trump Attacks
When Donald Trump was sworn in as president, he lost no time launching Project 2025—a right-wing policy agenda rooted in white supremacy that he had claimed to know nothing about.
He issued executive orders to end birthright citizenship, gut Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programs, and strip transgender people of their rights. He has aggressively attacked voting rights, freedom of speech, and reproductive choice.
He unlawfully used an 18th-century law called the Alien Enemies Act as cover to deport 200 Venezuelan men who he accused of being gang members—without producing any evidence whatsoever to a court. The U.S. government forced the men onto planes bound for El Salvador where they were locked up in a notorious gang prison.
We are witnessing abuses of presidential power the likes of which we have never seen.
The ACLU stands ready—as we have for more than a century—to defend our vision of an inclusive democracy based on fundamental principles of equality.
“Our priorities remain clear as we confront the Trump administration’s many threats to our civil rights and civil liberties,” said Abdi Soltani, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. “We will challenge discriminatory policies and block efforts to dismantle constitutional protections. And we will resist the disturbing normalization of anti-democratic threats.”
Birthright Citizenship
On Day 1, Trump signed an executive order that would strip babies born in the United States of citizenship unless at least one parent is a citizen or permanent legal resident.
Two hours later, the ACLU sued him in federal court in New Hampshire. A judge temporarily blocked the order days later calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Every child born in the United States, regardless of who their parents are (unless they are foreign diplomats), is automatically a U.S. citizen. Birthright citizenship is a cornerstone of our multi-racial democracy.
The 14th amendment enshrined birthright citizenship in the constitution in 1868 and reversed the Supreme Court’s odious Dred Scott ruling that had denied citizenship to Black people. Trump’s order is an abuse of executive power, violating the constitution and laws enacted by Congress, and creating an underclass of people who would be denied the benefits of U.S. citizenship even though they were born here. Read more about birthright citizenship here.
Fighting Mass Deportation
Trump’s anti-immigrant attacks on Black and Brown people have only intensified during his second term. At the same time, he has offered political asylum to Afrikaners, members of the white minority who ruled during apartheid in South Africa. Trump preposterously claims that they are victims of racism.
Much of our ACLU litigation has focused on stopping Trump’s efforts to deport immigrants— most of them immigrants of color—without due process.
Here in California, the ACLU Foundations of Northern and Southern California and our legal partners (National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, and the Haitian Bridge Alliance) sued Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of the National TPS Alliance and eleven Venezuelan and Haitian immigrants who are in the Temporary Protected Status program, known as TPS.
Trump officials revoked an 18-month temporary extension that had allowed some 600,000 Venezuelans to live legally in the United States because their home country is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. The DHS Secretary canceled the Temporary Protect Status for the majority of them just weeks after the Biden administration had renewed it.
In our lawsuit, we argued that the Trump administration exceeded its legal authority and that the decision was based on prejudice. The case was amended in March to also defend the rights of 500,000 Haitians at risk of losing their temporary immigration status.
“I am stunned to have TPS ripped out from under me, at a moment’s notice,” said one plaintiff, Freddy Arape, an IT support specialist in Texas. “It doesn’t make sense. TPS exists exactly for the situation that Venezuelans face right now. We cannot safely return.”
On March 31, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to strip Venezuelans of their temporary protected status while the case moves through the courts.
Challenging Unlawful Raids
Even before Trump officially took office, his election victory emboldened U.S. Border Patrol agents who couldn’t wait to terrorize immigrant communities.
The day after Congress certified the election, Border Patrol agents based at the U.S. Mexico-border went rogue. They traveled 300 miles north to initiate raids in predominately Latino farming communities in and around Kern County and began indiscriminately stopping people because of their skin color. They targeted day laborers and farm workers.
They smashed people’s car windows and slashed their tires. They threw a grandmother to the ground. Legal residents and U.S. citizens were among those stopped and arrested in the unlawful sweeps.
In February, the ACLU Foundations of Northern California, Southern California and San Diego & Imperial Counties and Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP., filed a class action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Border Patrol officials over these gross violations of people’s constitutional rights during “Operation Return to Sender”—on behalf of people arrested in the raid and the United Farm Workers.
The agents arrested at least 78 people. As we detailed in our lawsuit, they transported the people they arrested back to the border patrol station where they held them in frigid cells, denied them adequate places to sleep, showers, or enough food. They refused to let them make phone calls to their lawyers or family members.
These pressure tactics were meant to break them so they would “voluntarily” agree to be expelled from the country.
Maria Hernandez Espinoza who is one of the plaintiffs in our lawsuit, lived in Kern County for 20 years. After her arrest, the border patrol agents made her sign forms, but wouldn’t let her read them. They refused her plea to see an immigration lawyer. She was among approximately 40 people stranded in Mexico with no idea when she will see her loved ones again.
“We’re suing to end Border Patrol’s unlawful reliance on racial profiling, indiscriminate arrests without a warrant, and using coercion and deception to deny people their rights,” said Bree Bernwanger, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. “These lawless practices do not make anyone safer. All they do is terrorize communities.”
Protecting Transgender Rights
Trump continues to launch his vile attacks against transgender people.
He issued an executive order that threatened to yank federal funding from medical institutions that provide gender affirming care to people under 18.
In a major victory for gender affirming care, a judge blocked the unconstitutional order.
Trump issued another executive order blocking transgender people from being able to update their gender on their passport. We again sued to stop more of his cruel scapegoating of transgender people.
“We have an administration that is using rhetorical attacks on trans people in order to expand executive power and open up a series of attacks that are going to affect all of us,” said Chase Strangio, director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV project during an ACLU Town Hall. “We all need to be vigilant about what’s going on.”
A Call to Action
The ACLU is prepared for the critical mission at hand, and we are on the ground in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.
Litigation is one of the most powerful tools we have. We have scored some important victories in court, but we know more challenges will come.
Beyond going to court, we are building a firewall for freedom to harness the power of political advocacy and community organizing. The ACLU produced a 96-page playbook providing tools to state policymakers to help prevent the Trump administration from executing its vicious and unconstitutional attacks.
Here in Northern California, we’re developing local strategies to help people resist Trump’s draconian agenda. For instance, we’ve produced Know Your Rights (KYR) resources to educate immigrant communities about how to protect themselves from federal immigration enforcement agents. They provide valuable tips on what to do—and not to do—at home, at work, at school, or in a public place when confronted by ICE. We’ve also produced KYR videos in English and Spanish that have been viewed more than 500,000 times on our social media channels. And we’re partnering with immigrants’ rights advocates to ensure that the information reaches the people who need it.
And we need you, our members and supporters, some four million strong, to join us for the long fight ahead. We’re summoning all our friends and supporters. We need all hands on deck.
Together, we will stop our country from going backward to a time when most everyone but white, straight, Christian men were denied equal protection under the law.
We the people are the only ones with the power to save our democracy.
Stand with us! Make your voice heard!
