Collection documents through born-digital oral histories the lives and experiences of undocumented community organizers and activists.
History of the Collecting Process:
The Undocumented Organizing Collecting Initiative is a multi-year effort to preserve histories of undocumented organizing in the United States. Collecting oral histories and objects from undocumented organizers in Southern California, Chicago, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Washington, D.C. and Mexico City, the Initiative was the first collective research initiative to provide a national perspective on the multi-focal, multi-vocal undocumented organizing movement.
The Initiative is based out of the National Museum of American History's Center for Restorative History (CRH). The CRH works to redress exclusions in United States history using the principles of restorative justice. This project therefore centers the knowledge of undocumented organizers to address and document historical harms, present needs, and obligations in an effort to make history more accurate and inclusive.
The project's core team includes Patty Arteaga (Project Lead), Dr. Nancy Bercaw (Curator, Political History; Deputy Director, Center for Restorative History), José Centeno-Meléndez (Oral Historian), and Delia Beristain Noriega (Assistant Oral Historian).
Scope and Contents:
This collection contains oral history interviews, interview transcripts, and indexes with timestamps and descriptions documenting the lives and experiences of undocumented organizers. In some cases, the original recordings and transcripts have been redacted upon request of the interviewee.
The oral histories cover immigration to the United States, community organizing work, and such topics as deportation, mass incarceration, anti-Black violence, family separation, and food insecurity.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged into three series, each organized alphabetically by last name of interviewee.
Series 1: Transcripts, 2019-2021
Series 2: Born-Digital Interviews, 2019-2021
Series 3: Indexes, 2019-2021
Historical:
Undocumented organizers have played a crucial role in U.S. politics over the last 20 years, most notably by securing the first significant piece of immigration reform since the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. The announcement of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012 broke a logjam by securing a limited immigrant right, the first granted in 26 years. This achievement represented a signature moment in U.S. history echoing Emancipation, Women's Suffrage and the Civil Rights movements, where people without citizenship or the right to vote changed government policy.
The origins of undocumented organizing in the 21st century can be traced back to 2001, when undocumented youth pushed for access to higher education. Up to the moment of high school graduation, undocumented youth, then and today, are guaranteed access to a K-12 public education by the landmark Supreme Court decision in Plyer v. Doe (1982). Yet upon graduation, their futures are foreclosed without protected access to higher education. They face the choice of silently slipping into wage work or returning to their home country. In 2001, Senators Dick Durbin (IL) and Orrin Hatch (UT) responded to the crisis and introduced the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, otherwise known as the DREAM Act.
What had seemed like an easy bill to pass became implausible after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Anti-immigrant sentiment spiked, encouraging Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) to introduce highly restrictive immigration legislation in the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. Using the only tool available to them, hundreds of thousands of immigrants across the United States took to the streets in May 2006. Many undocumented youth organizers remember this moment as a potent lesson, introducing them to the power of people's movements.
With strong training and support from immigrant rights organizations, such as CHIRLA, NILC, National Council of La Raza, UCLA Labor Center, Casa de Maryland, NAKASEC, Latin American Coalition, Community Change, and Make the Road New York, among others, young activists formed undocumented-led organizations such as United We Dream (UWD), Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL), LA DREAM Team, and the New York State Youth Leadership Council (NYSYLC). As directly-impacted people, undocumented youth set their own agenda and developed innovative mass mobilization tactics.
Inspired by the May 2006 marches, undocumented youth began to focus on direct-action campaigns which peaked in 2009-10. Wearing high school graduation robes, they traveled to the U.S. Capitol and conducted sit-ins in congressional offices to push the passage of the DREAM Act. Others built upon Black organizing traditions and walked 1,500 miles from Florida to Washington, D.C. Paying homage to Civil Rights activism, this march, known as the Trail of DREAMs, wound its way through the U.S. South facing Ku Klux Klan activity along the way. Early organizers also borrowed from LGBTQ+ organizing tactics by "coming out of the shadows" and declaring themselves "undocumented and unafraid," thereby risking deportation. Strategically, they announced their status through scripted narratives emphasizing their "Americanness" as high-achieving, English-speaking students raised on the American Dream. These strategies paid off. Anti-immigration sentiment still ran high, but popular opinion swung in favor of the DREAMers as "Americans" despite their legal status.
