Host and "Movement Meteorologist" Ejeris Dixon welcomes Cristina Jiménez Moreta—bestselling author, MacArthur Genius Fellow, and co-founder of United We Dream.
This edition of The Fascism Barometer finds host Ejeris Dixon sitting down with Cristina Jiménez Moreta—bestselling author, MacArthur Genius Fellow, and co-founder of United We Dream—for a timely conversation on how fascism shows up in the everyday lives of immigrant communities. Cristina reflects on her own journey from Ecuador to the U.S. and speaks to the experiences of immigrants who flee authoritarian and fascist regimes, only to be targeted in the United States. Cristina highlights the acts of resistance that everyday people are taking and the opportunities to build bigger, more visionary possibilities that this moment creates. This is not a theoretical conversation—it’s about real people, real histories, and real stakes.
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Cristina Jiménez Moreta's critically acclaimed book, Dreaming of Home
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Ejeris: [00:00:00] I am so excited to welcome Christina Jimenez to the Fascism Barometer. Christina Jimenez Morta is an award-winning community organizer, a bestselling author, and a leading voice in movements for social justice. She is a co-founder and former executive director of United We Dream the largest immigrant youth led organization in the country.
Playing a leadership role in the campaign to win and implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Also known as DACA Jimenez was awarded a MacArthur Genius Fellowship and was named one of time one hundred's most influential people and her. Bestselling debut memoir, dreaming of Home, was published in May, 2025.
She came to the US from Ecuador in 1998 and grew up undocumented in Queens, New York. I really believe that Christina's unique mix of clarity, strategy, and compassion is part of what I've that propelled her to be. [00:01:00] Incredibly influential social justice leader. one that I've, admired from afar and also gotten to know recently, from the migrant rights movement, but really throughout our social justice movements.
Christina, I'm so grateful to have you on. Thanks for joining us on The Barometer Today
Cristina: Great to be with you, Jarris, and so grateful for the space and the conversation that you're hosting in this podcast, especially in this time.
Ejeris: Yes. So I know that you'll get this in the same way that I'm, really understanding this. I thought we needed a space to talk about fascism, authoritarianism, what's happening on the right, but what it means for all of the communities that are the most targeted, So it's not this academic or kind of theoretical conversation, but we're talking about impacts on real lives and how we talk about it within our
communities. And so I'm wondering how you would define fascism, let's say. You're at dinner with [00:02:00] your family and someone asks you, you know, I heard you were on this podcast, or I heard you saying something about fascism.
What does that even mean and why does it matter to, to our communities?
Cristina: It is such a good question and I really appreciate us like not getting into the. You know, just like the intellectual conversation about what this means because, you know, for everybody engaging in this conversation and who's listening, I, have worked for the o over 20 years, um, with immigrant communities that come from all over the world predominantly.
Latin American, communities, and that includes migrants and refugees and asylum seekers. And when you paint a picture of like, you know, having a conversation with my family, who by the way has mixed immigration status and different experiences around migration, it is truly talking about the conditions that let people [00:03:00] to have to painfully.
Flee from the places where they were born. and when I think about my own story, I grew up in Ecuador in the 1990s. there is a whole political turmoil in the country where, the military takes over, where you have the country shifting. from president to president.
Like in one week you had like three different presidents in the country. Um, I'm just naming this to paint the picture, like the way in which this idea that people get to participate safely and making the decisions about the place where they live, their country, their government, that there's accountability with the folks that you have elected, in a democratic way.
All of that. Was totally disrupted in a, couple of weeks. So the country is in complete, [00:04:00] you know, unstable in all kinds of ways. There's like strikes all over the country. people start losing their jobs. Banks are bailed and they take people's life savings and they leave the country.
So you see all of these crises ultimately pointing to.
the reasons for why people end up facing very desperate conditions that lead them to figure out a way to protect their loved ones and seek a better life somewhere else. Some of that may look like domestic migration. You know, some of that. It's gonna be like many generations of immigrants in my family coming to the US in 1998.
