Recent anti-immigration policies and practices in the Southeast of the United States have presented difficult challenges for newly arrived bilingual learners and their families. To validate student voices within this socio-political context, our school/university collaboration implemented an arts-based participatory approach to English Language Arts. Informed by critical discourse analysis, this paper investigates how, in the context of anti-immigration policies, a lack of social resources, and English-only instructional practices, our approach supported immigrant students in engaging agentively in social action-oriented literacy activities. Part of a larger ethnographic study, the paper focuses on a curricular project enacted in spring and fall 2010.