We in Santa Cruz County should consider ourselves lucky not to have been targeted by the same types of harmful anti-immigrant lies that Donald Trump and JD Vance have recently spread about the communities of Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado. The stereotypes these lies play upon are hurting all people in Springfield, which experienced more than 30 bomb threats, school and government building evacuations, and cancelation of public events. But harms have also reached far beyond those communities.

Immigrants are an essential part of the fabric of our communities. Anti-immigrant rhetoric works to unravel that fabric, undermining everyone’s wellbeing. It is time for more of us to denounce the racist and stereotyped language being used to dehumanize immigrants.

Racist language has real and tangible consequences, like hate crimes and attacks that compromise community safety. Verbal attacks also fuel policy efforts to strip immigrants of various forms of protection. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is currently weighing whether to continue the DACA policy that provides protection against deportation to nearly a million people who grew up in the U.S. Another case will determine the future of the Keeping Family Together parole, which protects U.S. citizens’ spouses and parents. Rescinding these policies would lead to hundreds of thousands of family separations affecting immigrants and U.S. citizens, many of them children.

The threat of deportation ultimately takes a toll on the feeling of safety in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. Those who are targeted feel unsafe, while those who witness the targeting often experience distress as bystanders. Recent research conducted in Santa Cruz County supports this assertion.

In Fall 2023, youth researchers in United Way of Santa Cruz County’s Alzamos la Voz program worked with undergraduates and faculty from UCSC to analyze data from a survey of over 500 Santa Cruz County community members. The surveys showed that higher life satisfaction was related to lower levels of fear and concern about the impact of immigration enforcement in the community and higher levels of satisfaction with how police, schools, hospitals, and social services provide care and safety to immigrants – without discrimination or bad treatment.

The surveys also showed that a wide range of people could benefit from improvements in those areas. People with the highest levels of fear and concern about immigration enforcement were 16-18 year olds from southern parts of the county who identified as Latinx and whose parents had less than a high school degree. But those least satisfied with how institutions are supporting immigrants were white or multiracial females between 19 and 35 or over 51 who resided in northern parts of the county and whose parents had a college degree.

These results help to demonstrate that, in order for our communities to thrive, we must support immigrant safety. Political leaders who use racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric are directly harming safety and wellbeing in our communities. But we can fight back. The Haitian immigrant community in Springfield is filing a lawsuit to hold former President Trump and Sen. Vance accountable. Similarly, thousands of young people and immigrant rights activists are advocating for the continuity of DACA and to keep parole in place.

We each have a role to play in calling out and stopping anti-immigrant rhetoric, whether online, in our communities, or through the ballot box. Immigrant safety isn’t a policy position. It’s our civic responsibility.

Regina Day Langhout is a professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz, and lead author on a policy brief, “Statement on the Effects of Deportation and Forced Family Separation on Immigrants, their Families, and Communities.” Saskias Casanova is an associate professor of psychology at UCSC, and director of the Migration, Identity, & Education Lab. Both are faculty support for the Alzamos la Voz program.