A Bound Imperative: American Democracy and the Fight for Immigrant Rights

In the past year, the Trump administration has waged a relentless assault on democratic norms, the free press, and constitutional checks and balances, and has sought to divide Americans by scapegoating immigrants, transgender individuals, and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. What has become clear – as explored in GCIR’s 2025 anti-authoritarian funder series – is that these attacks on our neighbors and on the constitution cannot be separated. 

Over the past year, the Trump administration has invoked the Alien Enemies Act to disappear immigrants to the CECOT facility in El Salvador notorious for torturing detainees, issued a secret memo instructing ICE agents to violate the Fourth Amendment by forcibly entering homes, and repeatedly threatened to activate the Insurrection Act – most recently following First Amendment-protected protests against ICE’s killing of two individuals in Minnesota. The United States is being tested as it has not been in recent memory, and scholars around the world have shifted from describing authoritarianism as a possible future-state for the U.S. to actively classifying it as a competitive authoritarian state.

Yet U.S. democracy, and the rights of its most vulnerable communities, can and must be defended and strengthened. Across the country, advocates, strategists, litigators, and everyday people are pushing back and are increasingly linking the struggle for immigrant justice to the fight to save and fortify our multiracial democracy. In this timely session, we will hear from leading groups and funders bridging these two movements, with insights on what philanthropy can do now to resist democratic decline and protect all community members.