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    • Fear of ‘scary’ times for some immigrants upon Trump’s return
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    Fear of ‘scary’ times for some immigrants upon Trump’s return

    Umito Posted on

    Giddel Contreras lives in the Bronx, works as a chef at a Queens hotel and resort, and is as much a New Yorker as anyone.

    But the Honduran’s decision to illegally cross the US-Mexico border in 1995 means he could now be an expulsion target – despite being married for over a decade to a US citizen, living and working legally in the US for over 25 years, and having a US citizen child.

    Donald Trump’s resounding victory On Tuesday, he gave a clear mandate to his promise to massively and illegally deport immigrants to the United States. His plan also includes eliminating some immigration benefits that keep millions of immigrants with their families, including the “temporary protection status,” or TPS, which allowed Contreras and people from certain countries stay in the United States.

    “It’s a scary time,” said Maribel Hernández Rivera, his wife and an immigration lawyer by profession. She is also director of policy and government affairs for the ACLU, whose affiliate helped bring the lawsuit that blocked Trump’s attempt to overturn TPS the first time around.

    Trump said mass deportations were a necessary step to protect the country from “criminal illegal aliens.” A majority of American voters – more than 73 million – agreed.

    Among the voters who supported Trump’s campaign were millions of Latinos. Trump won about 45% of Latino voters in this election, up significantly from the 32% of Latinos he won in 2020, according to CNN exit poll.

    In his victory speech on election night, Trump reiterated his intention to tighten immigration controls: “We’re going to have to close these borders and we’re going to have to let people into our country. We want people to come back. (…) But we have to do it, we have to let them come in, but they have to come in legally.”

    Today, immigrant families face multiple realities, from the threat of widespread deportations to the understanding that a large portion of Americans don’t want them here.

    More than 19 million Latino Americans live in a household with an immigrant, according to an analysis by FWD.us, and almost a third could see their families separated as part of Trump’s immigration control plan.

    To deport more than 11 million people, as Trump has promised, “it’s about going to homes where families of mixed status live,” said Juan Proaño, executive director of the League of Latino Citizens. United Americans, or LULAC.

    “There is one parent who is documented, one who is not, the children are American citizens,” he said. “Are you taking away the mother? Are you taking away the father? Are you evicting the whole family?”

    Trump’s victory has triggered a wave of fear and anxiety among immigrant communities nationwide, said Michael Kagan, who directs the immigration clinic at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

    “I think it’s a very scary time,” he said. “If we go into full deportation with the National Guard and detention camps in the desert, things will get very, very scary.”

    More: Trump’s deportation plan: a cost for taxpayers, billions for big businesses

    Hernández Rivera said she was encouraged by the legal challenges to Trump’s program that successfully protected her husband and many others last time.

    “During the first Trump administration, we constantly filed lawsuits,” she said. “This is what we are doing. We are well aware that a second Trump administration promises to be crueler and less constrained by laws.”

    Federal authorities versus “sanctuary” cities

    Trump failed to achieve his mass deportation goals during his first term, after facing legal obstacles and the refusal of “sanctuary” jurisdictions to work with him, from San Francisco to Chicago and New York .

    On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom called for a special legislative session to develop a strategy how the state will counter Trump’s plans, including providing funds to fight any attempt to end protections for immigrants brought to the country as children.

    In New York, the city’s immigration commissioner, Manuel Castro, warned against the spread of misinformation in immigrant communities and warned against “the establishment of panic and fear “.

    He said New York City agencies, including the police, would respect the city’s sanctuary laws and that immigrants should not be afraid to use these services.

    “We expect all of our city agencies to follow our sanctuary laws,” Castro said during a news conference Wednesday. “We will continue to protect our immigrant communities.”

    But Trump has threatened to cut federal resources for sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, which could put some cash-strapped cities in a bind.

    Last December, New York, Chicago and Denver advocated for federal aid to help house tens of thousands of migrants who arrived penniless after Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, I took them by bus from the border.

    The Department of Homeland Security awarded more than $300 million in grants through its Housing and Services Program in April to cities grappling with humanitarian crises, including more than 20 million dollars at the Office of Management and Budget in New York.