I named those conditions so vividly, and I named this, you know, in my book as a 13-year-old, witnessing what was happening and not knowing why, not understanding what were these forces that failed, that were beyond my parents, beyond my family, beyond me as a young person, but exactly now, [00:05:00] right?
As an organizer, as an adult,
our understanding that those are some of the conditions. That people all over the world face when having to migrate. So political leaders and our military forces or corporate forces that want to, take over and concentrate power for themselves, uh, a vision that does not.
Include more than them, in the country. And I wanna bring to parallels now, you know, so when we're having conversations around the table, we name like, oh, many of us in my family and other immigrant friends and neighbors have fled countries because of dictatorships, because of the concentration of power.
With people in government and, and or the concentration of power between the military and the government, or sometimes it's like the, the military that takes over. So all of these experience has just led to suppression. I. To violence and to the idea that some people belong [00:06:00] in whichever country or of, of place, of home.
and some people don't. So in a lot of the experiences of people in Latin America, a lot of it is against indigenous people. the idea that indigenous people who are fighting for their rights. And dignity do not belong. And so it's so, sort of full circle in not such a great way to be in conversations with my family and immigrant neighbors and friends and looking at the same conditions that we fled happening here.
So what we are seeing here, just to draw some, you know, additional connections, is that the.
The way the fascism of this, you know, is getting expressed here, and let's be real, it kind of manifests itself in different ways, in different countries and in different political contexts. But what we are seeing here in the US is certainly the idea of an authoritarian leader of concentrating a power.
And we see what the Trump administration is doing that disregard for the Supreme [00:07:00] Court that disregard for legal decisions. This idea that if you're not white and you're not Christian. You're just not an American. You just don't get to be part of this country. A part of its promise, a part of its vision.
I mean, and then your name also, your gender identity, right? So it's not just like white, it's not just like Christian, but is also going to be, now, Heterosexual folks. And if you look at other parts of the world, you know,
I was just a couple of weeks back, in a meeting, that included organizers from Brazil, from the UK and, and from Poland and all of us were naming and pointing towards the fact that we are seeing how these authoritarian or fascist playbook, it's playing out, choosing immigrants and or microns.
And trans people as the constituencies by [00:08:00] which they create fear. They create division and accumulate power. And so what we're seeing here is an accumulation of power. at the national level, we're seeing an accumulation of power in corporations. And you see also like the coalescing of that coalition.
particularly like, you know, tech industry and the government coming together and really, Behaving and promoting an authoritarian agenda, but then also this idea of who gets to belong and who doesn't. And you know, just the news recently of the fact that officially now there's an effort to denaturalize 23 million people.
There's a 23 million people in this country who have gone through naturalization. People like me
Ejeris: And will you explain naturalization a bit
Cristina: Yeah, so people who have not been born here, but because of, having access in a very unjust immigration [00:09:00] system, there have been some people that have had access and legal pathways to get a green card to get asylum to their refugee status and to eventually be able to apply for US citizenship, which we call the naturalization process.
For me, I. That took nearly 20 years. For many people, it takes more. And now the current administration, and this is again, this idea of nationalism and who gets to belong in this country and who gets to be a citizen and who doesn't know who's considered to be right? Like, but if clearly the vision of the fascism that we're talking about here is that people that look like me, Jarris and black folks, uh, and brown folks.
People of color, we just don't belong.
We are just not the people that are part of this vision. And so clearly you're seeing now that vision being put into practice with policy. And so the policy that we have [00:10:00] now, it's an an actual government process that is gonna look at 23 million people. That have gone through this process of applying for US citizenship and, and becoming, naturalized citizens and the be naturalization will be to revoke, to take away that citizenship and what we are seeing, not only with what they are doing with international students, as we have seen, you know, them getting deported, detained, visas getting taken away in a similar way.
