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    • Fear of “scary” times ahead for some immigrants upon Trump’s return
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    Fear of “scary” times ahead for some immigrants upon Trump’s return

    Online Niel Posted on

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

    But the Honduran native’s decision to illegally cross the US-Mexico border in 1995 means he may now be a target for deportation – despite being married for more than a decade to a US citizen, has been living and working legally in the US for over 25 years and has a child who is a US citizen.

    Donald Trump’s resounding victory on Tuesday provides a clear mandate for his promise to deport illegal immigrants en masse to the US. His plan also includes revoking certain immigration benefits that keep millions of immigrants with their families, including “temporary protected status,” or TPS, which allowed Contreras and people from certain countries to stay in the US.

    “These are scary times,” said Maribel Hernández Rivera, his wife and an immigration attorney by profession. She is also director of policy and government affairs for the ACLU, whose affiliate helped bring the case that blocked Trump’s attempt to repeal TPS the first time.

    Trump said mass deportation was a necessary step to protect the country from “criminal illegal aliens.” Most American voters – more than 73 million – he agreed.

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

    During his election night victory speech, Trump reiterated his plans for tougher immigration enforcement: “We’re going to have to seal those borders and we’re going to have to let people come into our country. We want people to come back to our country. But we have to, we have to let them in, but they have to come in legally.”

    Now, immigrant families face multiple realities, from the threat of widespread deportations to the realization that a broad swath of Americans don’t want them here.

    More than 19 million Latinos in America live in a household with an immigrant, according to an analysis by FWD.us and almost a third could see their family separated under Trump’s immigration plan.

    To deport more than 11 million people, as Trump has promised, “you’re talking about going into people’s homes, where there are mixed-status families,” said Juan Proaño, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.

    “There is one parent who is documented, one who is not, children who are American citizens,” he said. “You take the mother? You take the father? You deport the whole family?”

    Trump’s victory has set off a wave of fear and anxiety in immigrant communities nationwide, said Michael Kagan, who directs the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Immigration Clinic.

    “I think this is a very scary time,” he said. “If we go into a full-on deportation with the National Guard and internment camps in the desert, things are going to get very, very scary.”

    More: Trump’s deportation plan: Cost to taxpayers, billions to big business

    Hernández Rivera said she has heart in the legal challenges to Trump’s agenda that successfully protected her husband and many others last time.

    “During the first Trump administration, we sued constantly,” she said. “That’s what we’re doing. We’re very aware that a second Trump administration promises to be tougher and less law-abiding.”

    Federal authorities versus “sanctuary” cities.

    Trump fell short of his mass deportation goals during his first term after running into legal roadblocks and the refusal of “sanctuary” jurisdictions to work with him, from San Francisco to Chicago and New York City.

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

    In New York, the city’s Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, Manuel Castro, warned of the spread of misinformation in immigrant communities and warned against “the emergence of panic and fear.”

    He said New York City agencies, including the police, will follow the city’s sanctuary laws and that immigrants should not be afraid to seek services.

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

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

    Last December, New York City, Chicago and Denver pleaded for federal aid to help house tens of thousands of migrants who had arrived penniless after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, transported them there from the border.

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

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

    More: ACLU Sues Feds, Questions Mass Deportation Infrastructure

    Hundreds of immigration actions

    While Trump may not have followed through on his more extreme promises the first time around — including a vow to deport millions of people or close the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border — the administration has largely succeeded in ramping up enforcement on immigration and make legal immigration more difficult, according to a report by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

    His administration took 472 executive actions affecting immigration policyaccording to the 2022 report – a series of changes that ranged from travel bans targeting Muslim-majority nations; upon suspension of non-immigrant visa processing; to intensify domestic immigration enforcement.

    Kagan, the Las Vegas professor, said he suspects some Trump voters don’t really understand what mass deportation would look like, and others may have backed Trump because he has promised to address concerns about lengthy at the border and I believe it will only target violent criminals.

    But in one of Trump’s first executive orders of 2017, he “made every unauthorized immigrant a priority for arrest,” ending Obama-era discretion for immigration agents to target only criminals for deportation, according to the Migration report Policy Institute. The Biden-Harris administration has redirected ICE to focus on deporting people who are national security threats 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 – that’s the priority.

    “That sustained the panic” at the time, she said. “People were saying, ‘My God, we’re all priority for deportation. Where is it safe?”

    “Will they take my children?”

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

    Trump’s highest year came in 2019, when his administration removed more than 269,000 people, according to the TRAC data set. In all four years of the Trump administration, ICE has recorded just under 932,000 deportations.

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

    “I vividly remember in 2017 the fear and anxiety within mixed-status families,” said Orozco Guttlein. “They were not sending their children to school; they missed work, did not go to hospitals, only traveled locally. We can’t say it won’t happen again.”

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

    “I’ve heard questions, individuals saying, ‘I’m undocumented.’ My children are US citizens. Will the United States let me take my children with me or will they take my children?” We have to put these 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 in the wake of Trump’s win. They will first focus on rural areas, including North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Wisconsin and Ohio, she said.

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

    Trump often cited a 1954 deportation sweep as a model for his mass deportation effort. But Kagan said the military-run network deported many Mexican-Americans, along with people who were living in the United States without legal permission.

    “When we go into a system of mass deportation, people who think a piece of paper is going to save them are naive,” Kagan said.

    Kagan said she also worries that self-styled vigilante groups, empowered by Trump’s victory, could begin harassing or attacking immigrant communities under extralegal circumstances.

    “This has happened before, and this is a risk that is now on the table,” Kagan said.

    “These are scary times”

    Hernández Rivera said she and her husband will take it day by day, just like they did last time.

    She continues to believe that most Americans do not want to see families like hers divided.

    “There is one big thing that gives me hope,” she said. “Being 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.”

    However, she is making no plans for the couple’s 14th anniversary next year.

    “I’m not sure where we’re celebrating,” she said. “Hopefully together, with loved ones and not separated because of cruel policies.”

    Bart Jansen contributed to this report.

    Lauren Villagran can be reached at [email protected]

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