A coalition of immigrant rights groups announced its endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Thursday.

Following months of baseless GOP attacks claiming illegal immigrants are murdering Americans and stealing and eating their pets, the political arm of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, known as FIRM Action, said it is mobilizing its coalition of new citizen immigrants and other marginalized groups.

“We’re not standing idly by as immigrants continue to be the punching bag of politicians in this election,” FIRM Action Board Chair Angelica Salas said Thursday during a press call announcing the group’s endorsement. “We are responding by mobilizing our families and friends and neighbors and ensuring that they cast their vote at the ballot box and vote for Kamala Harris.”

FIRM Action is a collaboration of various groups that advocate for immigrant-inclusive policies and motivate voters to the polls to elect leaders with pro-immigrant and progressive agendas. Harris, Salas said, is on the side of immigrant families and stands for a path to citizenship for long-term undocumented immigrants that include farm workers and essential workers.

“Donald Trump is a menace to our lives,” she said. “And if he gets elected, he will destroy and separate our families with mass deportations. He will end DACA and temporary protected status. He will close all access to asylum and unleash hate against us throughout this nation. We reject Trump’s nefarious agenda and his inability to affirm our humanity.”

During his campaign stops this election season, Trump has frequently called for mass deportations of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. On Thursday, the former president also said he would end temporary protected status for Haitian migrants living and working legally in Springfield, Ohio, where he and Ohio Sen. JD Vance have repeatedly spread false claims that immigrants are stealing and eating cats and dogs.

“When Donald Trump speaks, it tends to be a verb, a noun and a disparaging comment about immigrants,” said Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of the pro-immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice. “We are alarmed at the level of fear mongering, and we know Trump and Vance have every intention of implementing their policy ideas and deporting as many immigrants as possible.”

With 24 organization members located in 26 states, FIRM Action said it plans to contact almost 3.1 million voters this election season, many of them new citizens. Since 2020, almost 3.5 million people have naturalized and become U.S. citizens. 

“They live and work and contribute in presidential-election-contested states,” Salas said. “We have political power, and we intend to use it in this crucial election.”

The FIRM Action groups are already in the field canvassing neighborhoods, making phone calls and posting on social media about immigrant issues urging voters to cast their ballots for Harris.

In Arizona, immigrants account for 16.2% of the workforce and have contributed $1 billion in tax revenues, according to America’s Voice. In Nevada, immigrants are essential to the state’s core industries of tourism and hospitality. And in Wisconsin, “the dairy industry would collapse without the work of Latino immigrants,” Cardenas said.

About 80% of dairy workers are immigrants, according to FIRM Action member group Voces de la Frontera Action in Wisconsin. The group said it is working to grow its Latino relational voter program to 27,000 voters this year. Relational voter programs leverage active voters to teach family and friends who are less politically active to head to the polls.

In Wisconsin, where President Biden won by a margin of just 0.63%, or 20,000 votes over former President Trump in 2020, Voces de la Frontera Action said the voters it’s reaching could be the deciding factor in 2024.

“We have a need for workers in this country,” Voces de la Frontera Action Executive Director Christine Neumann-Ortiz said. “Immigrants are keeping this country going right now.”

She said her group, and FIRM Action as a whole, hopes to work with Harris to fix a broken immigration system.

“While we do not fully agree on the border bill and all of us here stand firmly on the right of asylum for those who seek refuge and protection in the U.S., we are confident that she will work with us and listen to our many concerns,” Salas said.

The bipartisan Border Security Package introduced in Congress earlier this year would increase staffing at the border to process migrants, give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to close the border if it’s at risk of becoming overwhelmed and close asylum loopholes exploited by criminal cartels.

The bill was headed for a vote on the Senate floor in February when Trump said it was “horrible” and successfully lobbied congressional Republicans to scuttle its passage.