Tears, Tensions, and a Turning Point for Immigration

The sound of grief and terror is not abstract, it’s visceral. It’s the echoes of screams outside workplaces, the cries of children in parks, the silence left behind after a family member disappears. In neighborhoods across this country, immigration enforcement has become a state-sanctioned practice with harmful consequences. Raids. Detentions. Deportations. Rubber bullets. People are being taken from their families and communities, treated in ways that undermine their dignity and humanity.

I know this fear intimately, though I didn’t always understand it. I was born in Guyana, South America, and moved to the U.S. at 14 years old to reunite with my mother after seven long years apart. At the time, I didn’t grasp the political weight of migration. I was a child doing what children do: adjusting to a new school, caring for my baby brother, helping out at home. Within a year of arriving in Brooklyn, we became U.S. citizens. I didn’t understand the privilege we had acquired. I was too young to realize how many others would be denied that same protection.

Years later, I now find myself heartbroken and outraged. The trauma I witness in these times feels like a betrayal, as the forced removals of immigrants across this country have become a harmful, widespread policy. The current federal administration has issued a litany of Executive Orders under titles like “Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens”—titles which critics argue are misleading and obscure the impact of such policies. Rather than ensuring safety, these policies are separating families and leaving many with little hope. This painful reality we are living through is not just a policy crisis, but a personal one felt by many communities being disrupted across the country.

Deportation Is Personal

Deportation is not just about policy; it’s about people. As a researcher, I know data tells a story. But the truth lies beyond the numbers. You can see it in Instagram reels, TikToks, and live videos shared by devastated families. According to The Deportation Data Project, over 105,000 people were deported between January 1, 2025 and June 11, 2025. These are mothers, fathers, daughters, and neighbors – suddenly taken from their communities by force. 

Below is a list of birth countries of immigrants and the number of undocumented immigrants taken from the U.S.

Source: Deportation Data Project. Note: Repeated removals of the same individual are excluded from the counts. Individuals can be returned or expelled at the border without appearing in this data.

And where is this happening? Everywhere. These numbers represent lives, each one a story of love, survival, and dreams now interrupted. I know we are all witnessing the pain of communities—particularly in states like Texas, Florida, California, Arizona, Tennessee, and Georgia, where between 1000 – 7000 individuals by state were detained and deported. This is happening in every single state across the country.  For example, where I live in Los Angeles, the flowermarts are empty, restaurants are closed and there is an eerie silence as you drive through once vibrant immigrant-occupied neighborhoods.

What is TPS? 

Many people thought they were safe because they have Temporary Protective Status (TPS), but sadly, this too is at stake for early termination. TPS is a humanitarian designation allowing individuals from certain countries to temporarily live and work in the U.S. It is a lifeline, not a luxury. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), eligibility requires continuous presence and registration within a specific window. But now, many protections are expiring abruptly, leaving people without legal recourse.

The federal government has chosen not to renew TPS for thousands of individuals from countries facing political instability, violence, and humanitarian crises. Migrants from Venezuela, Cameroon, Haiti, Ethiopia, and others now face TPS expirations as early as July 2025, leaving people who have lived, worked, and raised families in the U.S. in legal limbo. Below is a list of countries/islands and the date by which their TPS status expires.

Source: https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status.

What Future Are We Building?

I carry two homes in my heart: the Guyana of my childhood and the America of my adulthood. My son, born in the U.S., has grown up within an immigrant household, shaped by our stories and struggles. We often talk about immigration—not just as policy, but as lived experience. He knows this issue isn’t abstract. His friends have felt its sting.

What we are seeing now are the long-term impacts of trauma on an entire  generation. Some of the children once held in detention are now seeing their parents, siblings, and friends disappearing from their lives. This is not the future we should accept for any child. 

But hope isn’t lost. Here are 3 concrete ways we are building our future:

 1. Coalition Building. Even in the face of immense pain and systemic violence, communities across California and the nation are rising with clarity, courage, and vision. We are not powerless and we are not alone.  Coalitions like We Are California are leading with a bold demand: a state rooted in belonging, where everyone feels safe, can afford to live, thrives and contributes their fair share. Their call is not simply about policy change, it is a reimagining of what it means to live in a truly just and compassionate society.

