To Immigrants With Love
A Love Letter to Special Immigrant Friends and our Wider Allied Community
This Valentine’s Day, we’re sending love to immigrants across the country. As our communities face violence, increased criminalization, detention, and dehumanization, we choose love and solidarity by taking action. Immigrants deserve safety, dignity, and freedom.#ToImmigrantsWithLove #IStandWithImmigrants #IAmAnImmigrant
This week, GAIN Power is proud to partner with To Immigrants With Love. While we are a very small piece of this effort, I see it as part of something much bigger—something rooted in love, courage, and collective care—and, in this moment, more important than much of the other work we do. You too can be part of this, sign up as a partner, or just take an action shift: gainpower.link/tiwl share your own love letter, register to take action, or lift this campaign on social. Here is a toolkit.
This is mine:
Dear friends, organizers & all immigrants,
I want to write you a love letter.
I also want to be honest: I’m scared.
I’m scared to name you.
I’m scared to tag many of you.
I’m scared to say where you work, who you serve, or how you show up—because right now, even praise and love can feel dangerous.
That fear is devastating. And it says everything about the country we are living in today.
I cannot begin to imagine what it feels like to live in the United States as someone who was not born here—or as someone born here who is still made to feel like they must constantly prove it. I cannot imagine the terror of worrying that your name, your job, your address, your family, or your love could be used against you. I cannot imagine having to carry papers to justify your belonging.
And yet, this is the reality for so many.
I think about my friends every day.
I also want to be honest about where I am right now. Over the past year, illness and recovery have forced me to sit more on the sidelines than I want to. That has been deeply frustrating—because I want to be in the streets, in the rooms, and in the fight alongside you. For now, what I can do is use my voice relentlessly: sharing real stories, lifting the truth of what is happening, and refusing to let this violence and dehumanization be normalized or ignored. It is not everything—but it is what I have, and I am using it.
I think about the friend with Temporary Protected Status, watching the clock run out while politicians debate their humanity like a bargaining chip.
I think about the friend who is married to an American, here legally, doing everything “right,” navigating the long and punishing process toward a green card and citizenship—only to wake up to another announcement that the rules have changed again, that visas from his country may no longer be approved, that certainty has once again been replaced with fear.
And I think about the friends whose children are American citizens—kids who go to school here, who pledge allegiance, who know no other home—while their parents live with the constant terror of being torn away from them.
Most people have no idea what immigrants have to endure just to be here. They don’t see the endless paperwork, the arbitrary timelines, the constantly shifting policies, or the cruelty embedded in a system that is clearly broken—and then deliberately made worse by leaders who refuse to fix it.
Trump keeps changing the rules. He keeps sowing confusion and fear. And ICE is terrorizing communities across this country—detaining people, disappearing neighbors, traumatizing families, and inflicting real and lasting generational harm.
A special shout-out—though I wish it weren’t necessary—to the epicenter of so much of this madness: Minnesota. I have immigrant friends there who are here legally and still do not feel safe. Let that sink in.
Right now, no one feels safe.
To all of our immigrant friends: you belong here. We need you. We want you. You are not alone. No executive order, policy change, or campaign of fear can erase your dignity or your place in community. You are part of this country—its families, its culture, its economy, its future—and we will keep showing up to make that truth impossible to ignore.
What I can say—without naming names—is this:
You are extraordinary.
Across this country, organizers are showing up every day—in neighborhoods, churches, schools, community centers, and living rooms—protecting families, building allyship, and refusing to let fear be the final word. Some of you are working directly with immigrant communities. Others are organizing broader coalitions, building solidarity, and helping people understand that an attack on immigrants is an attack on all of us.
What we are seeing in places like Minnesota did not just happen. It is the result of deep, patient, values-driven organizing built over decades. From Mondale to Wellstone and so many others, this legacy has been carried forward by generations of organizers who refused to give up on one another. We have seen it spread nationally—from Minnesota to Re: Power, from the uprising after George Floyd’s murder to movements that demanded this country confront the truth about whose lives are valued and whose are treated as disposable.
I also want to name and thank some of the leaders and organizations helping drive this moment. MoveOn. Working Families Party. The organizers at the Fight Back Table. Leaders like WFP’s Nelini Stamp / Nelini Stamp and Jessica Morales Rocketto who created and organized getting “ICE OUT” buttons on some of the biggest celebs in our culture—including the Grammys—reminding the country that this fight is not invisible and it is not fringe. There are so many others—too many to list—who are building strategy, shaping narrative, mobilizing communities, and refusing to let cruelty go unanswered.
This is a coalition of strong, independent, brilliant people. And that is exactly why it matters.
This moment is sad.
It is frightening.
It is infuriating.
And still—we show up. In different ways. With different tools. With love, honesty, and courage.
Please know this: even when we cannot say your names out loud, you are seen. You are valued. You are appreciated more than words can capture. Your staff, your leadership, and your communities matter profoundly.
With love, gratitude, and unwavering solidarity,
Amy Pritchard
Founder, GAIN Power
For Immigrants, With Love