On the bookshelf at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, Ramon Hernandez holds consultations a few days a week with immigrants who are asking questions about their legal status.
Demand for public libraries’ free immigration services has proposed selling a $5 million “gold card” that promises the largest massive deportation in US history since President Trump’s return, which attacked immigrants as “our country’s blood poisoning,” and gives them a path to housing and citizenship for the rich.
Anyone can meet immigration experts over the phone. You can meet in person in one half dozen of Los Angeles Public Library from Wilmington to Pacoima through a long-term city-funded program called the New American Initiative.
“We’ve seen more people in the end wanting to acquire citizenship or adjust their status to become legitimate permanent residents, and many of them are for the new administration,” said Hernández, one of the coalition of humanitarian immigration rights, a nonprofit advocacy organization and some service providers.
Hernandez and his colleagues help people become legal permanent residents, apply for citizenship, renew their green cards or provide postponed actions to allow for early arrivals. They can help people prepare for citizenship exams. Or, among other services, file record requests for immigration history.
The library also offers general consultations to address questions and concerns people have about immigration status under the Trump administration.
“For now, everyone is trying to answer questions by planning and talking to trustworthy immigration service providers. They need to know their rights.”
IldeFonso, a 20-year veteran of the Library System, who helped launch the New American Initiative in 2018, said the program has seen an increase in calls since the beginning of this year. The library also jumped to the request for a “know your rights” card. Credit card sizes available in various languages, red cards can be handed over to immigration agents to advise citizens and non-citizens of constitutional rights and invoke protections of the fourth and fifth amendments.
She said the library has printed cards in 18 languages and plans to expand to 31 languages. The library also plans more citizenship classes and workshops for families, and will decide who will care for the child in case a parent or relative is taken into custody.
Approximately 1.4 million Angelenos (36% of the city’s population) are foreign-born, with an additional 29% having at least one immigrant parent, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center of data. The LA Metro area has the second largest immigrant in the country after New York City. According to think tanks, immigration accounts for around 15% of the nation’s population.
This month, LA City Council members proposed new measures to strengthen the city’s resistance to Trump’s immigration policy, including funding the Immigration Law Services Group and a comprehensive “Know Your Rights” campaign.
If successful, some of these proposals mean expanding the kind of support that LA Public Library has provided for years. The new American Initiative was built on a previous path to a citizenship program that began under former mayor Eric Garcetti during the first Trump administration and provided lessons to those eligible to naturalize. Several larger library systems, including New York City, offer similar programs.
The fully city-funded program has a $1.2 million budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year, and is one of the main ways the city can provide support to immigrants. Some money supports classes and workshops on naturalization, citizenship and English as a second language, but most of it is directed towards one-on-one sessions with immigration experts such as Hernandez.
Support is available to anyone at participating library branches, regardless of immigration status or where they live.
In December, Mayor Karen Bass signed the Sanctuary Urban Act, which prohibits city employees and resources from being involved in the enforcement of federal immigration, enforcing policies first established by executive orders under Garcetti several years ago. President Trump has since threatened to punish “sanctuary cities” by cutting federal funds, including disaster relief funds needed to recover from recent wildfires.
Many appointments are started via telephone messaging lines. Multilingual library staff who return these calls can win hundreds of people each month. You can also schedule your appointments online. One-on-one is available in English, Spanish, Armenian, Korean, Farusian, Russian and Tagalog. Program administrators want to add Mandarins for Chinese and Thai.
There is also a “welcome station” with materials to support legal permanent residents with a naturalization process for all 72 people in the Los Angeles public library. This includes “Citizenship Envelers,” which has a checklist of all the documents and procedures needed to become a naturalized citizen, and other resources such as flashcards that support citizen knowledge in vocabulary and citizenship tests.
More than 500,000 people in LA County were legal permanent residents eligible for naturalization as of May 2024, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.
One of the biggest barriers to citizenship is the oral civic exam, with 100 possible questions. The naturalization application is itself a failure and can be visited in a few months to complete the library.
The promotion of civic literacy and self-empowerment is consistent with the long history of US public libraries providing education and other resources to immigrants. This tradition dates back to the golden age and steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie is a Scottish immigrant whose philanthropic support for public libraries was designed to educate citizens and immigrants.
Ildefonso said anyone with concerns about confidentiality should be relieved by the long tradition of protecting the privacy of people in public libraries.
“Library staff are trained and know how to handle questions coming into the library from law enforcement,” she said. “Community members should feel safe in a library setting. We are known as a safe space for many people.”
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