itstargetnews
The most immediate risk after the presidential transition in the US next week is not for the residents of those countries that Donald Trump has considered invading. For the millions of people in the United States about to enter four years of fear: the undocumented migrants Trump has promised to deport en masse.
They include young people who arrived as children and whose entire life memories exist exclusively within the US
These people prepare in countless ways. They take over a digital panic button to warn loved ones if federal agents arrive. They study their rights and save the telephone numbers of lawyers.
Families are encouraged to plan for the worst: to have food, shelter and care for children ready if the adults one day go missing.
Their situation will be in the spotlight on Wednesday, when U.S. senators will have a chance to question Trump’s choice to lead the border and deportation agency on her confirmation as Homeland Security secretary.
“It’s a paralyzing fear,” said Saúl Rascón Salazar, who arrived in the country 18 years ago, when he was five. His Mexican family came on a temporary visa and never left. He has now graduated and is working to raise funds for a private school in California.
“I say (this) as someone who hates fear mongering and who is totally against it. (But) I don’t think things are looking good. In terms of everything — emotionally, financially, rhetorically. Not seeing this situation improving.”
These young people did not expect to be here again.
Four years ago they did optimistic. Joe Biden, who was just elected US president, endorsed a program to stay in the countryand talk of a new immigration law remained up in the air.
Those hopes then evaporated. Congress lack of votes for the law, trump was reelected and migrants now face a double threat – from the next president and courts.
Reality hits on election night
Rascón said he was hopeful, until election night. He never believed that Trump would win. But the new reality sunk in when he returned to the polls on November 5 with friends in Arizona.
“It was a pretty gloomy, dark atmosphere in the room,” he said, recalling how he and his friends began sorting through the things that would change.
Rascón graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles with a degree in international relations, so he said his first thoughts wandered abroad to Ukraine and the Middle East, then to domestic issues like abortion, minority rights and gun laws.
It was only after that, he said, that he began to think about immigration, and he insists that it actually took a few days for his personal reality to really hit home.
For example, Rascón said, he urges people in families like his, if they use social media like he does, to avoid posting their specific hangouts and whereabouts.
They should set aside money for lawyers, moving expenses and, in the worst case scenario, long-term nannies, he said.
Trump insists he does not want to deport young people like Rascón.
He is one of more than half a million people enrolled in a program created by Barack Obama in 2012, suspended by Trump during his first term as president, and revived by Biden known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). It delays their deportation indefinitely if they arrived young, went to school or work and had a clean criminal record.
US President-elect Donald Trump is promising the ‘largest deportation program’ in US history when he takes office, but what could it mean for Canada? The National’s Adrienne Arsenault asks the CBC’s Paul Hunter and Catherine Cullen to break down his plan and potential impact.
Trump tries to appease the young “Dreamers”
In a recent interview, Trump suggested deporting those young people last, calling them by their collective nickname, “Dreamers”; the future president even said he would like Congress to protect them with permanent legislation.
“We have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people who were brought here very young,” Trump told NBC in December.
“They don’t even speak the language of their country. And yes, we will do something about the Dreamers.”
But there is ample reason for skepticism. “Those are just empty words,” Rascón said.
After all, Trump tried to end the DACA program in his first term. According to his own words, he would even deport entire families where the children were born in the US and are full US citizens. Additionally, there is a legal challenge to DACA through the court.
On top of that, Trump’s allies are promising punish and judge people which hinder deportations.
One young woman, a student in Texas interviewed by CBC News, illustrates the point Trump made: that this country, the United States, is the only country he remembers. (CBC has agreed to withhold the woman’s name, fearing she will be deported for speaking publicly about her experiences).
She described how she was brought by car from El Salvador when she was two years old. A few years ago, she was granted permission to leave and re-enter the US to see her ailing grandparents in her native country, describing it as a culture shock.
US President-elect Donald Trump unveiled some cabinet picks over the weekend, including vocal immigration hardliners Stephen Miller and Tom Homan — who will be in charge of Trump’s promise to carry out the largest deportation in US history.
The woman recalled one interaction with a street vendor in El Salvador who called her “chele,” or white. Others started calling her Mexican. Although she speaks Spanish well, her language is altered by the facial expressions of the many Mexican Americans around her.
As for the prospect of him now being treated like a criminal, she calls it cruel.
“I didn’t decide to come to the US,” she said. “How is that fair?”
Same family, different status
One of the big unknowns is the fate of mixed-status households like Rascón’s: His parents and older sibling are completely undocumented, he’s on DACA, and his two younger siblings are U.S. citizens.
Trump said entire families like these could be deported. His incoming border emperor later clarified that he cannot deport actual US citizens — but if their parents are deported, they can decide whether to take their children with them.
It is not always clear where they would go. Take the case of Marina Mahmud.
She was born on the Golan Heights under Israeli occupation to a Syrian father and a Ukrainian mother. The common language of her family at home is Russian.
Mahmud was a child when her parents traveled to the US 20 years ago and never returned home. She now has a college degree and works in Michigan as a caregiver.
In 2016, she was called out of class the day after Trump was elected to meet with her parents and lawyer to discuss next steps, such as whether she should flee the country and go into hiding.
Her situation has changed dramatically since then: Mahmud has just been granted permanent residency through a relative, which in theory means she is spared. She was even allowed to travel abroad and visited Canada three times.
But on election night, she was struck with sadness, thinking about the hundreds of thousands of other Dreamers who don’t have the security she found.
Driving home from work that evening, she heard about Trump’s early lead on the radio and tried not to cry at the wheel. She came home, opened multiple screens and broke down.
“I cried all night,” said Mahmud. “I couldn’t stop.”
She compares it to survivor’s guilt.
Mahmud promised her friends in the DACA movement that she would continue to support them and protest with them.
She described texting a friend after the election: “I’ll be your human shield if I have to be,” Mahmud said, recalling the message.
But she admits her own situation isn’t guaranteed. Trump and his team have thought about taking it off residence of certain people and challenging the US Constitution citizenship rules.
Even being a human shield at a protest is not without risks. A permanent resident may still face deportation if convicted certain crimes.
For undocumented migrants and their allies, four years of fear begin when Trump takes the oath of office in Washington, DC, at noon ET on Monday.
