As Donald Trump passed 500 days in the White House earlier in June, the parameters of the administration’s approach to critical issues of concern to the Latino community have become even clearer. After 500 days, Trump has failed to nominate a single Latino to a federal court of appeals vacancy. After 500 days, Trump has continued regularly to demonize, with false facts and vile rhetoric, all immigrants, particularly Latino immigrants. After 500 days, Trump has embarked on a federal policy of violently separating minor children from their refuge-seeking parents in the name of “zero tolerance.” After 500 days, Trump seeks to expand family detention, an inhumane abomination, and continues to demand that United States taxpayers pay for an ineffective and unnecessary wall at the southern border. After 500 days, Trump still champions a discriminatory Muslim ban, securing a bare-majority Supreme Court ruling allowing the continued influence of bigotry in immigration policy, which has historically harmed Latinos more than anyone else. After 500 days, the Trump administration has proven to be the most anti-Latino presidential administration in our history.
After 500 days under this administration of our own work to forge a different path for our nation, MALDEF continues to strive, in court and out, to promote civil rights and constitutional values. To resist and to lead. Below, we highlight just a few of our activities to promote the right to vote and to defend our national principles of fairness and equity in treatment of all immigrants. Work like that described below will continue and expand as MALDEF fulfills its unique role – to be the legal voice that helps to enable the Latino community, despite efforts of the Trump administration to prevent many of us from even being counted in the decennial Census, to lead our nation to a more promising future of inclusion and equity.
Sincerely yours,
Thomas A. Saenz
President and General Counsel
MALDEF