A young South American woman looks off into the distance with a serious look on her face, as if contemplating her future.
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President Donald Trump’s statements, both when campaigning and since his election, have put Latinx community members on notice that their fundamental rights and protections are at risk. Of highest concern is the looming threat of mass deportation.

Deportation affects not just undocumented residents but also millions of US citizens, particularly in mixed-status families. For example, a Reuters article indicated that “at least 5.1 million US citizen children live with an immigrant parent who lacks legal status.”

As Ali Bianco of Politico recently noted, the mass expulsion effort, which Trump dubbed “Operation Aurora” on the campaign trail, would seek to employ a law enacted at the end of the 18th century, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. This rule has only been applied on three occasions: the War of 1812, World War I, and—perhaps most infamously—World War II.

During the war, the law was used to forcibly remove nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and house them in “internment camps”—effectively prisons. In 1988, Congress passed a law belatedly providing an estimated $80,000 Japanese American survivors with $20,000 reparation payments.

It’s common to talk about immigrants as if they’re either documented or undocumented, but it’s not that simple.

Thomas Kennedy, himself an immigrant from Argentina and a spokesperson for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, tells NPQ that “there is concern about [Trump’s] statements, because when a politician says something like that, especially something so extreme, you have to take it seriously.”

Adelina Nicholls, a Mexican immigrant who serves as executive director of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, in her remarks to NPQ, concurs: “We take all these statements very carefully.…We already had an experience, which was from 2016 to 2020….An anti-immigrant environment is generated.”

Both Kennedy and Nicholls form part of a larger national network of advocates who are organizing to protect immigrant residents.

Additional Immigration Policy Threats

The structure of immigration to the United States is complicated. It’s common to talk about immigrants as if they’re either documented or undocumented, but it’s not that simple.

One example of an “in-between” category are the over 835,000 residents who are beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shields some but not all of the undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children (who are also popularly known as Dreamers) from the threat of deportation.

In another in-between category are the estimated 863,880 residents (as of March 31, 2024) who benefit from Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program that has been in effect since 1990 and which has, as a Pew Research Center report explains, offered temporary work permits and protection from the threat of deportation for “qualifying immigrants who live in the US and come from selected nations that are deemed unsafe to return to because of war, natural disasters or other crises.”

In June 2024, the administration of former president Joe Biden sought to add a third in-between category, through the Keeping Families Together program, which would have granted residency to the undocumented spouses of US citizens, thereby shielding mixed-status families from the threat of deportation. That program, however, was struck down by a federal judge in Texas. The court’s order, issued in November 2024, came in a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and 15 other Republican-led states, co-counseled by the right-wing group America First Legal.

The struggle to protect immigrant communities is multifaceted and involves not just opposing mass deportation but safeguarding existing hard-won policy protections. Speaking to NPQ, Laura Vazquez, an associate director of Immigrant Integration at UnidosUS, the nation’s largest Latinx civil rights organization, recalls that there were “more than 200 changes to immigration policy that the first Trump administration worked to try to implement, although many of those changes were blocked by the courts and were not able to be implemented.”

Vazquez added, “But we know that one of the concerns that we have is that the emphasis that the Trump administration places on mass deportation would leave millions of US-born children who currently live in mixed-status families vulnerable and would cause enormous harm to US-citizen children. It would also disrupt critical sectors of our economy where immigrants are making contributions and are an essential part of the workforce.”

Trump and the Latinx Community

In the media, Latinx voters have been identified as fueling Trump’s victory. As with immigration policy itself, the story is complicated. There was a shift of Latinx voters in Trump’s direction compared to 2020. Still, even if one rejects alternative polls favored by groups like UnidosUS that dispute the extent of the shift, it is worth noting that even mainstream exit polls affirm that at least a narrow majority of Latinx voters supported Harris.

Making sure immigrants know their human and civil rights…is a critical strategy.

Moreover, regardless of their electoral choices, Vazquez emphasizes that Latinx voters have indicated by a wide margin that they do not support mass deportations. In a UnidosUS survey published last November as part of the American Electorate Voter Poll, in a representative sample of 3,750 Latinx voters, 80 percent of respondents indicated that they support passing a law to provide permanent legal status to undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for a “very long time,” including Dreamers who arrived in the United States as children.

Local Struggles

National elections also have local impacts. Nicholls notes that beyond the actions that the federal government may take, Trump’s election encourages Republican governors to further deepen their anti-immigration policies. “It is an environment where checkpoints and arrests against our community grow,” she says.

In addition, American First Legal has sent a judicial threat to 249 elected officials in specific “sanctuary city” jurisdictions that by law do not cooperate with the federal government on immigration matters—a clear formal attack on one of the biggest obstacles the Trump administration faces to implementing mass deportation. While sanctuary cities cannot completely block federal authorities from acting by not actively collaborating with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities, these cities often can help low-risk immigrants (those not considered dangerous or a flight risk) avoid deportation.

The consequences for families, both abroad and at home, of who stays and how they stay must be addressed at the community level.

Community Advocacy Strategies

All the organizations consulted for this article agree that the full dissemination of information—especially making sure immigrants know their human and civil rights—is a critical strategy. Strengthening community support networks, building helplines, and distributing educational materials are all part of their overall planned response.

According to the Immigrant Defense Project, immigration and enforcement agents are using the tactic of posing as police officers to enter the homes of immigrants with excuses such as investigating identity theft or chasing suspects. Tactics also include phone calls, where agents request personal information or confirm addresses under false pretenses.

“Since 2016, we have implemented the ICE Free Zone campaign to educate and empower the Latino community by informing about our constitutional rights to know how to protect yourself and how to protect your family, your home, and your neighborhood,” says Nicholls.

It’s worth remembering, in short, that immigrant protection work is not new, and not limited to a conservative political environment. Nitza Segui, who is president and executive director of Latinas en Poder (Latinas in Power), a transnational feminist Latina network, recalls that “during the Biden Administration, there were deportations.”

Regardless of the administration, Segui says that the consequences for families, both abroad and at home, of who stays and how they stay must be addressed at the community level.

“The conditions under which they stay and what that means for families who depend on the income of people who are immigrants in the United States must be considered,” Segui notes about providing full support to immigrant communities.

Segui adds that because women are more vulnerable throughout their migration pathway, grassroots organizations working to defend immigrants should adopt a gender-equity focus: “We are going to see what there is going to be—that is, we know that there are going to be changes and that it is going to greatly affect the women’s agenda.”