It’s no secret that immigrant communities have been criminalized and surveilled by ICE, CBP, and local and state law enforcement agencies across the country. Our country has a cruel history of persecuting and targeting our immigrant neighbors.

Anti-immigrant laws passed in 1996 drove mass incarceration and mass deportation of people of color. And a racist, destructive law previously passed in 1929 has also enabled significant abuses in recent years, from “assembly-line” hearings of shackled people, to the tearing of children from parents at the border.

We cannot continue on this path of terrorizing and destroying immigrant communities and communities of color. It’s time for a New Way Forward.

With the direction from immigrant community leaders and organizations, progressive members of Congress have introduced the New Way Forward Act. If passed, this groundbreaking legislation would end mandatory immigration detention and decriminalize the act of migration to the U.S.

Community members like Ravi Ragbir, who’s lived in the U.S. for over two decades, and is an immigrant justice community leader with the New Sanctuary Coalition in New York, deserve the right to live free and thrive in this country.

As we draw closer to the 2020 elections and people across the globe search for a better future, we need to know where Democratic presidential candidates land on progressive human-first, trauma-informed immigration policies.

That’s why we are calling on the candidates to pledge to end the criminalization and deportation of primarily immigrants of color by encouraging Congressional lawmakers to pass the New Way Forward Act and signing it into law within the first 100 days of their presidency.

Sign the petition: Demand an end to the mass deportation system. Push Democratic candidates to pledge support for the New Way Forward Act.

Participating Organizations:
Daily Kos
National Domestic Workers Alliance
NILC Immigrant Justice Fund
United We Dream Action
Women's March National