• Lily Benavides, Green Party of NJ's candidate for Governor responds

One week ago today, by a vote of 6 – 3, the US Supreme Court ruled that ICE agents in Los Angeles could stop people if they “look like” they might be “undocumented.” Lily Benavides, Green Party of New Jersey’s candidate for Governor in 2025 responds:

Green Party of New Jersey
https://gpnj.org

For Immediate Release
September 15, 2025

For more information
Madelyn Hoffman, campaign manager for benavidesforgovernor2025 at [email protected]
Barry Bendar, Green Party of New Jersey Elections Chair at [email protected]
Lily Benavides at [email protected]

“They can call it whatever they want but we all know it’s racism, pure and simple. They don’t even hide it anymore. How is it possible that in this century something so awful can be approved by the major legal authority of this country?”

Benavides continued, “When I came to this country with a bag filled with dreams about the wonderful life in ‘America’, I never thought that 36 years later I should make a survival plan for our family, just in case. My family is mixed. We are from different countries, we speak different languages, and we have different customs, but we are still a beautiful family and I will defend them tooth and nail if necessary.”

Lily Benavides knows from personal experience what it’s like to be on the receiving end of racist immigration policies. She has fought against that racism for as long as she has lived in the US and continues to do so today. Even though she already spoke English when she moved here (not as fluently as she does now), she remembers vividly at least one racist moment out of many.

“I still see myself standing in my son's middle school main office to inquire about something and I noticed how every white person that came in would come and go and were attended and was still there waiting for someone to ask me what I needed. I can't remember for how long this was going on until I got upset and I had to raise my voice to stop being invisible. That's what they want. They want us to become invisible. They want us to disappear. I feel very proud to be bilingual and there isn’t anything of anyone that would stop me from speaking my maternal language. It reminds me of my roots.”

Benavides’ concerns extend to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, North, South and Central.

“It brings me joy to listen to indigenous people communicating with each other and sadness at the same time to know that they want to exterminate them, that they want to exterminate all of us. This is our land. This is the land of our ancestors.”

Lastly, Benavides takes on the challenge of naming the whole continent of the Americas correctly and not just singling out North America as "America". It is a difficult challenge because using the word “America” solely to refer to the United States is deeply engrained in US culture.

"America" is not just this piece of land,” Benavides states in many gatherings. “LAS AMÉRICAS is a whole continent. All those white Europeans that say that they are not racist, let me ask you. When are you going to start recognizing that this is North America and not the center of the universe? When are you going to start calling yourselves North Americans? When are you going to recognize that there are indigenous natives of this continent from north to south?”

Benavides and the Greens believe that not being racist is about respecting others' cultures and wanting to learn from them. It is about being anti-racist and joining the fight against an organized system made on purpose to prevent people of color from becoming too powerful.

“That is why WE SHOULD NOT HAVE BORDERS,” concludes Benavides. “Before all this chaos, many decades ago, indigenous were free to go back and forth at the border without anyone asking them for papers. Not being racist is not about eating tacos or celebrating 5 de Mayo. It is not about how some politicians in every election use black and brown people as tokens to win. It is not about elected officials inviting Latino "leaders" to join their privileged groups for a show-off.

"Racism is a pestilence that has always existed and persists. It is our duty to continue raising our voices against it until we succeed and change the system. "The system" needs to be dismantled, so we can create a new one for all of us united as a family."