Photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk via Flickr
Recent executive orders and decisions made by the Trump administration have sparked controversy and protests in many cities across the United States.
By Liliana Stinson ’27
Contributing Writer
Three months into the second Trump administration, which has unleashed unprecedented hostility towards immigrants, foreign nationals and racial minorities, Mount Holyoke College welcomed immigration attorney Camille J. Mackler to campus.
On April 1, 2025, students, faculty, staff and community members gathered in Gamble Auditorium for “Protecting the Unprotected: Making Change in Today’s Immigration Landscape,” a conversation between Mackler and David Hernández, professor and co-chair of critical race and political economy.
The event began with a land acknowledgment read by Jules Camargo ’25. Then, Hernández welcomed everyone to the space and introduced Mackler. Beyond being an immigration attorney, Mackler is the founder of Immigrant ARC, a visiting senior fellow at the Truman Center for National Policy, and former director of immigration legal policy at the New York Immigration Coalition.
Hernández began the discussion by asking Mackler about her response to Trump’s travel ban on several Muslim majority countries in 2017. Mackler answered by talking about her outrage at the travel ban. The “organic spontaneous reaction to injustice, to racism,” as Mackler described it, led her to John F. Kennedy International Airport the morning after the ban was announced. Eventually, she would be joined by hundreds of attorneys and thousands of protesters.
A short video titled “Camille Mackler: My Week at JFK” described the movement at the airport and how Mackler ran “a law office out of an airport diner with hundreds of people who [she] had never met.” For nine days, these lawyers worked to help every possible immigrant or foreign national from the banned countries, and, by the end of it, they were able to free the two Iraqi men who were the first detainees following the ban.
Notably, these lawyers continue to work together, meeting every month to strategize on how to tackle the current legal landscape when it comes to immigration.
Next, Hernández asked Mackler about her thoughts on the second Trump administration's “ever-evolving deportation plan.” After thinking for a moment, Mackler responded, saying that what scares her the most “is honestly the impunity with which ICE agents behave: You all saw the video of the Tufts student being arrested.” Her statement was in reference to the detainment of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student from Turkey who was taken off the street by plainclothes officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 25 after her visa was suddenly terminated.
“[ICE agents] know that they won’t be punished,” Mackler continued, stating it was “just a chilling mark of an authoritarian regime.”
Hernández agreed, saying, “My fear is always a version of vigilantism: People’s neighbors calling [ICE] on their neighbor and the impunity for that. All of this is the product of when you have a society where tens of millions of people are vulnerable, and then people act on that vulnerability.”
Mackler then touched on the importance of working to protect immigrant’s rights on the local level, saying that because of immigration’s complexity, “it’s easy to inflame the rhetoric around it and that’s what we’ve seen on the national and international levels.” However, that means “the best way to address [immigration] is to start locally and to start having conversations,” Mackler said, telling a story of when she was able to bridge understanding with NYPD officers.
“[The] good news,” she emphasized, “is that we have that power at the local level.”
The last question Hernández posed to Mackler was what advice she would give to students. She responded, “If it scares you, you have to do it.”
“You can’t lose. You’ll either succeed, or you’ll learn something about yourself,” she said. “Trust that you’ll figure it out, and grab it, because you’re following something inside of you.”
Next, students and community members had the opportunity to ask Mackler and Hernández questions.
A student asked Mackler how she “balances advocacy and respect while working within institutional barriers.” Mackler discussed the fact that she does not consider herself an activist, a response that Camargo thought was very notable.
“I really appreciated [Mackler’s] perspective on why she chooses to distance herself from an activist label and aligns herself as an advocate,” Camargo described in an email to Mount Holyoke News. “Her emphasis on how much planning and intentionality activism requires feels like an important takeaway and distinction to consider.”
In her answer to another student question, Mackler elaborated on how activism is an individual choice, saying, “I think everyone shows up to the fight the way that they can, and we don’t get to judge the way that looks for everyone else.”
Camargo noted in an email interview how crucial they thought this message was for the Mount Holyoke community. “[Mackler] emphasized time and time again how there is a dire need to assess our positionality (as students and in regard to documentation) in our ability to make the best (deeply personal) decision on whether or not to be outspoken and the consequences that may come with that,” Camargo said.
The event ended with Hernández calling for all attendees to pick up “know your rights” cards that a community member made after hearing about the event, demonstrating the variety of ways students can get involved in immigration advocacy and activism.
Karishma Ramkarran ’27 contributed fact-checking.