What we are seeing is an effort for people that, do not fit this by Christian nationalist vision of this country, to find more ways in which we, can be excluded. And that will be, another way, you know, besides mass deportations, which we're seeing is, is an effort to take away and revoke people's citizenship, which could be just because you disagree.
[00:11:00] With this administration in any shape or form. So I know that I went into a lot of details, but
it feels like so current for people from an immigrant background in particular because of everything that's going on, that these conversations are so alive in our families and in our communities because these are the conditions that led people to flee in the first place.
Ejeris: Yeah. while this podcast often focuses on fascism in the US we also talk about how there's a global fascist movement, right? And this kind of heartbreaking, combination of people fleeing fascism and authoritarianism and this kind of who belongs and who doesn't belong from their own home countries.
To the US to try to make like a new home or to find a better life. And then experiencing, these forms of violence harm or even when people have like gotten a form of status and to have that [00:12:00] removed. And there's a lot of ways that I think. The Trump administration, MAGA say this is about safety or say this is about, all of these things.
But then you can also hear, I think Steven Miller, who the deputy Chief of staff in the administration has said things like comparing immigrants to. Vermin or dirty, you know what I mean? And so that's, and that's the fascist part for me, like, when you, when you use this like dehumanizing rhetoric and then you combine it with policies that allow people to, to kind of think, oh, people aren't human.
And so. You know, and, and as a, as a black person, that we are subjected to so much language that is about how we are not human. And so there's this like wisdom out of our own experiences of discrimination and oppression that I think our communities, all of our communities can really understand. Um, and so I wanna know your thoughts [00:13:00] about, since it's not about safety and it's not about. Jobs, right? This fascist obsession with immigrants is much deeper and it fuels either the travel ban, this de naturalization, you're talking about the latest piece around, um, the Supreme Court decision around birthright citizenship and how that's going to affect people mass deportations or even, you know, as we were saying like this whole piece where they've been talking about how.
Immigrants shouldn't have access to due process, which is another way to just say a hearing. A hearing to review the evidence. What do you think is the deeper motivation here?
Cristina: Um, you know, this is, such an important question that I feel, through this podcast and more conversations and more ways in which we are creating the spaces of really confronting the truth and the history of this country are so critical at Js because. People may not know this, and I talk about this [00:14:00] in my book because I felt that it was so important for people to make the connections.
We had technically an open border policy until 1924 as a country. Why? Because it was mainly people coming from Northern Europe. Who all they had to do as they were struggling and also seeking a better life. Get a ticket. Get on a boat or ship land. Ellis Highland or another port. Find work, bring their families.
I mean, we technically had an open border policy, but what happens in 1924? Oh, more Asian people are coming. Oh, more people of color are starting to come.
And also more white people that were considered not, the, the good white people like the Irish
and the [00:15:00] Italians. And so I named this because at the root of how we have an immigration system that we have is a system that is rooted in eugenics.
If you look at the history and some of the conversations, the political discourse at the time, there's very clear statements around our policy being designed for a hierarchy of immigrants considered to be the best race. And those were folks from certain parts of Europe. But if you were Catholic and from Europe.
You were not that kind of immigrant that they wanted, and so they will close the door. So the level of racism, the level of nativism in that it is so clear that's at the root, that's how the whole system was designed. So what I do in my book is, you know, pull back the curtain for us to know like what was underneath and what's really here.
So I [00:16:00] think. you cannot disconnect the way that this immigration system is designed in the 1920s from a long history of colonialism and slavery and anti-black racism in this country. So when you bring together nativism, anti-black racism, colonialism and slavery, we can begin to understand that really though.
The fight or the tension and the struggle that this country has had since its beginnings. It's who gets to belong and who doesn't, and the who doesn't has been clearly marked around these ideas of the superiority of the white race. and so I do think it's so important for us to understand how all of these connect.
Even when we think about.
