Meet the nonprofits helping multilingual communities in S.D.

Megan Raposa -

Simplified: The South Dakota Dream Coalition, a group of nonprofits across the state, has been working over the last several weeks to coordinate multilingual resources to remind people of their rights – regardless of immigration status.

Why it matters

  • Local groups are anticipating an increase in law enforcement activity, particularly among the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), now that President Donald Trump is in office. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to crackdown on illegal immigration, a focus he's maintained in his first couple of days on the job.
  • But it's not just immigrants who should be paying attention to the work the SD Dream Coalition is doing. Taneeza Islam, local immigration attorney and CEO of nonprofit South Dakota Voices for Peace, emphasized that these rights apply to everyone living in the United States.
  • Islam noted that it's particularly important for employers to know their rights when it comes to interactions with law enforcement in order to protect their employees.
"Let's treat this time like a fire drill," Islam said. "Something is going to happen. We don't know the extent of what, but if we want to protect our communities, shouldn't we want to be prepared as a community? You never want the fire, but we've got to be ready."

Tell me more about the SD Dream Coalition

The coalition formed in 2020 as a way to help communicate important safety information to multilingual communities during the pandemic.

  • Over the last five years, those meetings have continued in an effort to work together to share information, resources and services.

The coalition includes community members as well as the following nonprofits:

  • Bienvenidos a Brookings,
  • Caminando Juntos,
  • Lutheran Social Services SD,
  • Que Pasa Sioux Falls,
  • SD Voices for Peace,
  • The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,
  • The HUB SD,
  • Unity Ethiopian Association,
  • Yankton Connecting Cultures.

What is the coalition working on?

Over the past couple of months, the coalition has been working on a "Rapid Response Protocol" to strategize "how we can best protect immigrant communities with the information we have today, knowing information will rapidly change," per a grant proposal submitted by the coalition and shared with Sioux Falls Simplified.

  • This protocol includes plans to create a multilingual news platform – something that at this point does not exist in the state. The goal is to broadcast news in the most commonly spoken languages in the state: English, Spanish, Nepali and Amharic.
  • It also includes an ongoing "Know Your Rights" campaign, in which the nonprofits are sharing basic constitutional and legal rights of all people – including the right to not open the door to law enforcement unless they can present a warrant signed by a judge. You can find a full list of resources here.
"There's so much fear on all ends that no one is accessing information," Islam said. "We believe if we just put information out there then, hopefully, the right people will see it or share it with each other."

In addition to sharing multilingual information, the coalition is also working on other ways to support undocumented and mixed status families by helping them prepare for the possibility of deportation.

All of this work also includes community organizing – one example of which was a "paper the town" event earlier this week to share "Know Your Rights" information and distribute fliers around town.

How can I help?

One of the most impactful ways to support the work of the SD Dream Coalition is to donate to the various nonprofits involved, Islam said.

If nothing else, she encouraged people to take in accurate information and to not contribute to the "fear-mongering and hysteria."

"If you don't want to protect the community, I'm not talking to you," Islam said. "But if you're an employer that has a large immigrant population, I'm pretty sure you don't want half of them to be arrested and deported, right?"