Trump's second presidency sparks fear of 'scary' time ahead among some immigrants
Published 9 November 2024
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.
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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 Proaño, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.