--- title: Immigration Activist Cristina Jiménez on Life Under Trump description: President Trump's actions have made Cristina Jiménez's work more difficult—and also given her more reasons to fight. canonical: https://time.com/5337365/immigration-donald-trump-cristina-jimenez/ author: Abigail Simon article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-07-13T14:00:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:53:18.225Z article:section: Politics og:title: 'Yes, We Can Change the World.' How One Activist is Fighting for Immigration Reform og:description: Trump has made Cristina Jiménez's work difficult—and strengthened her resolve. og:url: https://time.com/5337365/immigration-donald-trump-cristina-jimenez/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Yes, We Can Change the World.' How One Activist is Fighting for Immigration Reform twitter:description: Trump has made Cristina Jiménez's work difficult—and strengthened her resolve. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # 'Yes, We Can Change the World.' How One Activist is Fighting for Immigration Reform > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=ddce6667-2156-472d-b66c-a5a3835dcc52&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Cristina Jiménez on How Her Mother Taught Her to Stand Up to Institutions [Watch (HLS stream): Cristina Jiménez on How Her Mother Taught Her to Stand Up to Institutions](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Kzjyzwri.m3u8) (4:31)  _Published 2018-07-12. Cristina Jiménez's organization United We Dream has been instrumental in preventing deportations, organizing rallies and successfully lobbying the Obama Administration to implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program._ by [Abigail Simon](https://time.com/author/abigail-simon/) ## Abigail Simon Jul 13, 2018 2:00 PM UTC by [Abigail Simon](https://time.com/author/abigail-simon/) ## Abigail Simon Jul 13, 2018 2:00 PM UTC Since taking office, President Donald Trump has signed [executive orders](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/24/us/politics/new-order-bars-almost-all-travel-from-seven-countries.html) limiting travel from several Muslim-majority countries, attempted to [phase out](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/us/politics/trump-daca-dreamers-immigration.html) an Obama-era program to protect undocumented immigrants brought as children and issued a [zero-tolerance](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trumps-zero-tolerance-at-the-border-is-causing-child-shelters-to-fill-up-fast/2018/05/29/7aab0ae4-636b-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7%5Fstory.html%3Futm%5Fterm=.974d2e9f8e02) policy at the Mexican border that caused [over 2,300 children](https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family-separation-and-zero-tolerance-at-the-border) to be separated from their parents. For Cristina Jiménez, who was brought to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant twenty years ago, each one of these actions was a reason to fight. “It’s hard,” she said at a July 9 event at [WeWork White House](https://www.wework.com/buildings/white-house--washington-DC) in Washington, D.C. “I have the days where I feel like yes, we can change the world. And there are days or weeks that have been very debilitating.” The 33-year-old activist originally founded United We Dream, America’s largest youth-led pro-immigration organization, in 2008, with the goal of creating a community where people could advocate together for immigration reform. Through United We Dream, Jiménez, who was named one of [TIME’s 2018 100 Most Influential People](http://time.com/collection/most-influential-people-2018/), has been instrumental in preventing deportations, organizing rallies and successfully lobbying the Obama Administration to implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Her recent talk was the second event in the [TIME 100 x WeWork Speaker Series](http://time.com/5300121/time-wework-partner-speaker-series/). But under Trump, Jiménez said her work has taken on a new urgency. “When you see nativist and hateful policies so clearly, you see clarity about what you need to fight for,” she said. United We Dream [currently](https://unitedwedream.org/about/) has over 400,000 members and an online reach of over 4 million and growing; meanwhile, Jiménez noted, polls show that [most Americans support DACA](http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/368959-poll-most-americans-support-daca) and [oppose family separations](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/18/poll-66-percent-of-us-voters-oppose-family-separations-650948) at the border. “Most people disagree with how we’re dealing with immigrants right now,” she said. “That actually gives me a lot of hope.” In recent months, Jiménez and United We Dream have launched [Summer of Dreams](https://unitedwedream.org/2018/07/united-we-dream-launches-summer-of-dreams/), a program that will train youth to become grassroots organizers and activists. They’ve organized [protests at the