Like many Americans, last Tuesday  I found myself first in shock – but then fear for our country and for the civil liberties values we cherish.

This was because of how the campaign of President-elect Donald Trump stoked racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic fears, promising polices that, if enacted, would be an unprecedented all-out attack on the rights of Americans.

The day after the election, the ACLU of Florida staff met first to come to terms with our collective shock at the civil liberties challenges we are now surely facing, then to immediately begin planning how we will deploy our resources and the tens of thousands of ACLU members in Florida to respond to them.

We are now preparing to fulfill the role the ACLU has always played since it was established in 1920: standing up against and challenging any government abuses of rights and liberties.

People understand this about the ACLU. That is why, in the week since the election, the ACLU has received an unprecedented outpouring of support. We are now hard at work putting that  support to work.

At the federal level, we are committed to:

• protecting the “Dreamers” who received Presidential protection against deportation, and resisting any attempt to create a dragnet deportation force;
• blocking any effort to deny reproductive rights or defund Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health service providers that serve women’s health;
• preserving civil rights protections for transgender Americans, especially transgender children in public schools;
• preventing “stop-and-frisk” policies from being adopted nationwide; and
• opposing discrimination against Muslims in the U.S. and bans on Muslims entering our country.

But the reverberations of this election will not  be felt only at the federal level. The stakes are also enormously high in Florida.

We must be vigilant against efforts by Florida politicians who may seek to capitalize on the toxic anti-immigrant sentiment that fueled Donald Trump’s rise to the Presidency. Laws targeting individuals based on their status as immigrants violate the fundamental right to fair and equal treatment. Despite their large share of our state’s population, immigrants in Florida are now a punching bag for opportunistic politicians seeking to make cheap political points. We will be stand up for Florida’s immigrant community against efforts to discriminate.

We must also be vigilant against efforts to roll back Florida women’s access to abortion and reproductive care.  President-elect Trump has said he would appoint justices who would undermine Roe v. Wade, but the Florida Constitution’s explicit right to privacy protects everyone in Florida, including a women’s right to abortion.  (We are currently before the Florida Supreme Court challenging the Legislature’s latest restriction – subjecting women to a mandatory wait period before receiving an abortion.)

We are prepared to fight back against attacks on that right, from the Legislature or the forthcoming Constitutional Revision Commission.

And we must guard against efforts to undermine hard-won victories for LGBT people who want to live their lives free from discrimination. We’ve celebrated victories that brought an end to Florida’s ban on adoptions and marriage, and we are prepared to fight back against efforts to undermine those victories.

For example, if Florida legislators attempt to pass a bill like that signed into law in Indiana last year by Vice President-elect Pence to allow people to assert a religious belief as grounds to discriminate against LGBT people, the Florida civil rights and business communities must be prepared to forcefully respond.

We must  prevent the election results from being misinterpreted as justification for derailing the momentum for genuine criminal justice reform.  A recent study commissioned by the James Madison Institute and the Charles Koch Institute found that 72% of Floridians want reforms in the criminal justice system. We cannot allow racially-charged rhetoric about “law and order” to lead our state to double down on failed mass incarceration policies for which the cost in taxpayer dollars is matched only by their toll in human suffering.

For its nearly 100-year history, the ACLU has fought back – on behalf of everyone, regardless of race or political point of view.

We have faced difficult times in the past -- from the anti-immigrant Palmer Raids in the 1920s, to the Japanese internment in the 1940s to the McCarthy hysteria of the 1950s, to the Nixon assault on civil liberties in the ‘70s, and the inept reaction of the Bush Administration to the tragedy of 9/11.

In each of these crises, the ACLU stood up to presidents -- stood up for the constitutional rights of Americans.

Ultimately  constitutional values prevailed.   Together, we will prevail again.

 A version of this op-ed was originally published in the Broward New Times, and Tampa Bay Times. 

This morning, Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States, and the ACLU has a message for him.

President-elect Trump, as you assume the nation’s highest office, we urge you to reconsider and change course on certain campaign promises you have made. These include your plan to amass a deportation force to remove 11 million undocumented immigrants; ban the entry of Muslims into our country and aggressively surveil them; punish women for accessing abortion; reauthorize waterboarding and other forms of torture; and change our nation’s libel laws and restrict freedom of expression.

IT'S TIME TO FIGHT

These proposals are not simply un-American and wrong-headed, they are unlawful and unconstitutional. They violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and 14th Amendments. If you do not reverse course and instead endeavor to make these campaign promises a reality, you will have to contend with the full firepower of the ACLU at every step. Our staff of litigators and activists in every state, thousands of volunteers and millions of card-carrying members and supporters are ready to fight against any encroachment on our cherished freedoms and rights.

One thing is certain: We will be eternally vigilant every single day of your presidency. And when you leave the Oval Office, we will do the same with your successor as we have done throughout our nearly 100 years of existence. The Constitution and the rule of law are stronger than any one person, and we will see to that. We will never waver.

Anthony Romero, ACLU Executive Director

This post first appeared on ACLU.org