It has been seven years since I first walked into Adelanto Detention Facility to meet Soli. I was volunteering with an accompaniment team supporting people in detention and helping secure their safe release into local care networks in the Inland Empire of California. I attended his court hearings, visitation hours, and worked on bond release fundraising. Reflecting on Soli’s first time living in detention, he said that in the first months, when no one visited him, he stopped “speaking of hope,” unable to imagine an end to his captivity. I remember telling him during our first meeting that one way or another he would not stay living in detention, that whether it was release into the community or deportation, he would see the outside world again. He shared this reframing grounded him while inside, his spirit was lighter, that visitations steadied him and gave him strength, feeling less alone in the fight to stay in the United States. In the IE, accompaniment practices and goals centered around the fight to stay during the first Trump administration. Yes, it would be difficult, but it wasn’t impossible to get people out.

During this time in 2019, we had been building momentum, our organizing efforts led to AB32, also known as the Dignity Not Detention Act, being signed into law by Governor Newsom, promising the closure of for-profit detention facilities in California, including Adelanto Detention Facility. This was followed by an explosion of joy when Soli was finally released in 2020 from Adelanto as part of the pandemic-era ACLU lawsuit that reduced the number of people living in detention facilities. In Adelanto, the population dropped from 1,900 people in 2020 to as low as 3 by 2024. Witnessing the mass releases was a major win in the movement to end detention. It provided an opportunity to demonstrate the obsolescence of incarceration by showing that people could pursue their asylum and immigration cases outside of detention centers. In a social movement like immigrant justice, where the blows are devastating and tragic, we hold that much more tightly to the wins. I clung to Soli’s release and the emptying of Adelanto as a signpost for change to come.

But 2025 rewrote everything.

Trump’s return to power fractured hope for many. Across California, our cities are under constant raids and attacks by ICE agents. Adelanto Detention Facility is, once again, at capacity, and in April 2025 Soli was seized by ICE during his routine immigration check-in. My heart shattered at the news, as I knew the pain the space held for him. His story had been a win that gave me hope for life after detention. When I saw him again, in detention for a second time, he was reduced to a zombie-like state. Outside, he is someone that naturally carries joy and optimism. He had been a leader and organizer fighting to end detention. Now, he was in distress being held within the walls that had brought him so much emotional and physical harm. This time, he was uninterested in staying in the United States; his only goal was to get out of detention as fast as possible. He was looking toward the afterlife of deportation.

“Deportation is not the end,” he told us during our visit. Rationally and intellectually, I understood this. His words nonetheless unsettled me and pushed me to reevaluate the landscape of immigration in this moment. I was so concerned with his survival inside Adelanto and getting him out, desiring to fall back to the previous moment when release felt possible, but he was absolutely right: there was much more for me to consider. Was staying in the United States still the most desirable option for migrants? In many ways, the assumption that migrants want to stay and fight is part of the American Dream mythos. The United States is not and has never been the promised land; its hostility toward migrants is endemic and intensifying. The answer to stay, leave, or something in-between varies from person to person, especially for those who fear for their lives in their home countries, but under Trump 2.0, we are reaching a point of needing to re-evaluate directions of accompaniment.

In Trump’s first term, despite how bleak it felt, we were still fighting for people to be released into their homes and communities. We scoured for lawyers to represent the people we accompanied, assembled teams for visitations and coordination of post-release support, and fundraised for bond releases, all oriented toward the idea that we could have wins against the immigration detention system. Today, we are seeing families make the choice to leave to avoid detention altogether. Soli didn’t want to fight in court; he self-deported.

Accompaniment, in this light, is not a fixed practice oriented solely toward preventing deportation, but a malleable form of care that shifts in response to changing regimes of enforcement. Soli asked me to fundraise toward relocation support post-deportation. Accompanying Soli now looked like working on a fundraising campaign with him and his family in Egypt, to assure his safe and financially-secure relocation. He saw no future in the United States. We still message from time to time, and my heart is at ease knowing he is still safe, free, and with his family.

As an activist-engaged scholar, I find myself wrestling with the idea of hope, as it is fleeting and unsustainable. As I continue to research and write on the grassroots sanctuary movement arc during the Trump administration, the escalation of violence is what I sit with the most. While the frontlines of grassroots mobilizations grow through legal observation, marches, education, and civil disobedience, the administration’s attacks leave us stuck in a defensive state. We are suspended in a state of survival. Though we have lost so much, there is still much more at stake. We must look toward the offensive, the resources and infrastructures we can build collectively to create liberatory futures. I always hesitate to offer examples, but this is a moment to look within and around us for the people, resources, and skills we have and use them toward social change. As a scholar and educator, this means having difficult conversations in the classroom, creating community-engaged opportunities for my students, and continuing to accompany my interlocutors. It means staying malleable and adapting to an ever-shifting landscape of uncertainty. Accompaniment does not assume a fixed direction; more important than the destination is the act of walking alongside someone so they do not have to face uncertainty alone.