Across the country immigration groups and leaders in state governments are gearing up for president-elect Donald Trump’s plan to crack down on immigration through mass deportations, strict border policies, and the end to birthright citizenship.
Immigrants’ rights groups have spent the last year preparing for a second Trump term and an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system, analyzing Trump’s proposals, drafting legal briefs, coordinating messaging and organizing aid for immigrants and asylum seekers, Politico reports.
“We should expect to see the devastation of immigrant communities all over the country. We should expect to see family separation,” said Kica Matos, the president of the National Immigration Law Center. “It is entirely possible that he will try to use the military to carry out deportations, so that means that Americans all over the country will see the military engaging in enforcement against civilian populations, which is horrifying.”
In California — which is home to more immigrants than any other state in the nation, about 10.6 million people, as well as the most unauthorized immigrants, according to 2022 numbers compiled by the Pew Research Center — Gov. Gavin Newsom warned of the potential economic impact of mass deportations, CalMatters reports.
“If Donald Trump is successful with deportations, no state will be more impacted from a fiscal perspective, from an economic perspective,” he said at a press briefing last week.
Immigrants make up more than a fourth of the state’s population, and nearly half of all children in California have at least one immigrant parent.
California State Attorney General Rob Bonta said that his office is prepared to fight, spending the months leading up to the election developing legal strategies.
“The best way to protect California, its values, the rights of our people, is to be prepared so we won’t be flat-footed,” Bonta said days before the election. Bonta’s comments indicate that the state, which sued more than 100 times over Trump’s policies in his first term, will again be a thorn in the president’s side.
In Texas, home to about 11% of immigrants in the United States, Trump’s promised policies have the potential to upend the lives of millions in the state, the Texas Tribune reports. The state is home to an estimated 1.6 million undocumented persons — the second-most in the country after California. It is also led by Republican elected officials who, unlike those in California, are politically in lock-step with Trump.
“We are in uncharted territory,” said Cesar Espinosa, the executive director of FIEL, an organization that offers education, social and legal services to immigrant families in the Houston region — home to about half a million people who are living in the country illegally.
“We tell people that this is kind of like having a plan for a fire: You don't know if a fire is gonna happen, you can't predict when a fire’s happening, but you have a plan on how to exit.”
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