Today, Mijente director Marisa Franco issued the following statement on the Biden campaign’s newly announced immigration policy commitments. Franco was a member of the campaign’s unity task force on immigration as one of the representatives negotiated by the Bernie Sanders team.

“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. 

We are proud of the community demands we were able to bring to the table, and we celebrate those wins. We know 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; and 
• 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. 

And in these last 117 days until the November election, we will dig even deeper to mobilize Latino communities to get involved, to understand all that is at stake, and to turn out to vote. Because with Trump out of the White House, our people have a fighting chance.”

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Mijente is a political, digital, and grassroots hub for Latino and Chicano organizing and movement building. Launched in 2015, Mijente has been building this infrastructure long before the 2020 election cycle. We unseated one of the most racist sheriffs in the country with our campaign against Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio in 2016. 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% in 2018. We have a long history of grassroots organizing and movement building outside of the electoral sector and are nationally recognized leaders in the immigrant rights movement. @conmijente – Mijente.net to join us.