    THE optics of the Abbott bus programwhich forced cities to provide shelter and services to tens of thousands of migrants, fueled the anger of some Americans with the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the border and drove voters toward Trump.

    More: ACLU sues federal government, challenges infrastructure needed for mass evictions

    Hundreds of actions on immigration

    While Trump may have failed to deliver on his most extreme promises the first time around — including his promise to deport millions or seal the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border — the administration has generally succeeded in strengthen immigration controls and make legal immigration more difficult. according to a report from the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

    His administration took 472 executive actions affecting immigration policyaccording to the 2022 report – a series of changes ranging from travel bans targeting Muslim-majority countries; to suspend the processing of nonimmigrant visas; to intensify immigration controls within the country.

    Kagan, the Las Vegas professor, suspects that some Trump voters don’t really understand what a mass deportation would look like, and that others may have supported Trump because he promised to address long-standing border issues. date and believes it will only target violent offenders.

    But in one of Trump’s first executive orders in 2017, he “made every illegal immigrant a priority for apprehension,” ending the discretion granted to immigration agents under the Obama era to target only criminals for deportation, according to the Migration Policy Institute report. The Biden-Harris administration has reoriented ICE to focus on deporting people who pose a threat to national security or criminals.

    Trump targeted everyone who was not a citizen or legal permanent resident and “put everyone on the same level,” said Jessica Orozco Guttlein, senior vice president for policy at the Hispanic Federation. “Undocumented immigrants are the priority.

    “That’s what caused the panic” at the time, she said. “People were like, ‘Oh my God, we’re all priority for deportation. Where is it safe?'”

    “Are they going to take my babies?”

    No president has reached the level of annual deportations that Democratic President Barack Obama did, who at its peak in 2012 deported more than 407,000 people, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse in Syracuse. In total, his eight-year term recorded more than 3.1 million ICE deportations.

    Trump’s highest year was in 2019, when his administration laid off more than 269,000 people, according to the TRAC data set. During the four years of the Trump administration, ICE recorded just under 932,000 deportations.

    But immigrant advocates say the threat alone is enough to destabilize people.

    “I remember vividly in 2017 the fear and anxiety within mixed-status families,” Orozco Guttlein said. “They weren’t sending their kids to school; they were missing work, not going to the hospital and only traveling locally. This is not something we can say won’t happen again .”

    The federation’s New York office has already started fielding calls, she said.

    “We’ve heard questions, people saying, ‘I’m undocumented. My children are American citizens. Will the United States let me take my children with me, or will they take my babies?’ We have to put these kinds of things in context: you have the right to be with your children. You have the right to bring your children with you.

    The nonprofit is working with a network of grassroots organizations to offer “Know Your Rights” workshops and information following Trump’s victory. They will focus first on rural areas, including North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Wisconsin and Ohio, she said.

    “These areas experience a lot of misinformation and lack culturally competent service providers,” she said.

    Trump has often cited a Sweep of 1954 expulsions as a model for its mass deportation effort. But Kagan said the military-led operation deported many U.S. citizens of Mexican descent, as well as people living in the United States without legal authorization.

    “When we enter a system of mass deportation, people who think a piece of paper will save them are naive,” Kagan said.

    Kagan said he also feared that self-described vigilante groups, strengthened by Trump’s victory, could begin harassing or attacking immigrant communities in extra-legal circumstances.

    “This has happened before, and it’s a risk that’s on the table now,” Kagan said.

    “It’s a scary time.”

    Hernández Rivera said she and her husband will take what comes, day by day, as they did last time.

    She still believes that most Americans don’t want to see families like hers divided.

    “There is one important thing that gives me hope,” she said. “In this job, there are a lot of people who support us. The American people – the majority – don’t want people like my family to be separated.”

    Still, she’s not planning the couple’s 14th anniversary next year.

    “I don’t know where we’re going to celebrate,” she said. “I hope we will be together, with our loved ones, and not separated because of cruel policies.”

    Bart Jansen contributed to this report.

    Lauren Villagran can be reached at [email protected]

    Umito
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