Ejeris: about
Cristina: You know, ice agents and when were they created, uh, border patrol, when were they created, it also happened in the [00:17:00] 1920s.
And the roots of those groups, of those people that joined border patrol came from people that used to be
Ejeris: to
Cristina: Texan Rangers,
Ejeris: um,
Cristina: and slave patrols. So again, you know, the connections are so important here.
So what I think it's really at the heart of what we are seeing in the immigration policy is a implementation of a wise supremacist idea of what this country needs to be. That it's not new, that it's been there for a long time, And that, black communities in particular and people that, led abolition efforts and then the wave of, you know, black power, civil rights movement, et cetera.
They have been the generations that have been pushing against this idea and contending with it to actually get us closer. To the [00:18:00] foundational values that, you know, around equality for all and opportunity for all that and a true democracy, we have yet to be fulfilled. And so I think that we're, we continue to be in that trajectory of, really pushing this country to be what it promised.
To be in those foundational values that it has yet to realize. And the last thing I will say on this jarris is that actually what for many of us that do work in social justice movements, I think it's important to remind ourselves that we are in the moment, that we're aim because we're actually experiencing a backlash to our movements being effective and winning.
That is what's happening right now. So it's not like we have been in a downward trajectory here. You know, we've actually been in a trajectory. When you look at the tradition and what I call like our, our chosen ancestors of movement leaders and organizers that came [00:19:00] before us, we have been in an upward trajectory of making this country.
Ejeris: the country,
Cristina: True place where like all of us can thrive regardless of race, ethnicity, et cetera. And in contending for that idea, that different idea and vision of this country, we have been winning. And it is for that reason that this, we're seeing this backlash that we are going through, right now. So it's not like we are, facing these tough conditions because.
We have not been winning. It's actually the other way around.
So I think it's important when sometimes everything could feel overwhelming. I speak for myself, right? Like when I am getting news of friends that I know that are getting targeted or that family members are getting detained or stopped, like I to remind myself that what we're going through is because we've actually been winning and building power towards a different vision that is inclusive of all of us.
Ejeris: Yeah, I feel like, and that vision starts to [00:20:00] kind of really expose as you were saying, the kind of white supremacist project. And there may be people listening who are like, I think you're wrong, y'all are taking this too far. But it reminds me of within Trump's first administration.
when he called certain countries, shithole countries, and then it was just like really clear. They're like, they're not coming from the good countries, they're coming from, you know? And, and what was the difference between the good countries and the shithole countries? Well, it was really like.
European countries, right? Or, or you'll see this piece around how access to asylum has been removed for so many people, but white Africaners in South Africa were given access and, and what else is that about then? Skin color. What else is that about in this idea and the way that immigration policy and so many other forms of policy just reinforce these hierarchies of, of good versus bad.
And I remember I was a geeky kid. I. Who loved reading history. And when I read about the kind of three fifths of a [00:21:00] person piece in a history book, and I was like, wait, wait a second. That's not a democracy, you know, and there's this, piece around, the backlash. I think that you're right.
And how it can be disorienting to be in this both end place. Right? That there have been advances towards democracy, but then there also is this place where a lot of our communities particularly have not experienced that, And um, sometimes we talk about how the US both has a history of fascism and a history of democracy, and a lot of it depends on the color of your skin.
I. So in these times, what does it mean to defend immigrant communities in these days? Like, how are the communities or the organizations that you're connected to responding be? Because it feels like there are just so many various forms of attacks that it must be devastating, it's heartbreaking.
It must be overwhelming. Like what does that work look like right now?
Cristina: You know, I was just with organizers [00:22:00] in Los Angeles last week and
just to see, hear witness the level of destruction that is intentional and dehumanizing and cruel. It first graders that were in their closet and eyes, Asians show up. They lied to school authorities saying that they have parental consent to be there, to try to kidnap first graders, young people that were graduating and everybody had to run and flee the graduation because ice agents were around conducting raids. College graduates that showed up to their graduation or didn't show up because their parents were picked
up.