border](https://unitedwedream.org/2018/06/250-shut-down-border-crossing-at-tornillo-tx-at-site-of-child-detention-camps-immigrant-youth-community-escalate-pressure-to-stop-the-deportation-force/) and participated in rallies against family separations. And they have been busy lobbying — they recently [urged](https://unitedwedream.org/2018/06/nmdt-republicans-in-congress-propose-dangerous-enforcement-bills/) Congress not to pass Republican-backed immigration bills and [spoke out](https://unitedwedream.org/2018/07/scotus-pick-will-rubber-stamp-trumps-anti-immigrant-agenda/) against Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee. Jiménez herself has used her growing platform to advocate for immigration policies that don’t, as she puts it, reinforce a system “that was designed to discriminate against communities of color.” Among them: Urging Congress to direct taxpayer dollars away from deportations and towards education or healthcare and joining senators like Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand in calling for abolishing of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Jiménez said she knows these changes won’t happen overnight, especially under Trump, but she won’t stop fighting to make them reality. “I just dream of the day that people will be able to move freely without fear,” she said. “I know it may not happen in my own lifetime, but that drives me every day.” ## Transcript Christina, thank you so much for being here with us. Great to be here, and great to be with all of you. You came here when you were 13 years old from Ecuador and you arrived in Queens with your family. You were undocumented, just tell us a little bit about what that was like. Coming here, you know, it's a very both like painful and hopeful moment when you And your family make a very difficult decision to leave everything behind and come into a place you don't know. The language, the culture. My college advisors starts asking me questions about whether or not my parents were documented or whether we pay taxes and whether I had a social security And when I said no, she basically said, I can't help you. You can't go to college. All of a sudden, the world just crumbles around me. So I walk home crying, and I'm talking to my mother. So she basically said to me, you have two options. One is that you go back to school and you find out someone that can help you and figure this out, because you're gonna go to college. Or I'm gonna go there myself. That's your second option. And I'm gonna figure this out! This is the first time that, even though as a high schooler, as a young person, you don't have the words to put to it, my mother really pushed me to question institutions and authority And their mission. She was saying they're supposed to be there to help you go to college and fulfill this dream that we have. I didn't know that that was the beginning of a journey to demand what are communities deserve from their institutions and their government. So you mentioned the last election cycle, which of course, ushered in a rhetoric and a policy with relation to immigration that we haven't seen before. I wonder if That sharpens your advocacy or if it is at risk of becoming deluded. I think that the moment that we're in is one where we're really facing the question of who we are as a country, and who gets to define what is an American, or who is an American And what are we, what is the soul of this country really about? And that is, I think on immigration, and on a whole host of issues that I know we care about here. So I think that that for me has actually make my advocacy even more sharp and clear, because when you see nativist and hateful policies, So clear. He gives you clarity for what you need to fight for. The policies and the agenda from the comment that was made about black immigrants in the White House last year to all of the attacks on trying to deport immigrants that come predominantly from countries or communities of color. What that has lead to, really, is exposing what our tax paying dollars are supporting when we see ICE agents and Border Patrol agents going after different communities. The call, and the growing movement for abolishing ICE and Trump's deportation force, It's coming as a result of the agency exposing really what they're about. What you're seeing is a growing movement that is saying this is not division of the country that we have, and when we talk about solutions, abolishing the deportation force and not having all these agents that are terrorizing communities is one part. But actually, we need to look at the entire system that was designed to actually discriminate immigrants from communities of color. And so we can't just look at the agency. There's a bigger picture here because over the last 30 plus years the act of migrating. It's a crime. That's what our law has made migrating is a crime. So now we have to reverse, you know, like, our thinking and our vision is like, migration and a family, or children coming here seeking refuge, it's not a crime. And so our policies Need to encompass all of it. 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