Zuckerberg-backed immigration group targets Trump

An immigration reform group backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other major tech figures is taking aim at Donald Trump.

The group, FWD.us, on Thursday released a video as part of a campaign to increase the chances that immigration reform legislation — which has so far eluded Congress — becomes law in 2017.

{mosads}The video imagines a world where Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s plan to deport every immigrant in the country without authorization comes to pass.

Expanding on a clip of Trump’s comments that he would create a “deportation force,” activists discuss what life would be like under a regime of “mass deportation” as animations show scenes of a police state. In addition to Trump, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) is also shown speaking about deportations.

“Mass deportation started and everything changed,” says a student who has lived in the U.S. for 14 years. “I stopped leaving my house, I stayed inside because I was afraid that they would find me, afraid that they would take me away from my family.”

Then she looks straight at the camera and says, “You deported me.”

The video also features Sophie Cruz, the 5-year-old girl with undocumented parents who made headlines when she gave Pope Francis a letter during his visit to Washington earlier this year. In the video, she imagines what it would be like for her mother to be removed from the country under a widespread policy of deportation.

The videos are part of a larger campaign that includes research and advertising aimed at mobilizing pro-reform voters in 2016 and improving the chances of action on immigration once a new president takes office.

FWD.us launched in 2013 to great fanfare and with backing from Zuckerberg and others. But reform efforts faltered in Congress, and the group was criticized by progressives for some of its tactics.