When Donald Trump announced his bid for the presidency of the United States on June 15, 2016, he let the world know where he stood, using racist, xenophobic rhetoric to foment anti-immigration sentiment from his white national base. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump claimed. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
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Though Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 23 women since the 1980s, his scare tactics worked. Since elected, he has waged a campaign against immigrants from the Global South on both sides of the border. In just three years, the policies Trump Administration have destroyed families, uprooted countless lives, and left people to suffer and perish in facilities that deny them rights granted under the Geneva Conventions.
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In the barrage of daily headlines, it’s easy to lose track and forget the scale and scope of these abuses of power. The new exhibition Trump Revolution: Immigration, the first of a year-long six-part series exploring the impact of the 45th presidency, takes on the task of making sense of this relentless assault. Here, curators Cynthia Rivera and Michael Kamber bring together the work of eight photographers and filmmakers including Greg Constantine, Kholood Eid, Luis Antonio Rojas, Elliot Ross, Griselda San Martin, John Moore, Cinthya Santos-Briones, and Laura Saunders, examining the complexities of the problem while showing the true human cost.
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