Before 1996, Maru Mora-Villalpando traveled back and forth from her native Mexico to the United States on a tourist visa. She did so, mostly, to improve her English. But when US immigrant laws became stricter with the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, Mora-Villalpando decided it was better to stay in the United States rather than risk not being let in again. She overstayed her visa. “All of a sudden we got stuck,” she says of undocumented immigrants like her who then found themselves with virtually no path to regularize their status and faced a potential 10-year ban if they left the country and tried to return. “Through the years I asked lawyers for advice on how to obtain [legal] status,” Mora-Villalpando recalls. “Everybody just kept saying, ‘wait for immigration reform.’”
“It’s the being hunted down, literally, and being taken away from your family.”
During the Bush years, Mora-Villalpando started organizing. She worried that 9/11 might give rise to anti-immigrant policies. When immigration reform bills began to move through Congress during the Obama administration but only expanded border militarization and detention, she realized how little political power undocumented immigrants like herself had. So, Mora-Villalpando turned to civil disobedience. In 2014, she founded the organization La Resistencia and led an effort to block deportation buses from the for-profit Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, that inspired hundreds of detainees to stage a massive hunger strike to protest conditions inside. She also opened up publicly about being undocumented for the first time.
In December 2017, Mora-Villalpando received a notice from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) instructing her to appear in immigration court. After almost 20 years as an undocumented person in the United States, she had been placed in deportation proceedings. Agency records Mora-Villalpando obtained through litigation show she came on ICE’s radar because of an interview in which she divulged her status. ICE also noted her “extensive involvement with anti-ICE protests and Latino advocacy programs” and her “public figure” status. In internal communications, an officer suggested deporting her could “take away some of her ‘clout.’” Mora-Villalpando saw that as evidence of deliberate retaliation for her and others’ organizing work, a charge ICE disputed. “When I read that, I didn’t know what [clout] meant so I had to look up the word,” she says. “I realized, oh, wow. So I do have influence. I had no idea. I didn’t think that they would think of me as having influence, but that’s what these systems do against movements.”
In 2021, after successfully fighting her deportation case, she became a legal permanent resident through her US citizen daughter. Mora-Villalpando spoke with Mother Jones about the targeting of immigrant rights activists during the first Trump administration and what it can tell us about the attacks in a second term.
On the Trump administration targeting her for deportation: It was very sudden. I did not expect it. It was just a notice that said that I was being put in deportation proceedings and I needed to show up to court, but it didn’t give me a date or a place. They probably thought that by getting rid of me, they could stop the movement.
To me, it was very political because they didn’t have any excuse except the fact that I had overstayed my visa that I participated in anti-ICE activities, and that I work to protect my Latino community.
I realized I wasn’t the only one. We found other people who were being placed in deportation proceedings, or if they were already in the system being fast-tracked for deportation. Within two months we counted about 20 cases of immigrant activists targeted for immigration enforcement during the Trump administration. I think what they were trying to do was to target us in different regions to impact the movement across the nation. It was very clear that they saw us as a threat.
On ICE raids in Washington state during the first Trump term: Since I came to the United States, I heard constantly about la migra and the idea of having police come and handcuff you and arrest you for not having papers. To me, it was wild. It was completely outrageous. In Seattle, we had a law that prohibited police from collaborating with ICE on immigration raids. Yet immigration raids were happening with the support of the Seattle police. Workplaces were the common space to hear about immigration coming in and raiding the place and taking people and deporting them.
After 9/11, we saw the spread of immigration detention centers, including here in Tacoma, Washington. We saw private companies come in and start building and running the detention buildings. Then all of a sudden we saw ICE agents on the streets. We started getting a ton of calls from people saying, “I was waiting for the bus and then there was this white van coming, some people came out and started talking to us in Spanish. Next thing you know, they’re just grabbing people and putting them in the van.”
It’s the being hunted down, literally, and being taken away from your family, and your family not knowing what’s happening to you, just like you’re being kidnapped
On immigrant surveillance: We already learned technology is being used to monitor our communities, and that is just going to increase tenfold. But we said it from the very get-go: we’re just the experiment. They’re going to do that later on with everybody. We have 180,000 people under surveillance by ICE. That means that as immigration raids happen, those are probably going to be the very first ones they’re gonna target because they know exactly where they’re at each moment.
On a second Trump administration: With Trump back, they have learned how to fight against localities and how to fight organizing and freedom of speech. We saw it with the pro-Palestine encampments and the Stop Cop City organizers. They’re willing to come after entire infrastructures that sustain organizing. We know how to protect each other. The problem now is I don’t know how organizations are going to be able to keep up when these big systems are coming after them, not only against organizers but the small infrastructure that most nonprofits have.
On reasons to have hope: We all have hope in humanity and we don’t rely on individuals. We rely on the community. The level of fascism that is taking over the entire world is going to reach a point where people are choosing sides. You’re either on the side of your community or you’re against it. That’s what’s defining the moment. Movement is sacrifice.
