We Are All Undocumented Now

This column is co-published with Zócalo Public Square. Image created with Gemini AI.

We are all undocumented now.

We Americans no longer have undeniable legal status in this country. Our rights, our organizations, our jobs, our health, our schools, our laws, our constitution—all are now provisional, subject to the whims of the White House tyrant who calls himself “The King.”

None of us can count on the power of citizenship anymore. The U.S. Constitution may say that all person born here are citizens. But the King says he may cancel the constitution by executive order. He says that citizenship is no longer our birthright. He may revoke it, for whatever reasons he wants.

He says he is only blocking the citizenship of those who are born here with parents with temporary visas, like students. He says he is only seeking to keep out the children of invaders or terrorists.

Those who think this revocation only applies to today’s unauthorized immigrants are fooling themselves. The precendent the King is setting is clear: Any of us may be declared terrorists or invaders or children of same.  Any of us may be stripped of citizenship, jailed, deported. Your U.S. birth certificate is just another piece of paper. We are all undocumented now.

We used to have the confidence that came with knowing that Congress had appropriated the money that paid for some service, some program, or maybe your own government job.

But Congress’ appropriation power is constitutional and legal, and the King does not care what is constitutional or legal. The King and his billionaire friend fire people and shut down agencies no matter what the law says. Heck, they even close up independent nonprofits if they wish.

The government promised you money after the fires burned down your community? So what? That money is provisional—the King might give it to you, but only if you bow to him, and maybe enact laws to suppress your own votes.

You say the courts are making their rulings and will stop the “extralegal” federal actions. But the King says he does not have to obey the courts or the law because he is trying to save the country. He is ignoring and subverting rulings. He and his allies are seeking to remove judges who dare get in his way.

The King already owns the Supreme Court, which is now giving its due consideration to his obviously unconstitutional cancelling of birthright citizenship. It does not matter how the Court rules, because the Court has made clear that the King can ignore its own rulings. The Court already cancelled prosecutions of the King, allowed the King to run for president though he was barred by the plain constitutional rule that Insurrectionists are ineligible, and granted the King legal immunity for anything he does that may be deemed official.

The King may prosecute anyone who offends him. He went to the Justice Department and said as much.

There is no war declared in this land, but the King says there is, and so he has invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a wartime measure allowing him to arrest or remove anyone he wants from the country. It was last used to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II—an act so egregious that the U.S. government, which does not admit its mistakes, apologized and paid compensation to living victims of this action.

That apology and compensation may now be null and void, too. Even if you had a pardon from a previous administration, the King has declared it null and void.

So, like our undocumented neighbors, we all must live in the shadows.

We also must live without economic rights. Yes, we might have union contracts or economic regulations or Social Security accounts, but the King can cancel them all. He may launch tariffs against friendly neighbors with whom we have trade agreements that the King himself negotiated. He may violate the sovereignty of others, seizing whatever land he likes, from Greenland to Gaza.

You say you have the right to protest, under the First Amendment. Alas, that is a right in the constitution too. The King says he has the right to declare an insurrection and use violence against protestors. He just arrested and is seeking to deport a legal U.S. resident who was a pro-Palestine student activist. The King is attacking civil society—removing dissidents, threatening movements and organizations, silencing the press. He stripped $400 million from private Columbia University and threatened to take more if the university didn’t shut down departments or stop teaching subjects he doesn’t like.

You may think we can overturn such actions with voting. But there is no right to vote in the constitution. And Trump, now empowered, may ignore election results he doesn’t like anyway.

So, what do we do?

Now that we are all undocumented, maybe we should listen to those who have been undocumented the longest. Our long-undocumented neighbors know us well—most have been here for more than 20 years. Many migrants are here because of authoritarianism and attacks on democracy in their own countries. They can tell us much about fighting people like The King.

“Learn from immigrants,” advised Angelica Salas, who has led the immigrant rights group CHIRLA for a quarter-century, at a Zócalo Public Square event. “And understand when you don’t protect the most vulnerable in society, you open the door. I’m an immigrant. We’re the canary in the coal mine. A lot of what is being tested [by the administration] is being tested through us.”

If we listen to undocumented immigrants, maybe we can learn how to cope with the frustration of paying taxes to a government that attacks us instead of representing us. Maybe we can learn how to hide and protect ourselves from federal officials who might take us away on a whim.

And maybe we will realize that our decades of failing to protect and legalize our undocumented neighbors have left all of us in danger. Maybe then we will finally understand that protecting ourselves against a tyrant requires us to fight for everyone.