Solo el Pueblo Salva el Pueblo (Only the People Can Save the People)

Organizing for Safety, Dignity, and Survival in an Era of Intensified Immigration Enforcement

Contemporary immigration enforcement did not emerge spontaneously. The long history of immigration enforcement and tactics like surveillance, criminalization, and state violence directed at immigrant communities could only have landed us in the present moment. The normalization of these tactics is made possible by decades of legal and political choices that embedded surveillance into the everyday lives of immigrants through driver’s license databases, employment verification systems, court records, school enrollment data, and health and social service interactions. What feels newly extreme to the public is experienced by many immigrant communities as an intensification of a long-standing condition of vulnerability.

Our work at TCC Group has long focused on partnering with funders and advocates committed to advancing the rights, dignity, and collective power of immigrant communities. Last year, we supported a client in deploying $10 million from 2025 to 2027 across 35 organizations in 28 locations nationwide to resource Latinx-led solutions working directly with immigrant communities including LGBTQ people most impacted by immigration enforcement. These investments strengthen community-rooted systems of care and protection, ensuring that resources and services are shaped by the identities, cultures, and lived realities of the immigrant communities they serve.

Since last year, we have seen the communities we collaborate with weather an escalation in the visibility, aggressiveness, and geographic reach of ICE operations. News of children being detained alongside a parent, the release of a leaked ICE memo describing expanded arrest authority and reduced internal safeguards, and the recent deaths of a legal observers in Minnesota has highlighted the growing dangers faced not only by immigrants themselves but also by those attempting to bear witness, document abuses, and provide community protection (ACLU, 2026).

At Creating Change, the National LGBTQ Task Force’s annual convening that brings thousands of LGBTQ advocates, organizers, and movement leaders from across the country together, our workshop “Solo el Pueblo Salva el Pueblo” invited participants to move beyond reactionary framing and toward a structural understanding of why immigration policing looks the way it does today, while also grounding that analysis in practical actions communities can take to protect themselves.

Presented by Jesus Barrios (TCC Senior Consultant), along with Javier Hernandez (Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice), Luis Nolasco (ACLU Southern California), and Alma Dorado (IE Immigrant Youth Collective), the workshop rejected narratives that frame immigrant communities as passive victims of enforcement. Drawing on organizing histories from Southern California and the Inland Empire, we described how communities have repeatedly built protection and resistance through rapid response networks, court accompaniment programs, legal defense funds, youth-led organizing, and political education. These efforts are not symbolic acts of solidarity. They are concrete strategies that interrupt deportations, reduce isolation, and restore a sense of agency in the face of overwhelming state power.

Organizing traditions are also connected to broader questions of health and safety. Hyper-policing and surveillance also generate chronic stress, deter people from seeking medical care, destabilize families, and fracture community trust. From a public health perspective, immigration enforcement functions as a structural determinant of health that drives anxiety, depression, delayed treatment, and social disconnection. In this sense, organizing is not only a political response but also a health intervention that restores collective efficacy and social support.

A central theme of the session was that the scale of the system requires an equally intentional investment in community power. Legal reforms and litigation remain essential, but they are insufficient on their own. Without organized communities capable of responding in real time, holding institutions accountable, and sustaining networks of care, policy victories remain fragile.

The workshop closed by returning to its title. Solo el pueblo salva el pueblo – Only the people save the people. This was not offered as a slogan but as a diagnosis of reality. In a system designed to render certain lives disposable, survival depends on relationship-building, political imagination, and a willingness to break down silos that philanthropy has too often reinforced. The moment demands clarity about the roots of immigration enforcement and honesty about its harms. It also calls for partnership between organizations, funders resourcing ecosystems rather than individual actors, and movements sharing knowledge.

At TCC Group, we recognize the importance of helping create the conditions for this kind of collaboration, supporting organizations and funders as they work to design, learn and sustain partnerships that reflect the realities on the ground. In an era where the government invests in punishment over care, we know that the way to build and protect is together.