Protecting Immigrant Communities

Our immigrant communities are facing unprecedented attacks that continue to escalate under the Trump administration. From ending corporate support of immigrant detention and deportation, to ensuring access to universal legal representation for individuals facing deportation, the CPD Network is on the frontlines of countering the hatred perpetuated by the White House with a vision of justice and dignity for all immigrant communities. It is crucial that we secure state and local pro-immigrant policy victories and fight back against an unjust and harmful mass deportation agenda. 

CPD’s campaign and policy support, and the national coordination of our affiliates, uniquely positions us to create strong and bold immigration campaigns. In 2018, CPD created an immigrant rights cohort comprised of more than 14 organizations that meet monthly to share experiences and plan the next steps of their campaigns. 

Corporate Backers of Hate
The Corporate Backers of Hate (CBOH) campaign launched in early 2017 and has targeted individual companies profiting from the Trump administration’s hateful agenda. CBOH started with the launch of a website that targeted the companies on Trump’s now-dissolved business advisory council. Research reports have been released to expose these corporate profiteers, bolstering hundreds of actions against target companies.

Since its launch, the campaign has shifted its focus to target Wall Street banks financing the private detention industry. Working with the Families Belong Together Corporate Accountability Committee, we have expanded our efforts to target all banks financing private detention centers. Through this campaign, eight banks (Wells Fargo Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, SunTrust, BNP Paribas, Fifth Third Bank, Barclays, and PNC) have stopped financing private detention centers. This represents an estimated $2.35 billion, or 87.4 percent of the known current financing used by the biggest private prison companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group. 

Universal Representation: Access to Lawyers for People Facing Detention and Deportation
CPD and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) have worked very closely with the campaigns for universal representation in New Jersey and in the Washington, D.C. area that now provide free legal representation to people facing deportation proceedings. At the same time, CPD provides technical assistance to dozens of access-to-counsel programs around the country through the national working group which CPD co-chairs with NILC and the Vera Institute for Justice. 

In December 2018, in response to requests from members of the national working group, CPD, NILC, and the Vera Institute of Justice released the first module in a three-part toolkit designed to help community members and policy makers advocate for, design, and implement universal representation programs. In 2019 and 2020, we will release another two modules which support the development and implementation of universal access campaigns. 

Local Campaign Support
CPD has supported local policy campaigns on a wide range of issues relating to immigrant justice including sanctuary policies, criminal justice reforms, creation of municipal ID programs, and improved or expanded language access. We also provide policy support to the members of Local Progress. Here are some examples of our ongoing work:

• In Connecticut, we provided technical support to Make the Road CT to pass a Safe Schools resolution in 2018.

• In New York, we’re supporting New York Communities for Change in passing legislation that would limit the ability of companies to get tax breaks if they are collaborating in any way with immigration enforcement.

• In 2017 we released, Protecting Immigrant Communities, a report on sanctuary policies that has become an important tool for our affiliates to build their own sanctuary campaigns.