How do some immigrants feel about Donald Trump’s presidential victory?
Former President Donald Trump will take office again in 2025. How do immigrants in Washington, DC feel about his victory?
USA TODAY
Shortly after arriving at her office Wednesday, Angela Plummer, the executive director of the Columbus refugee and immigrant organization CRIS, received a phone call.
“A woman called who was an asylum seeker, who is here legally and is now concerned about when the mass deportation might begin,” Plummer said. “She has children at school and is worried about what could happen to them.”
And so it went throughout the immigrant community following Tuesday’s election of Donald Trump as president. Immigration officials, attorneys and others have been fielding questions all week from immigrants panicking about their future in the U.S. in light of Trump’s calls for a “mass deportation” of at least 11 million immigrants.
‘People are going crazy’
“I spent most of the morning (Wednesday) with people who wanted to rush their cases,” said George Martinez Jr., an immigration attorney in the Virginia office of the Columbus law firm Shihab & Associates. “I understand that people are panicking.”
There are many uncertainties about how Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric will translate into action, but tens of thousands of central Ohioans could be at risk.
The Vera Institute of Justice says, based on U.S. Census data, 95,700 central Ohio residents are foreign-born and not U.S. citizens. are at risk of deportation under Trump’s plan.
Those who serve the immigrant community are trying to reassure immigrants that legal protections remain for many. Yet they also know that not all immigrants have protections and that the laws are subject to change now that Trump is in power and both houses of Congress are likely in Republican Party hands, even though Democrats have a chance to win a achieve a majority in the House.
“Can he round up every immigrant and deport them?” asked Julie Nemecek, founder of the Nemecek Firm, an immigration law firm in Columbus.
‘The answer is no. We still have laws, immigration benefits. For example, if you marry a US citizen, you can gain status. … He can’t take the system apart and throw it away, but he can do it. will certainly make the struggle for immigrants harder.”
Nemecek and others working on immigration issues worry about the future and see Trump’s rhetoric as an attack on a core American tradition.
“I think as a country we have lost our way,” said Columbus Councilmember Lourdes Barroso de Padilla, a daughter of immigrants from Cuba who has led some of the city’s efforts to help immigrants. “We have forgotten that America was founded by immigrants seeking life, liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness.”
Who is vulnerable to deportation?
More than 11 million American immigrants, about 23% of foreign-born U.S. residentsare considered illicit, although some may still enjoy protection.
“The most vulnerable are those who have previously received eviction notices, who have lost their cases and exhausted their processes – the administration can pick them up and remove them,” Nemecek said.
‘We saw that when Trump first came to power the black Mauritanian community in central Ohio. Many had been here for years, but they had old immigrant orders. … Even with those people, we were able to fight some of them.”
Other immigrants vulnerable to deportation include those in the country under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which has protected approximately 530,000 immigrants who entered the U.S. as children. Trump tried to revoke DACA during his first term, while the subsequent Biden administration tried to keep it in place, resulting in a protracted legal battle that could now swing in Trump’s favor.
“DACA is fighting for its life in federal courts,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University who has written several books on the intersection of criminal and immigration law.
“I fully expect that the Justice Department under Trump will stop defending DACA, and there will be consequences,” Hernández added. “Half a million people with DACA are at risk of losing it, people who are fully rooted in life in the United States.”
Can Haitians be sent back?
Another group that could potentially face deportation are the approximately 650,000 immigrants in the U.S. who are under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a long-standing U.S. policy to provide refuge to immigrants from countries deemed unsafe. The policy has admitted Haitian immigrantsto move to Springfield, Ohio, for example. Trump has said he plans to to revoke the status and turn them off.
‘Where will they be taken? To Haiti?’ Plummer asked. ‘How unconscionable is that? Many come here because they are just trying to survive. Are we going to plop them down there again in such an unsafe place?’
In addition, about 1.6 million immigrants have pending asylum claims and can stay while their cases are pending, according to the Pew Research Center.
Immigrants in the US are also on alert for what is called Parole in Place, a Biden policy designed to provide a path to citizenship for some undocumented spouses of US citizens while simultaneously allowing them to work in the US. On Thursday, a federal judge in Texas said rejected the policywhich was not expected to continue under Trump.
“I fully expect that to end once the Trump administration takes over Homeland Security,” Hernández said.
Hernandez and others advised immigrants unsure of their status to speak to an attorney before the presidential administration changed.
“We don’t know what will happen, but we do know the rhetoric that has been spoken, and that’s the concerning part,” Martinez said.
“And we know what Trump has done in the past, like with what’s called the Muslim ban. Do we know what he’ll do next? No. “I will always be hopeful, but I am more hopeful in the checks and balances than him doing anything good.”
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