We're targeted for deportation at the car wash where they work, or because there were street vendors, people that are showing to court for appointments, for the asylum cases that are getting detained by these [00:23:00] agents in masks.
Sometimes not even wearing any, you know, official sort of gear. That's what's happening. So I just wanna name like, I've done work in immigrant communities for over 20 years. I went through what was like to live in the targeting of Muslim and immigrant communities post nine 11, particularly in places like New York City is actually what politicized me, right?
To see neighbors disappearing. Why? Because they were Muslim. Or because they were immigrants. and so I do wanna recognize that the level of terror, it's a whole new level that we have not experienced in recent history, and that, can feel very, very overwhelming. Right. So, and at the same time, what was really important for me in these conversations and I took away, you know, with some of the organizers in, in Los Angeles is to recognize that though that's true.
What is also true is that immigrants and non-immigrants are [00:24:00] opening their eyes to what they're seeing and not being just, bystanders, but taking action. And that looked like in multiple ways, like. Supporting the children of immigrants that now are the ones leading the street, the food truck business or the stream vendor business for their families because of fear or because their parents were already picked up and detained and disappeared.
doing grocery shopping for people, joining the protests on the rallies. literally like. recording and or protecting their neighbors from eyes, reaching them, in their homes or in other public places like a church, like a school. so those are all of the ways in which people.
Are taking action. And that's also part of the story. So what brings hope to many of us working intimately with, immigrant and, and refugee communities right now is that, is that we are having an [00:25:00] opportunity, for people to wake up to the terror. And to say like, I'm against this and take action.
And so I just gave you some examples of what we have seen in places like la. but we are also seeing in other places across the country where people are. Going in groups to support families that are showing up to court for appointments so that they can defend and protect them from potential targeting of deportation, where folks are doing grocery shopping, where folks are sharing basic like know your rights information, where folks are creating teams in neighborhoods.
Where they are doing monitoring of what's happening and supporting one another, right? Like, I've heard so many stories of people who have seen eyes in their communities alerted people through their WhatsApps, the signal groups and, people protecting each other that way. making sure that we know are rights.
making sure that like, no one can really go into our physical spaces with our without [00:26:00] warrants, et cetera. So these are all of the ways in which we can take action, and I will not, be, Also strategic to not ask people to also like continue to call on members of Congress about this, like at the local level, at the national level.
Elected folks need to know that this is not what we are supporting and they need to hear from us even in these conditions. This still matters and organizing it still works. Like this is how we're still able to stop some deportations. Not all. And we've seen many of the stories where we've been able, communities have galvanized around them.
Many students in New York City, in Massachusetts, where you see all an entire community coming around, these people demanding that people are released, demanding that people have the right to due process. And in some of those cases, we've been successful in People, power community has made it possible for folks to be released even in these authoritarian conditions that we're in.
So [00:27:00] I, I wanna name that, that the organizing is still is the way forward even in these conditions. And we are seeing examples of that.
Ejeris: that. I love that. we keep talking about how fascism is rising, but so is our resistance.
Cristina: Yes. and that's the way we get out. Right? what you've been saying about this being backlash feels really true. A piece of that means that we have to keep pushing towards liberation, right? Like all the attacks that are happening need to be responded to, but there's also the work to do to create an affirmative vision of what people want.
Ejeris: How are Immigrant justice groups. How are immigrant communities balancing the need to defend in these times and also this work of organizing towards a liberatory future? beyond maga, beyond the fascists
Cristina: This is such a good question. It's actually a very, ongoing conversation, very [00:28:00] alive. you know, in immigrant communities, especially those of us organizing and thinking about this moment because what we are seeing and tracking, I. Is that the overall sense of the country? Like, you know, the overall sort of looking at some of the data is not only reflective of where people in our social movements are at, but like the broader public generally, there is increasingly, downward support for mass deportation rates.
