How activists are working to support Utah immigrants during Trump’s return

The grassroots campaign that Maria Montes and Brianna Puga created sometimes placed them in Home Depot parking lots throughout the Salt Lake Valley, speaking to undocumented workers there at dawn.

Puga said they delve into a worker’s life story – until he “books it” to an arriving car in the parking lot. “Wait!” Puga said she was going to scream, but the worker was suddenly busy getting a job.

Through quick and careful introductions, Puga and Montes often reach Utah’s immigrant community. But other interactions in backyards or home visits – with coffee and a chatty crowd – have also awakened people to their cause.

Puga and Monte are considered “co-leaders and co-founders” of Salt Lake County’s Immigrant People’s Agenda, which advertised for a year before officially launching in November 2023. At that time, 100 people came together, mobilized through their visits to build “power” for the estimated 300,000 Utahns born outside the United States.

The campaign’s efforts are based on four pillars, issues that its members have repeatedly cited as important: advocacy for day laborers; finding dignity for new immigrants; Providing accessible education on the west side of Salt Lake City; and advocate for affordable housing and combat gentrification on the west side.

In the wake of the election — and concerns that mass deportations proposed by President-elect Donald Trump could harm immigrants — organizers say the campaign’s mantra has remained the same: “Solo el pueblo salva el pueblo” – “Only the people save the people.” .”

Optimism and fear

In the gymnasium of the Centro Civico Mexicano, Cris Mora Rubio led the approximately 100 people gathered there in a “Grito,” the cry: “¡Si se puede!” (“Yes, we can do that!”).

The sound is so loud that it could be heard in the parking lot one October night during the People’s Agenda’s first meeting.

Although most seemed to sense the Grito’s optimism, a few scattered around the gym remained seated with their arms folded, their expressions conveying an unspoken question: How is this time different?

Some remember nearly two decades when similar outcries were heard in downtown Salt Lake City. It was 2006, as part of nationwide May Day demonstrations, and that day about 20,000 immigrants and allies marched through Eagle Gate and up State Street to the Utah Capitol – the state’s largest rally for immigration reform.

Levana Nicolía Ramos was a high school student at the time. She said she remembers her “whole community” — co-workers, churchgoers and neighbors — coming together to support the cause.

She said she also remembered “the fear that people felt.” In December 2006, eight months after the march on the Capitol, 114 people were arrested for immigration violations in raids or “redades” at the Swift meat processing plant in Hyrum.

Over the years, such raids — along with traffic stops, wage theft, workplace abuse and a lack of basic resources — have made life miserable for immigrants, campaign organizers said.

Joel — who did not give his last name, he said, because he is undocumented — sat at another meeting weeks later with his arms folded, listening to campaign members talk about what to do after Trump’s victory.

Joel has regularly attended the People’s Agenda bi-weekly meetings over the past year, but rarely participates. With his wife and small child, he watches his daughter, an organizer, from a distance.

“Sometimes I join in, sometimes I don’t,” Joel said in Spanish. “And yet I’m scared because, firstly, I don’t feel safe enough to take part.”

In this way, the immigrant community has been “conditioned” to think, Nicolía Ramos said. Fearing retaliation or deportation, she said, immigrants “keep their heads down.”

Instead, she said, her activism happens in a “quiet way.”

“There is a lot of grassroots work within the community,” said Nicolía Ramos. “Conversations that take place around coffee tables where we teach our friends how to navigate. … I like to call it everyday activism.”

Mora Rubio, on the other hand, openly discloses his immigration status. He said he always saw himself as an achiever – and education was his path to “a better life”.

Later, as he pursued higher education, his status as an undocumented immigrant began to influence those plans.

Mora Rubio was rejected from the University of Utah nursing program and was ineligible for financial aid due to his immigration status. He enrolled at Westminster University – but three semesters later he was dismissed from the program because he was undocumented. He said the news was a “punch in the gut.” He turned to public health and graduated in 2023.

He said that despite having some closure, the past year has felt like “limbo.”

“I have a college degree,” Mora Rubio said. “I have the urge to work and improve my community and I’m being stopped from doing that.”

Months after graduating, Mora Rubio discovered the People’s Agenda campaign. It gave him a “little bit of respite,” he said.

“This is my chance to use my story and my community to make a difference,” Mora Rubio said, “to take a stand and fight.”

Goals to support education

At another meeting at 6:40 p.m., the remaining members broke into small groups in the meeting rooms and closet-like offices of the Comunidades Unidas to discuss progress on the four pillars of the campaign.

Cynthia Ponce-Orellana, who is leading the education effort, shared her six-month plan to involve 50 young people in the campaign’s efforts. But as Ponce-Orellana spoke about the education pillar of the agenda, one member’s child had other plans – she decided to treat the committee’s planning sheet as a piece of paper.

Ponce-Orellana said she has a larger education goal beyond the six-month plan — a high school on the city’s west side. Activists had tried to pass a bond to fund such a school during the November vote, but the Salt Lake City School District rejected that request.

“We have always had this disadvantage. “We have to work harder for what we want,” said Ponce-Orellana, a University of Utah freshman who lives in West Jordan, “especially in education.”

Ponce-Orellana said she saw it firsthand. Her brother, a DACA scholar, “struggled to obtain higher education.” While Ponce-Orellana doesn’t expect a West Side high school to be the only solution — let alone built any time soon — building relationships with students and alumni will help her cause, she said.

“Build relationships,” Ponce-Orellana said to the other two column members. “This allowed us to build traction within our movement.”

Ideas floating around that evening included a resource hotline and campaigns in K-12 schools. These plans, organizers say, will help all communities.

“There is no separation between old immigrants, recent immigrants and new immigrants,” says Nicolía Ramos. “This is a country where anyone who is not native is an immigrant.”

Reaction to Trump’s victory

At the People’s Agenda post-election meeting in the Comunidades Unidas, the optimism of two weeks earlier was gone. Instead, organizers expressed concern about the impending Trump presidency.

“I saw the fear that these kids carry,” said one who works with immigrant youth in Ogden. “You can’t concentrate.”

One woman mentioned another fear: the possible end of birthright, which has been part of the U.S. Constitution since the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868.

When it is Monte’s turn to speak, she wakes those gathered.

“Ya hemos aliveo esto,” Montes said in Spanish. Translated, it means: “We’ve been through this before.”

Montes said the lack of comfort from elected officials for the campaign’s principles — even as it contrasts with Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric — is a “frustration” that organizers have been grappling with “for years.”

“We realized that unfortunately they don’t see eye to eye on the issues we care about,” said Montes, who also works as head of energy development at Comunidades Unidas.

Since November, the campaign has been appealing to Utah leaders – in the legislature, county and city levels – to attend a meeting or make an appointment with campaign organizers. So far, they said, they have met with 10 leaders, including Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall.

But, Montes said, the campaign isn’t waiting for official recognition. “The reason we decided to start this whole campaign,” Montes said, “is because we realized it was in our best interest to take back power for ourselves rather than hand it over to officials .”

Rather, their grassroots success, Montes said, is due to organizers pushing their “gente” — the people — forward.

“This is an opportunity for us to recommit to each other,” Montes said. “It’s a moment for us to lean on each other again – to look out for each other when it comes to creating the conditions in which we feel safe.”