To take advantage of this political opening, undocumented organizers fiercely advocated that the DREAM Act be placed at the top of the immigration rights agenda. As DREAMers, they had a strong chance of success in creating the first pathway to citizenship since the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. They argued that the DREAM Act could serve as a wedge, widening the door for other immigrants to gain legal status. Immigrant rights organizations disagreed, unwilling to shift attention away from comprehensive immigration reform. This caused a rupture that resulted in undocumented activists breaking away from the immigrant rights platform and trusting their own knowledge and experience over those in established systems of power.
Lacking a large national organization to direct and mobilize campaigns, undocumented activists used the internet to create new systems for organizing. They constructed DREAMActivist.org to coordinate events nationwide, held synchronous Coming Out of the Shadows events, and ran online forums to share up-to-date information with chat rooms on how to navigate daily life as an undocumented person.
They pushed for the DREAM Act coordinating nationwide events to rally support for their cause including marches, demonstrations, sit-ins, fasting campaigns, and walkouts. Yet after nine years of gridlock, in 2010 Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act by five votes. Suddenly, the youth and students who had stepped forward faced an even greater risk of deportation.
In the wake of the DREAM Act's failure, undocumented organizers regrouped. A dedicated legal team investigated a largely-unknown administrative practice called "deferred action" from deportation. Presidents employed deferred action on a case-by-case basis to protect immigrants from deportation. What if this could be implemented more broadly? Working with immigration attorneys, organizers presented their case to the Obama administration requesting action on temporary relief. When the White House failed to act, they took to the streets. Undocumented people demonstrated, marched and even took over President Obama's re-election campaign offices. By applying pressure to the presidency, undocumented youth were once again putting forward all their energy to stop their own deportation and arrive at a solution, even if a temporary one.
On June 15, 2012, President Obama announced an executive action, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The program offered some undocumented youth a two-year, renewable protected status to pursue employment if they could prove the following: that they arrived before their 16th birthday; could demonstrate living continuously in the United States since June 15, 2007; had not committed a felony; and were under 31 years of age.
DACA was in effect for five years when the Trump administration rescinded the program on September 5, 2017. Challenging the administration in court, undocumented organizers eventually took their case to the Supreme Court and won. Yet the June 18, 2020, Supreme Court majority opinion ruled based on a technicality and made no judgement on the validity of deferred action. At the time of this writing (March 31, 2023), legal statuses such as DACA, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and Deferred Enforced Department (DED) face intense challenges in the courts, the U.S. Congress, and state and local legislatures.
After securing DACA in 2012, the movement shifted. Recognizing that DACA only protected youth, and only a fraction of that population, undocumented organizers expanded their action to advocate for all 12 million undocumented U.S. residents. While some continue to organize nationally, successfully swinging presidential and U.S. Congressional elections and aggressively pursuing action in the courts, others explore goals aimed at relieving systematic oppression. Daily deportations separated families, leaving infants without parents and grandparents without loved ones. Building upon political practices from their home countries and combining them with lessons learned from Black freedom struggle, the Chicano movement, indigenous claims to sovereignty and LGBTQ+ liberation, undocumented activists organize for liberation. Moving beyond a civil rights/ immigrant rights paradigm, undocumented organizers are reconfiguring fundamentals of U.S. democracy by calling out the exclusionary nature of "rights" and "citizenship." Likewise, they actively wrestle with identity-based politics through coalition building across Black, (Afro)Latinx, Asian and queer communities against deportation, incarceration, and state surveillance. Grounded in community needs, they take a holistic approach that refuses to focus on one issue, one identity, over another.
These actions include (but are not limited to):
287(g): To protect residents from deportation, many successfully swing local elections to elect anti-287(g) candidates. 287(g) is a small clause in the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act that permits sheriffs to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) whenever they detain a person. In many places, 287g means that a random traffic stop, a broken taillight, jaywalking, or simply looking "foreign" can trigger a deportation pipeline—regardless of whether a person has broken the law.
