Donald Trump’s promise to carry out mass deportations has driven fearful immigrants to seek protections and advice.
By Sara William Photographs by Shutterstock | Nov. 23, 2024 Updated 11:35 a.m. ET
President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to slash immigration — both legal and illegal — and ramp up deportations on Day 1.
Immigrants are racing to get ahead of the crackdown.
Foreign-born residents have been jamming the phone lines of immigration lawyers. They’re packing information meetings organized by nonprofits. And they’re taking whatever steps they can to inoculate themselves from the sweeping measures Mr. Trump has promised to undertake after he is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
“People that should be scared are coming in, and people that are fine with a green card are rushing in,” said Inna Simakovsky, an immigration lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, who added that her team has been overwhelmed with consultations. “Everyone is scared,” she said.
People with green cards want to become citizens as soon as possible. People who have a tenuous legal status or who entered the country illegally are scrambling to file for asylum, because even if the claim is thin, having a pending case would — under current protocols — protect them from deportation. People in relationships with U.S. citizens are fast-tracking marriage, which makes them eligible to apply for a green card.
In total there are about 13 million who have legal permanent residency. And there were an estimated 11.3 million undocumented people in 2022, the latest figure available.
“The election result put me in a state of panic that propelled me to immediately find a permanent solution,” said Yaneth Campuzano, 30, a software engineer in Houston.
Brought to the United States from Mexico when she was 2 months old, she was eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the Obama-era program that has allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants who entered the country as children to remain in the country with work permits.
But DACA was a target of Mr. Trump’s during his first term and is being challenged in a lawsuit that could help him end it. Given the program’s precarious state, Ms. Campuzano and her fiancé, an American neuroscientist, have expedited plans to marry. They will wed next month — before Mr. Trump takes office. “Only after my status is secure will I be able to breathe again,” she said.
Brought to the United States from Mexico when she was 2 months old, she was eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the Obama-era program that has allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants who entered the country as children to remain in the country with work permits.
But DACA was a target of Mr. Trump’s during his first term and is being challenged in a lawsuit that could help him end it. Given the program’s precarious state, Ms. Campuzano and her fiancé, an American neuroscientist, have expedited plans to marry. They will wed next month — before Mr. Trump takes office. “Only after my status is secure will I be able to breathe again,” she said.
Voters of both parties were frustrated by chaos at the border under President Biden. Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations, and last week said that he intended to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to accomplish his goal. His top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, has said that “vast holding facilities” would serve as “staging centers” for the operation. This week, the state land commissioner in Texas offered the federal government more than 1,000 acres near the border to erect detention centers.
Deportations are not uncommon. Mr. Trump deported about 1.5 million people during his first term, according to analysis by the Migration Policy Institute. President Biden has removed about as many. President Obama removed 3 million in his first term.
But not since the 1950s has the United States sought to deport people en masse, and it has not previously created a vast detention apparatus to facilitate expulsions.
Sergio Teran of Venezuela has legal permanent residency. After five years as a green-card holder, Mr. Teran, 36, who lives in Lakeland, Fla., became eligible for U.S. citizenship in late July. The uncertainty surrounding the election was one of the factors that pushed him to recently apply. “I wanted to do it quickly,” Mr. Teran said.
“I am an upstanding community member,” he said, “but with a green card you can still be deported. I feel much more secure knowing my citizenship is in process.”
In addition to Mr. Miller, the president-elect has tapped other immigration hawks for key roles, including Thomas Homan, a veteran of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to be “border czar.”
Mr. Homan has said that the administration will prioritize the removal of criminals and people with outstanding deportation orders. But he has also said that workplace raids and other tools will be deployed to round up undocumented immigrants, many of whom have lived in the country for decades.
Even in California, whose leaders restricted cooperation with immigration authorities during Mr. Trump’s first term and have pledged to do so again, immigrants are worried about enforcement going into overdrive.
“This time we are more afraid, because of everything Trump says that he will do when he regains power,” said Silvia Campos, an undocumented Mexican farmworker who lives with her husband and three children, two of them U.S. citizens, in Riverside County.
Everywhere she turns, on Spanish-language radio, TV and social media, she said she is slammed with information about his intentions.
“It’s all everyone talks about,” said Ms. Campos, 42, who crossed the border with her husband 18 years ago. “We have to prepare for the worst.”
That is why she asked her manager for the day off from harvesting vegetables to attend a “know-your-rights” session last Tuesday at a nonprofit.
Among the tips: You have the right to remain silent. Only open the door to immigration agents who produce a search warrant from a judge. Do not sign anything without a lawyer. Make a family plan, in case you are detained and separated from your children.
After the session, Ms. Campos completed an affidavit authorizing her children to receive medical attention, if necessary, and to be cared for by her sister, a U.S. citizen, in her absence. She had three copies notarized, and on her return home, she sat down her children, 11, 14 and 17.
“We don’t want to create more fear, but we want them to be ready for anything,” said Luz Gallegos, executive director of TODEC Legal Center, which began holding the sessions, many of them standing room only, after its hotline was clogged with calls following the election.
The organization has been sending teams to brief workers on farms in Southern California’s agriculture-rich corridor that relies on immigrant labor, much of it undocumented. On Thursday morning, all 30 laborers at a farm in Lakeview took a break from picking and packing leafy greens to go to a presentation, the fourth held that day.
In Dallas, Vinchenzo Marinero, 30, a DACA beneficiary, has been frantically exploring avenues to remain in the country lawfully.
Stripped of DACA, he would lose his job, his driver’s license and, perhaps, his three-bedroom house. He has started a family with a fellow DACA beneficiary, and they have a 7-month-old baby.
“Without DACA, I wouldn’t be able to provide for my family,” said Mr. Marinero, who works for a faith-based broadcaster as a systems engineer.
He hopes the company will sponsor him for a skilled-worker visa, but that could not occur until next year. In the meantime, his lawyer advised him to renew his DACA for another two years, even though it expires in June 2025.
“By the time Trump takes office, I hope mine gets renewed so I have two more years,” Mr. Marinero said. “That gives me more time to plan.”
While few university leaders have spoken out about the Trump administration’s immigration strategy, many campuses have been quietly weighing steps to protect their international and undocumented students.
More than 1,700 university administrators and staff attended a webinar on Nov. 15 about how to support them.
“Our message is that the time to act is now,” said Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nonpartisan group of private and public colleges and universities that hosted the event.
Many institutions are considering sponsoring DACA beneficiaries for work visas, she said, which would give them a temporary solution that could eventually put them on the path to permanent legal status. They are seeking to take advantage of new guidance under the Biden administration that has provided faster processing for those who qualify.
A particular concern is the upcoming winter break when many international students may visit their homelands. On his first day in the White House in 2017, Mr. Trump banned people from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, creating chaos at airports. It was challenged in court, but a subsequent version of it survived.
The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has issued a travel advisory to all international students, faculty and staff, urging them to “strongly consider” returning to the United States before Inauguration Day, and said that students could move into their dorms early.
Wesleyan University, a private university in Middletown, Conn., emailed its international students on Nov. 18 with similar advice. It said that being in the country around Jan. 19 was “the safest way to avoid difficulty re-entering the country.”
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