Immigration is a hot topic. Has Trump’s election victory spurred activism in Idaho?
Irene Ruiz said she wasn’t surprised when Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, his third straight in which he was the Republican nominee, having served one term before losing in 2020 to President Joe Biden.
Ruiz, the executive director of the Idaho Organization of Resource Councils, said the local immigrant community already was preparing. Though her organization hasn’t seen an uptick in donations yet, which she attributed in part to being closed during the holidays, she said there are people engaged who want to volunteer.
“Trump laid out his mass deportation idea. That just kind of created more of a sense of urgency of how do we protect the communities we serve,” Ruiz said. “We doubled down. We’ve gotten to work right away.”
There are around 35,000 immigrants in Idaho without permanent legal status, according to the University of Idaho McClure Center for Public Policy Research. That number has remained fairly steady for nearly two decades, according to a report.
In 2016, the shock that Trump won the electoral vote and presidency — he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton — was followed by a wave of energy and activism, according to Charles Hunt, an assistant professor of political science at Boise State University.
People donated millions to nonprofits after that election, The Washington Post reported. A new Women’s March movement was birthed, and the one in Washington, D.C., drew nearly 500,000 people. Across the country, millions of people rallied to protest Trump’s rhetoric and policies. Now, the big protest around his inauguration on Monday is expected to draw 50,000 people, according to Politico.
So this time around, the bump in terms of activism seems more uneven. Some nonprofits didn’t get a flood of checks after the election, according to The New York Times, even though there is support out there.
PODER of Idaho, a local group dedicated to Latino and immigrant communities, has seen an uptick in donations, according to Executive Director Estefanía Mondragón. The Alliance of Idaho, which offers low-cost immigration legal services, said the number of participants in its year-end fundraising campaign nearly doubled.
In a statement, the ACLU of Idaho said the work is “even more crucial” since Trump has promised to target immigrants and have mass deportations.
“Even before the election, the ACLU had identified a growing anti-immigrant sentiment coming from lawmakers across the country, but especially in places like Idaho, and had begun modifying our structure to allocate more resources to protecting immigrant rights,” an ACLU statement read.
In the Idaho legislative session that just began, there already is a bill pending to allow local law enforcement the power to arrest and charge those without legal status. If it passes, it will undoubtedly face legal challenges.
Activists also could find themselves working in a more challenging environment. Public opinion has shifted on immigration, Hunt said, and Gen Z has grown up seeing Trump as “just a fixture of American politics.”
How Americans and potential charitable donors react also will depend on what Trump does once in office. Some policies, like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), are pretty popular, according to Hunt. That program allows immigrants brought into the country in an unauthorized manner as children to live and work without being deported.
“I think on a number of fronts, a lot of Americans are just much more tired than they were eight years ago,” Hunt said, explaining why there might not be as much public outrage in 2025 as there was in 2017.
Locally, the attention economy — how people manage all of the information and issues before them — might not be as big of a challenge as it is nationally. Ruiz, with the Idaho Organization of Resource Councils, said messages are being spread in the community via word of mouth.
One Idahoan, Cris Cuevas, decided to get involved. Cuevas said she was disillusioned with available help and trying to fill what she saw was a gap in providing resources for immediate needs for immigrants and others.
Cuevas created a Facebook page in November called Noticias Pa’ La Gente, or news for the people. On it, she’s posted Spanish-language videos and shared a document to help people gather important documents they may need. She’s also planning on putting out information for other communities in other languages.
“We’re looking at making sure that we’re giving people good information,” Cuevas said.
