By Odin Rasco

When Salwa’s husband received an offer for a job in California in the summer of 2024, it was not just an opportunity to progress his career: The option to move to the United States meant Salway, her husband and their two young children had a chance to break away from the volatile and violent conflict that had consumed Palestinian territories and Israel following the terrorist attacks and retaliations that had reignited the region since the previous October. (Salwa is not her real name; her identity is being protected for fear of deportation.) 

Salwa’s optimism quickly dulled, however, as she witnessed what she described as a rapid shift in political rhetoric and, later, policy, regarding Palestinian territories and immigration during the run-up to the November 2024 election and President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Though her husband and children have U.S. citizenship, Salwa does not, a situation that has become a growing concern in recent months. Looking at the rapid upswing in Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests and raids, paired with a media awash with politicians and pundits demonizing Palestinians and refugees, Salwa grew increasingly afraid of how familiar things felt to where she’d come from.

“It’s as if the U.S. immediately turned into Israel overnight,” Salwa said. “The surveillance, the amount of oppression and the speed at which it is happening, the executive orders, shipping people to prisons outside the U.S., it’s all part and parcel of this horrible phase the U.S. has come into.”

She went on to explain feeling as though she and her family had to hide who they were. They’re also readjusting how they look at their future. 

“We now have to think about if we want to stay in a hostile place like this; decide if it’s worth staying, because if we’re going to be oppressed, we might as well be oppressed in Palestine,” Salwa said. “It’s painful. It’s heart wrenching, especially for my kids. I’m used to being in movement. But I really thought I had brought them to a place I thought was safe or at least a little bit safer.”

After her family arrived in California in June, Salwa started working to acquire a Permanent Resident Card, commonly referred to as a green card. During this process — which, at time of this writing, is still ongoing — Salwa came into contact with the Community Justice Alliance, a nonprofit in the Central Valley headquartered in Sacramento that is taking a holistic approach to helping hundreds of individuals navigate the nation’s labyrinthine immigration system.

Founded in 2018, Community Justice Alliance, or CJA, bills itself as a group of attorneys, social workers and youth mentors working toward “a more equitable Central Valley.” Kristina McKibben is the group’s executive director. 

“They’ve been unbelievably supportive,” Salwa attested. “Kristina is like a ray of light in the tunnel of darkness in all this. They’re all trying so hard, they’re doing it for free, and you can feel that they genuinely care.”

The group was initially a loose association of civil rights and immigration attorneys working as community volunteers. Back then, they took service trips to a detention facility in Texas during Trump’s first term during the rollout of his “zero-tolerance” policy toward immigration. 

“These were family separations at the southern border, and essentially what was happening was parents were entering with their children and claiming fear of what would happen if they returned home,” recalled McKibben, who’s also CJA’s co-founder. “The U.S. government then criminally prosecuted the parents and separated them from their children. We went there to go to court — I’m an immigration attorney, so I figured this was one way I could support people.” 

She added, “We met fathers and sons who were reunited and learning about what they had been through over the last several months; and in some cases, we got them released to California.” 

McKibben and others searched across a 600-mile radius for attorneys who could defend the migrants who were recently released to the state, but found no one. They figured if they created a 501(c)3, they could scale their efforts.

“California has been the lead in the nation in creating infrastructure for what a public defender model for people in immigration court could look like,” McKibben said, “and we wanted to participate in that. That’s how we got our start.”

The uphill battle of teen migrants 

Though CJA provides removal defense legal services, that legal support is only one part of the puzzle. The group also aims to build a stronger community support system, increase access to education and health care and provide support to recently-arrived youths who often are unaccompanied and navigating an unfamiliar legal system and country by themselves.

“One of the most complicated parts of coming over young and unaccompanied is coming completely alone,” said one teenager who’s been assisted by the CJA. “Sometimes you can come with family, yes, family, but families you’ve never seen or lived with. You just get here with a bunch of strangers.”

Undocumented, unaccompanied youth can face a litany of challenges from the moment they arrive. Before the wheels of their legal defense begin turning, they’ll need to secure basic essentials such as food and clothing, which the system expects them to acquire for themselves while also barring them from making money until they receive a work authorization.

Often without identification or a legal guardian, McKibben shared she had met many undocumented teens who faced struggles when trying to become enrolled in school, with some being denied enrollment because they were going to turn 18 in the near future — which, McKibben notes, is illegal for the school districts to do. Though the individuals may live around the Central Valley, there are only a few locations across the state where they are expected to go for periodic check-ins with ICE.

