Entertainment
Since before he was elected into the Oval Office, one of President Donald Trump's primary goals has been to eliminate illegal immigration, or more specifically and perhaps most notably, to build a border wall. Over the past three years and in recent months, the measures taken by his administration have been concerning, cruel, and overall horrifying. Many advocates and concerned citizens have spoken out about the Trump administration's policies, including many celebrity parents who've stood up for immigrant families and their rights amid this ongoing humanitarian crisis, proving there are many people out there ready to use their status for good.
Many have deemed what's happening at the border as a "crisis," and many celebrities are using their platform to advocate for vulnerable families attempting to seek refuge and safety in the United States. The situation, to this day, is dire. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), at least seven migrant children have died in recent months either while they were in custody of U.S. immigration officials or after being detained.
Earlier this summer, drawings by immigrant children depicted appalling conditions they experienced while in detention centers. The ACLU has said that detention facilities are "dangerously overcrowded" and migrants held there are "forced to wear soiled clothes for days at a time."
Celebrities have been actively and loudly speaking out against the Trump administration's immigration policies for years now, dating back to his family separation policy that tore countless families apart and it, as NBC News reported recently, "never really ended." The immigration crisis is still very much ongoing and here is a sampling of celebrity parents who've stood up for immigrant families caught within it.
Mindy Kaling
After Trump announced his plan to abolish citizenship for children born on U.S. soil to "non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants," according to Axios, Kaling took to Twitter to say how she personally would have been affected, as HuffPost reported.
"Wait. I was born in the United States to two Indian professionals who later became proud citizens of this country," Kaling, who has a daughter named Katherine, wrote in 2018. "So... now I would be a citizen of India? My contributions to this country would be as a foreigner with no rights?"
And in June 2018, Kaling shared on Twitter that "as a mother and a daughter of immigrants" she was "heartbroken about children being separated from their families at America's borders."
Chrissy Teigen & John Legend
As the child of an immigrant herself (Chrissy Teigen's mother is Thai, becoming a U.S. citizen in 2018), the mother of two along with her husband, John Legend, donated $72,000 for each member of their family to the ACLU to help fight against immigration policy. The kicker? They made the donation on Trump's birthday.
Last summer, Teigen also protested against Trump's "zero-tolerance" immigration policy at the "Families Belong Together" march. "I’m incredibly proud to be a daughter of an immigrant," she said at the rally with her son Miles in her arms, according to HuffPost. "Making America greater most definitely doesn’t mean turning asylum-seekers away or kidnapping their kids to turn them away from coming here. I cannot even comprehend the cruelty in the hearts of the people who enacted this policy, but I do know that they didn’t expect us to come together in such an incredible way to resist this."
Kristen Bell
After speaking out against Trump's immigration policies, Kristen Bell, who has two daughters with husband Dax Shepard, actually campaigned to help a mother reunite with her family, mobilizing followers to donate to the cause, according to APlus.
Bell also recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the current immigration crisis and why she decided to get involved and vocal. "I teach my family that there’s no such thing as other people’s children; that our empathy can and should reach far beyond the boundaries of our four walls. My children hold me accountable for everything, annoyingly so," Bell told The Hollywood Reporter.
George & Amal Clooney
George and Amal Clooney, who welcomed their twins in 2017, made a donation of $100,000 to the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights in support of immigrant children, according to TIME. They later shared in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter: "At some point in the future our children will ask us: 'Is it true, did our country really take babies from their parents and put them in detention centers?' And when we answer yes, they’ll ask us what we did about it."