2. Research and data analysis. Research and data plays a critical role in shaping policy by enabling informed decision-making and ensuring that the lived experiences of impacted communities are acknowledged and validated. In California, many policy interventions and practices are grounded in robust, evidence-based research collected by a range of academic and community-based institutions. Among these, the USC Equity Research Institute (ERI) has been a leading source of disaggregated data that highlights systemic inequities. Below are selected findings from ERI’s research related to immigration:

• • As of 2021, LA County was home to 3.5 million immigrants, equating to 35% of the county’s 10+ million total population —18% are naturalized citizens, 9% are lawful residents, and 8% are undocumented immigrants. [ERI’s State of Immigrants in Los Angeles (SOILA) report 2024]. Over 1 in 3 Angelenos were immigrants. [ERI’s RepresentLA (RLA) report].
  • By ancestry, over 1 million immigrants from Mexico living in LA County, followed by 270,000 from China, 219,000 from El Salvador, and 189,000 from the Philippines. [ERI’s California Immigrant Data Portal (CIDP)]. Over 1 in 10 LA County residents are immigrants from Mexico.
  • In California 2021, over half (51 percent or 5.6 million) of immigrants were naturalized US citizens, while 2.93 million immigrants (27 percent) were lawful residents and 2.5 million (22 percent) were undocumented. (CIDP)
  • As of 2021, in LA County, 22% of all children under the age of 18 lived with undocumented parent(s) in the household. (CIDP)
    
  • As of 2021, there were 1.27 million Latino immigrants who are eligible-to-naturalize in California, followed by 479,000 Asian American, 245,000 White, and 26,600 Black immigrants who are eligible-to-naturalize. (CIDP)

3. Movement Building. At the national level, The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) reminds us that the immigration system is not separate from racial justice. According to their platform, the same systems that surveil, cage, and deport immigrants are the ones that have long criminalized Black communities. These are not separate fights, and we cannot dismantle one without addressing the other. 

M4BL calls for the repeal of the 1994 crime and immigration bill, which laid the foundation for mass deportations and expanded the prison-to-deportation pipeline.  These laws made it easier to detain and remove immigrants, especially Black and Brown immigrants, by redefining “criminality” in vague and punitive ways. The result has been devastating: families separated, communities destabilized, and millions living in fear.

Their demands go further: an end to ICE raids, deportations, detention centers, roving border patrols, and all forms of immigration policing create fear and instability in our communities. They call for universal legal representation in immigration court, emphasizing that due process should be a right, not a privilege.

What is our Turning Point?

As poet warrior Audre Lorde once wrote: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”  Immigrants are not just undocumented people. They are also Black. Latinx. Asian. Indian. Men. Women. Queer. Working-class. Parents. Survivors. Artists. Their struggles are intersectional—and so must be our solutions.

For me and many people in our communities, this moment is painful. AND it is also our turning point. The grief and disruption is undeniable—families are torn apart, dreams are deferred, and communities are left to navigate the uncertainties and aftermath of harmful policy decisions. We are watching systems fail people in real time. And yet, through the tears and the tensions, we are also witnessing something else: the rising.

This is more than a political moment, it is a moral reckoning. Our turning point is a call for love and solidarity. A call to action for love that is not passive, but fierce: A love that shows up at detention centers, at school board meetings, in courtrooms, in statehouses, and in the streets. And a love that holds accountable and does not turn away. 

Valarie Kaur, a civil rights thought leader and author, calls this work Revolutionary Love. In her framework, Revolutionary Love is the choice to labor for others, for our opponents, and for ourselves to transform the world around us. Her team has identified ten core practices of revolutionary love, grounded in research and infused with ancestral wisdom.

To meet this moment, I believe we  are being called into deeper solidarity across race, across generations, and across geography. Not just symbolic unity, but a real, grounded connection:  one that sees our shared humanity and does not flinch from the truth. A solidarity that builds bridges between Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant, queer, and working-class communities. A solidarity that recognizes our experiences with injustice may differ, but our liberation is bound together.

About the author:

Dr. Kim Tabari has a passion for social justice and education. She holds a doctorate degree in Educational Leadership and has worked at a variety of institutions both public and private. Born in Guyana, South America, Kim has the lived experience of an immigrant who later became a U.S. citizen.

As the External Affairs Director at the USC Equity Research Institute (ERI), Kim is part of the Executive Management Team and believes in the importance of maintaining relationships to bring about healing and transformation, especially during times of conflict. Prior to ERI, she facilitated conversations on racial, social, and healing justice topic areas. She is a trained facilitator working with both high school and college students in the past, and currently working with diverse stakeholders at USC and beyond. Kim presented at the Strength in Numbers: Uniting Immigration with Other Social Causes webinar hosted by The Immigrant Learning Center housed at George Mason University. Kim also facilitated a successful USC Visions & Voices conversation with Daughters of the Movement in the middle of the pandemic and nation-wide racial justice uprisings.

Outside of working at USC, Kim’s most important role is being a mom to an amazing young man currently in college. She is also very active in her local community, working primarily with her local school district to improve academic challenges of Black and other marginalized students.

Kim embodies healing justice and is a certified yoga instructor, facilitating online classes to her community. She also has a regular Tai Chi practice, and other self-care modalities.

Acknowledgements: ERI data and comms team assistance for this blog.