“They’re expected to make it on their own, but they aren’t allowed to work, they don’t have their own transportation,” McKibben mentioned. “People living in the Central Valley might be required to go to check-ins in San Francisco, and if you can’t figure out transportation, you can be immediately considered a flight risk, they can escalate your case or put you back in detention. It’s really high stakes, and they’re basically put into an impossible position.”

CJA endeavors to help make that impossible situation become manageable in multiple ways, including providing transportation to check-in appointments and holding occasional pop-up “boutiques” where clothing is provided. The nonprofit holds regular workshops across the state, including meetings in Sacramento, museum trips to San Francisco and poetry readings in Los Angeles and shares information packets to inform people about issues like what to do in the case of an unplanned encounter with ICE.

“We’ve been talking about due process and how the world should be,” McKibben said. “We talk about the warrants and how to screen those, and then we show them what immigration enforcement looks like. We talk about how ICE has to justify their probable cause, and how hard that is, unless they lie. We’ve seen it, because we’re immigration attorneys.”

More than material and informational support, however, is the emotional and psychological support that CJA promotes through fostering community. Youths have met at CJA events to share art and poetry inspired by their experiences, and some have collaborated to create information packets to help others who may experience similar difficulties in the future. 

Camila, a child of immigrants who now studies at University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, has been interning with CJA since the start of 2025. Hoping to go into immigration law herself, Camila has felt encouraged by the work she gets to do in her own community (Camila’s real name is also being withheld because of her family’s immigration status).

“I have loved every moment of it, and I think what CJA does is something that I haven’t actually seen a lot in immigration or even just nonprofit work,” Camila explained. “They interact with their clients and make sure that they’re able to provide them with what they need help with, whether that’s immigration relief or just basic hygiene needs. … I think that’s something that I have always wanted to see in any of the places that I would work at, where you are not just addressing one part of a person’s issues, but you’re looking at them as a whole.”

Threats to staff and the deportation rollercoaster 

Across the last two decades, immigration and deportation has been a bipartisan concern; data from the Department of Homeland Security shows more than 4.6 million people were removed from the U.S. during President Joe Biden’s administration, more than double the 2.1 million removals conducted during Trump’s first term and a daily average far outpacing the 5.3 million total removals during President Barack Obama’s time in office.

Communication from the White House makes it clear Trump intends to ramp up deportation and border enforcement efforts even further, with a May 2 letter from the Office of Management and Budget outlining the president’s request for a substantial bump in discretionary funding for the DHS.

“The budget proposes unprecedented increases for defense and border security,” writes OMB Director Russel T. Vought. “For Defense spending, the President proposes an increase of 13 percent to $1.01 trillion for FY 2026; for Homeland Security, the Budget commits a historic $175 billion investment to, at long last, fully secure our border.”

Shifts in policy during Trump 2.0 can already be seen in other data, such as a 7% jump in average daily ICE arrests since January. The immigration crackdown is also being pushed along by multiple executive orders signed by the president in his first 100 days back in office, including “Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens,” which threatens financial retaliation in the form of withheld federal funding from states and cities acting as “sanctuary jurisdictions,” accusing them of participating in a “lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law and the Federal Government’s obligation to defend the territorial sovereignty” and aiding in an “invasion” over the southern border. 

Though CJA has been operating since Trump’s first term, McKibben and others at the nonprofit agree things have grown more alarming not just for their clients, but for the attorneys themselves. In late April, McKibben revealed members of CJA staff had started receiving anonymous threatening messages, and a co-director had received death threats.

“All of this in isolation would feel like spam, maybe, but all of this at once?” McKibben wondered aloud. “We can’t tie it together, but it doesn’t feel like a coincidence. It definitely feels like there is something brewing.”

As CJA continues to work to aid who they can — the nonprofit currently helps more than 500 people in the Central Valley — McKibben admits she is concerned about the coming years. ICE has already conducted multiple operations in the region, with more are expected to be seen across the state.

“The main principle that I hope we can convey is that immigration enforcement is not public safety,” she said, “and so much of what we’re experiencing right now is propaganda.”

This story is part of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Hmong Daily News, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Support stories like these here, and sign up for our monthly newsletter.