Like we're seeing how those numbers in terms of public support are. Going down, that's a good sign. However, it can't be that we are just like against mass raid and deportations and not have a proactive liberatory vision of what this country should look like and how immigrants and refugees fit
in.
Ejeris: fit,
Cristina: And so I do think that we are sitting in this moment of opportunity as many people are awakening to the brutality, the [00:29:00] cruelty, the terror that is not just capturing people's, support, in terms of being like against the cruelty and against this terror, but he's like building support for the vision that we.
Hold as like the north star for all of us. And like I do think
Ejeris: that,
Cristina: and this is perhaps my like, much more like into inner of like the immigrant justice ecosystem,
but it would be a mistake to get trapped into a policy conversation because this never being, this ain't about policy this ain't about.
Legal arguments. It's never been about legality, it's never been about, policy.
Ejeris: No. And Trump's showing us that,
right? Like it's not about legality for them
Cristina: absolutely, this has always been about the bigger project, about a white supremacist nation, you know, and a different vision that we hold about a multiracial democracy. so I [00:30:00] do think that one, they're getting exposed, but so the opportunity that we have as organizers is like, how do we make it like, just like contagious, that we wanna build a country where all of us belong? Not some, but all of us belong, where all of us can live with dignity and without fear and freedom. Opportunity and whatever dreams you have that you can accomplish those. And that is the proposition or like the invitation, you know? so I don't think it's just like enough to capture people's anger, frustration right now.
Pain, I think we also have to capture the imagination for what we could build together. because in this moment, clearly folks in power are telling us like they're gonna disrupt everything. They're gonna disrupt everything as we know it. So why do we have to hold any sense of any rule or you know, or what, or the [00:31:00] status quo, quite frankly.
Like What a historical opportunity to actually invite people to the new. We can build together, you know, and I, I struggled a lot with like the titles of, uh, you know, my book and there was a lot of back and forth for those of you that are writers and have worked in book projects, like, oh my God, like so many back and forths of my on the titles.
But the last chapter of, dreaming of Home, I name America the Possible. Yeah, because that's, I think truly what the project that us, you know, in this, in this conversation, that that's what we're working towards, not the country, that we are seeing going towards this very exclusionary, dehumanizing, vision.
but rather what I name as to be the true of my own experience in this country is that.
While racism and discrimination, have been part of my experience in
this country, what is also true is that what I have experienced in this [00:32:00] country is a tradition of people that have fought for freedom to make it better for the next generation.
And that is also true about our history and about America.
Ejeris: That
Cristina: And that is the contradiction that I feel you know, about, like this place being my home and. and the truth is that like it's not black and white. And the complexity of it is that as much as the pain and the suffering and and how I've experienced discrimination, um, and racism, myself and exclusion and hate, that is also true that I've experienced love and across the country, people who just are working tirelessly.
For a vision of this country where people like me and all of us belong and that is the promise. And I feel like that is the opportunity that you know that, that we have ahead.
Ejeris: I don't think you could have said it better. Like I feel like we have gone through what fascism means and the ways [00:33:00] that migrant communities have this lived wisdom, but also. The opportunity of these times, and I, I see it too. I see people who have never done organizing or activism before, who start from that place of outrage or desire who are moving into action.
And I am, I'm so excited to, for us to use this episode. To encourage people to act. I also wanna encourage people to read your book, dreaming of Home. if you love the Barometer and if you love using Storytelling for Change, I think that Christina is doing, A masterful, example of that in her book.
And I just wanna thank you, thank you for spending time with us, for sharing your wisdom and your heart. and, um, this is, this is your invitation, listeners. This is your invitation into not only defending immigrant [00:34:00] communities, but liberatory worlds that we want. Thank you for joining us, Christina.
Cristina: Thank you so much, Jarris. So great to be here.
Ejeris: here.