Maria Elena Durazo knows about immigrant workers, labor and civil rights. She has been the hospitality union UNITE HEREs General Vice President for Immigration, Civil Rights and Diversity since 2014. Before that she was the first woman executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which represents 600,000 workers, many of whom are immigrants and Latinos. She became a force for labor and living standards in the nations second-largest cityand a thought-leader for the rest of the nation.

When she was growing up, Durazos farm-worker family picked crops up and down the West Coast. Recalling that time, she told film maker Jess Trevio , As migrant farm workers, my dad would load us up on a flatbed truck and we would go from town to town and pick whatever crop was coming up. I think of my dad when he had to negotiate with contratistas [contractors]. I knew we worked so hard and the contratistas were chiseling us down to pennies. What was pennies to them meant food on the table for us.

Durazo spoke with Capital & Main about the threats to working people and immigrants from a new Trump administrationand how to fight back.

About This Series

Capital & Main: Lets begin with the Big Question: What do you see as the next battle fronts for labor and immigration what needs defending?

Maria Elena Durazo: There is a great degree of worry about Trump giving permission to do harm in our communities, to immigrant families and immigrant neighborhoodspermission for people to attack, to harass kids, adults.

Our job in the labor movement is to create safe-work places. Here in Los Angeles, and in a number of cities, officials are standing up and saying were not going to allow our local police to cooperate with ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.] Our schools are saying were not going to allow ICE to come in.

Families have an earthquake plan. Who do you call? How do you react? How do we protect ourselves? Thats the very first level, and we have to give confidence to our communities. We know how to be safe. Lets remember that and do that stuff right away.

The president-elect has said he intends to cut federal funds to cities that dont collaborate with federal authorities on immigration policies. Local municipalities are saying noLos Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has staked out his positionbut what happens? Los Angeles could lose $500 million this fiscal year.

Remember the threats around apartheid? There were threats that pension funds in cities that divested from South Africa would be breaking the lawthreats of lawsuits. Then divestment happened across the board. But it took a few to start it, to have the courage to say were not going to be threatened that way.

Some people called President Obama the deporter-in-chiefnews reports cite 2.4 million removals during his administration. Is that title fair?

He certainly dramatically increased the number of border patrol agents. We in the labor and immigrant rights movement had big clashes with President Obama. He did try to do a version of [having] local law enforcement cooperate with ICE. We fought that.

At first he didnt agree with giving deferred action to young people. [DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals the Dreamers.] We pushed back, and he eventually agreed with it. He tried very hard to get a complete overhaul of the immigration laws and immigration system. He tried in his way. We certainly pushed in our way. We got as far as bipartisan Senate approval of a piece of legislation.

Other Republicans were adamant about blocking him at every single step. He only got as far as the enforcement part of it, which is why he was given the title. But other than DACA, he was never able to get the other pieces of legislative immigration reform.