In the bookshelf of the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, Ramón Hernández sat in a cubicle several days a week, in consultations with immigrants with questions about his legal status.
Since President Trump’s return, demand for free immigration services in public libraries has been inspiring, which attacked immigrants as “To poison our blood,“Promising the largest mass deportation in U.S. history and recommending sales $5 million “gold medal” Grants permanent residence and citizenship to the rich.
Anyone can meet with immigration experts by phone or through a long-term, ongoing city-funded program to meet with six Los Angeles Public Library locations. New American Initiative.
“We have been seeing more people who want to get citizenship eventually complete or adjust their status to become permanent residents of the law, many of which are due to the new government,” said Hernández, who works for the Nothalians Aproption Proiry, a nonprofit advocacy group and one of several service providers in the program.
Hernández and his colleagues help people become permanent residents of the law, apply for citizenship, renew green cards or extend childhood arrivals allowed actions. They can help people prepare for citizenship exams, or submit record requests for their immigration history, among other services.
The library also provides general advice to address people’s issues or concerns about their immigration status under the Trump administration.
“Now everyone wants to make plans to answer their questions by talking to trusted immigration service providers, and they need to know their rights,” said Madeleine Ildefonso, a librarian at the Office of Citizen Library and Community Services at the Los Angeles Public Library.
Ildefonso is a 20-year veteran of the library system, which helped launch in 2018 New American InitiativeCalls for the program have increased since the beginning of the year, said. The library also received a request “Know Your Rights” card. Credit cards are sized, red cards (in multiple languages) provided, advise citizens and non-citizen constitutional rights and may be handed over to immigration agents to invoke the protection of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
The library is printing cards in 18 languages and plans to expand to 31 languages, she said. The library also plans to prepare more civic classes and workshops for families to prepare key documents and decide who will take care of the child in case parents or relatives are detained.
According to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, about 1.4 million Angelenos (36% of the city’s population) are foreign-born. There is a Los Angeles metropolitan area The second largest immigrant In the country after New York City. According to think tanks, immigration accounts for about 15% of the country’s population.
This month, Los Angeles City Council Member New proposed measures To boost the city’s resistance to Trump’s immigration policy, it includes more funding for Immigration Legal Services Group and a comprehensive “Know Your Rights” campaign.
If successful, some of these suggestions mean expanding the support the Los Angeles Public Library has provided over the years. The new American Initiative was launched under the leadership of Eric Garcetti, the former mayor of the first Trump administration, and built on the avenues of previous citizenship programs that offer courses to those who are eligible for naturalization. Some larger library systems, including New York City, offer similar plans.
The program is entirely funded by the city, with a budget of $1.2 million for fiscal year 2024-25, one of the main ways the city can provide assistance to immigrants. While some of this funds support courses and workshops on naturalization, citizenship and English as a second language, most of them have one-on-one meetings with immigration experts such as Hernández.
Anyone involved in a library branch can help, regardless of their immigration status or where they live.
In December, Mayor Karen Bass signed a sanctuary law that prohibits city employees and resources from participating in federal immigration enforcement and articulates policies first formulated by Garcetti’s executive order under Garcetti’s leadership a few years ago. Since then, President Trump has threatened to punish “sanitary cities” Cut federal fundingincluding disaster relief funds, need to recover from the recent wildfires.
Many dates start with phone message lines. Multilingual library staff returning these calls receive hundreds of calls each month. Dating can be Plan online. One-to-one people are available in English, Spanish, Armenian, Korean, Farcia, Russian and Tagalog. Program managers want to add Mandarin Chinese and Thai.
All 72 in the Los Angeles Public Library have a “welcome station” with materials to help legal permanent residents undergo the naturalization process. This includes a “Citizen Envelope” and provides a list of all the documents and steps needed to become a naturalized citizen, along with other resources such as flash cards to help get vocabulary and citizenship knowledge for citizenship testing.
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, as of May 2024, there were 500,000 people in Los Angeles County who were eligible for naturalization of legal permanent residents.
One of the biggest obstacles to citizenship is verbal Citizen Exam There are 100 possible problems. this Naturalization application It is an obstacle in itself, allowing multiple visits to the library within a few months.
Promote civic literacy and self-authorization in line with the long history of the American Public Library, providing education and other resources to immigrants. Traditions can be traced back to the age of gilded and steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant whose charitable support for public libraries is designed to educate citizens and immigrants.
Ildefenso said anyone who cares about confidentiality should be reassured by the long tradition of public libraries to protect people’s privacy.
“Library staff are trained and know how to deal with the issue of law enforcement entering our library,” she said. “Community members should feel safe in the library environment. We are just called a safe space for a lot of people.”