Anti-Deportation Measures: As deportations spike, undocumented organizers employ a variety of tactics to protect families and communities. Many work on educating community members, organizing "Know Your Rights" campaigns. Others coordinate with abolition groups to halt the militarization of local police by federal agencies through direct action campaigns and court filings. Since September 11, 2001, the federal presence in local communities has spiked. Undocumented organizers closely monitor these agencies to block new policies that otherwise fly under the radar in the national political arena. (Also see 287(g))
Citizenship for All: After DACA (2012), many organizers began to question the tactic of emphasizing "Americanness" and "worthiness" to gain citizenship. Only an estimated 800,000 undocumented people applied for and qualified for DACA, leaving over 11 million without protection. Undocumented organizers shifted focus to campaign for citizenship that was not exclusionary, advocating for citizenship for all.
Economic Empowerment: To immediately address limited economic and homeownership opportunities for undocumented individuals without social security numbers, many organizers across the country devised innovative economic empowerment programs to support or create businesses owned by undocumented people. Others have formed economic cooperatives to acquire property.
Cultural Activism: The threat of deportation leaves many undocumented people living in isolation with limited access to community. By organizing around culture — festivals, music production, artistic expression — activists provide spaces, both virtually and in-person, for undocumented people to celebrate the richness of who they are as individuals and as a collective.
Beyond Citizenship: Those deported or voluntarily returned to their home country quickly recognize that they were misunderstood and stigmatized in both countries. Both "nation" and "citizenship", they argue, perpetuate exclusion, removing acceptance, services, belonging, and a life free from persecution. Emphasizing trans-local organizing, activists work to connect people on both sides of the border to provide the resources they need. They advocate for normalizing and decriminalizing migration to permit families to see friends and loved ones regardless of where they live.
Definitions
Undocumented refers to an individual's status who reside in the United States without a pathway to U.S. citizenship. Whether migrating to the United States as minors or adults, these residents are not granted permanent legal status by the U.S. government. Those who identify as undocumented have unfixed (or liminal) legal statuses including those 1) who are stateless (without citizenship in any country); 2) who are without U.S. citizenship or U.S. visas; and 3) who have temporary legal status such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Deferred Enforced Department (DED), or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Without the protection of U.S. citizenship, undocumented individuals live and work with the constant threat of surveillance and deportation. Moreover, they are blocked from national programs providing access to fair housing, healthcare, and workers' rights, among others.
Undocumented organizing refers to political mobilizing led by undocumented individuals from 2001 to the present. The essential feature separating undocumented organizing from earlier forms of activism is the public declaration of legal status by movement leaders. Risking deportation, family separation, and loss of community, they choose to openly declare themselves "undocumented." This action provides the opportunity to speak freely about the conditions that they and their communities face. By "coming out of the shadows," they step into leadership positions and form their own organizations. By directly representing their communities, undocumented organizers have created a new sphere of highly effective immigrant rights organizing.
Related Materials:
Materials at the National Museum of American History
The Division of Political and Military History holds the following materials related to undocumented organizing:
2006.0106; 2006.0211 - Posters, leaflets, and other objects documenting protests and demonstrations, such as the Immigration March (April 10, 2006, Washington D.C.) and the Great American Boycott/Day Without An Immigrant (May 1, 2006)
2018.0073 - Posters and clothing, including monarch butterfly wings, used in the DACA protest on March 5, 2018
2018.0156 - Bracelets
2018.0198 – Poster, "Stand with Immigrant Workers"
2020.0048 – Javier Jairo Morales' graduation cap, gown, stole, and monarch butterfly wings
Materials at the Anacostia Community Museum Archives
Gateway/Portales Exhibition Records (ACMA Acc. 03-102)
Black Mosaic: Community, Race, and Ethnicity among Black Immigrants in Washington, D. C. Exhibition Records (ACMA Acc. 03-027)
Provenance:
Made for the National Museum of American History by the Undocumented Organizing Collecting Initiative between 2019-2021.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research. Access and use of born-digital audio materials available in the Archives Center reading room or by requesting copies of materials at RightsReproductions@si.edu.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.