Trump's second presidency sparks fear of 'scary' time ahead among some immigrants

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

But the Honduran native's decision to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border back in 1995 means he may now be a target for deportation – despite being married more than a decade to a U.S. citizen, living and working legally in the U.S. for more than 25 years and having a child who's a U.S. citizen.

Donald Trump's resounding victory on Tuesday offers a clear mandate for his promise to massively deport immigrants in the U.S. illegally. His plan also includes revoking certain immigration benefits that keep millions of immigrants with their families, including the "temporary protected status," or TPS, that allowed Contreras and people from certain countries to stay in the U.S.

"It's scary times," said Maribel Hernández Rivera, his wife and an immigration attorney by trade. She's also the director of policy and government affairs for the ACLU, whose affiliate helped bring the case that blocked Trump's attempt to cancel TPS the first time around.

Trump has said mass deportation is a necessary step to protect the country from "criminal illegal aliens." A majority of American voters – more than 73 million – agreed.

Among those voters who backed 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 polling.

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

Now, immigrant families are coming to grips with multiple realities, from the threat of widespread deportations to the understanding that a broad swath of Americans don't want them here.

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

To deport upwards of 11 million people, as Trump has promised, "you are talking about going into people’s homes, where there are mixed-status families," said Juan Proa?o, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.

"There is one parent who is documented, one who isn’t, children who are U.S. citizens," he said. "Are you taking the mother? Are you taking the father? Are you deporting the whole family?"

Trump's victory has set off a wave of fear and anxiety across immigrant communities nationally, said Michael Kagan, who runs the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Immigration Clinic.

“I think this is a very scary moment," he said. "If we get into a full-on deportation with the National Guard and detention camps in the desert, things will get very, very scary.”

More: Trump's deportation plan: A cost to taxpayers, billions for big business

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

"During the first Trump administration, we sued constantly," she said. "This is what we do. We are well aware that a second Trump administration promises to be more cruel and less limited by the laws."

Federal authorities versus 'sanctuary' cities

Trump didn't meet his mass deportation goals during his first term, after he ran into legal road blocks and the refusal by "sanctuary" jurisdictions to work with him, from San Francisco to Chicago and New York City.

On Thursday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom called for a special legislative session to strategize how the state will counter Trump's plans, including providing funds 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 about misinformation spreading in immigrant communities and cautioned against "panic and fear setting in."

He said New York City's agencies, including police, will respect the city's sanctuary laws and that immigrants shouldn't be afraid to seek services.

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

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

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

The Department of Homeland Security in April gave out more than $300 million in grants through its Shelter and Services Program to cities grappling with humanitarian crises, including more than $20 million to New York's Office of Management and Budget.

The optics of Abbott's busing program, which forced cities to provide shelter and services to tens of thousands of migrants, fueled some Americans' anger with the Biden-Harris administration's handling of the border and drove voters to Trump.

More: ACLU sues feds, questions infrastructure for mass deportation

Hundreds of actions on immigration

Though Trump may not have delivered on his more extreme promises the first time – including a vow to deport millions or seal off the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border – the administration was broadly successful in ramping up immigration enforcement and making legal immigration more difficult, according to a report by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

His administration took 472 executive actions affecting immigration policy, according to the 2022 report – an array of changes that ranged from travel bans targeting Muslim-majority nations; to suspending non-immigrant visa processing; to ramping up immigration enforcement in the interior.

Kagan, the Las Vegas professor, said he suspects some Trump voters don't really understand what a mass deportation would look like, and others may have backed Trump because he promised to address longstanding border concerns and think he'll only target violent offenders.

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

Trump took aim at everyone who wasn't a citizen or legal permanent resident, and "put everyone at the same level," said Jessica Orozco Guttlein, senior vice president for policy at the Hispanic Federation. "Undocumented immigrants – that’s the priority.

"That’s what underpinned the panic" at the time, she said. "People were saying, 'Oh my gosh we are all high-priority for deportation. Where is safe?'"

'Will they take my babies?'

No president has reached the level of annual deportations that Democratic President Barack Obama did, who at the peak in 2012 removed more than 407,000 people, according to Syracuse's 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 dataset. Across all four years of Trump's administration, ICE 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," Orozco Guttlein said. "They weren’t sending their kids to school; they were missing work, not going to hospitals, traveling locally only. This isn’t something we can say won’t happen again."

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

"We have heard questions, individuals saying, 'I’m undocumented. My children are U.S. 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 a right to be with your children. You have a right to bring your children with you."

The nonprofit is working with a network of grassroots organizations to provide "know your rights" workshops and information following Trump's win. They'll focus first on rural areas including in North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Wisconsin and Ohio, she said.

"Those areas have a lot of mis- and disinformation and a lack of culturally competent service providers," she said.

Trump has often cited a 1954 deportation sweep as a model for his mass-deportation effort. But Kagan said that military-led dragnet deported many American citizens of Mexican descent, along with people living in the United States without legal permission.

“When we get into a mass deportation system, people who think a piece of paper will save them are na?ve," Kagan said.

Kagan said he also worries that self-appointed vigilante groups, empowered by Trump's victory, might start harassing or attacking immigrant communities under extra-legal circumstances.

“That has happened before, and that’s a risk that’s on the table now," Kagan said.

'It is scary times'

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

She continues to believe most Americans don't want to see families like hers divided.

"There is one big thing that gives me hope," she said. "Being in this work, there are a lot of people who support us. The American people – the majority – do not want people like my family to be separated."

Still, she isn't making plans for the couple's 14th anniversary next year.

"Not sure where we're celebrate," she said. "Hopefully together, with our loved ones, and not separated due to cruel policies."

Bart Jansen contributed to this report.

Lauren Villagran can be reached at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fear of 'scary' times ahead for some immigrants in Trump's return