Texas’s McAllen The front desk of immigration lawyer Alex Martinez’s well-lit offices has been humming with business.
The legal practice, which is located on a quiet street corner about 8 miles north of the bridge that connects the United States and Mexico, has noticed a significant increase in the number of persons calling and visiting the office in person who are looking for an immigration lawyer.
Many of those customers said they or their family members voted for President-elect Donald Trump, who won by less than 3 percentage points last month in Hidalgo County.
Hidalgo County hadn’t supported a Republican for president since 1972 until this year. It is currently one of 14 counties on or close to the border that supported Trump, many of them for the first time in decades.
According to Martinez, they think he is a competent businessman. Having money in the family appears to be more significant than obtaining legal status or avoiding removal.
Over half of the 35 states with undocumented immigrant populations over 50,000, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center report, supported Trump in this election. This puts undocumented immigrants, immigration lawyers, and immigrant rights organizations in those states in a challenging position as they prepare to oppose Trump’s proposed immigration policies, which are backed by the majority of voters in their area.
Kelli Stump, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and many of the almost 16,000 attorneys who are members of her group have witnessed the phenomenon firsthand. Stump added that many of her clients, who are based in Oklahoma, where Trump won every county, either voted for him or have family members who did.
They don’t think their family member will be deported by Trump. “They believe their family member may be safe, but Trump is going to deport the criminal or the person who just crossed the border,” Stump stated.
She sees other lawyers using social media and email chains to try to avert potentially significant changes to immigration enforcement, such as the termination of birthright citizenship and the deportation of entire families, which Trump reaffirmed as policy objectives in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month.
We’re preparing for battle. According to Stump, we simply do not yet know where the conflict will take place.
Similar preparations are being made in the town of San Juan, which is only 15 minutes east of McAllen, according to activists with the immigration advocacy group La Uni n del Pueblo Entero (LUPE).
Since the election, Joaqu n Garc a, the organization’s director of community organizing, has observed an increase in dread and anxiety in this border neighborhood, particularly in light of Trump’s proposal to deport entire families together, regardless of their legal status.
When people hear that, they become afraid. People have asked me, “What’s going to happen?” Or a few years ago, I obtained my naturalization. Do they intend to pursue me? Am I still in danger? Garc said. We’re also telling people that if you live in the United States, you might want to think about applying for U.S. citizenship in order to have a little more protection, but we’re not even sure if that protection will still be able to prevent you from being deported to a country that you may have never visited.
Garc a’s organization is one of several across the country that are either hosting or planning to launch know your rights information sessions for the public, includingSiembra NCin North Carolina,Project New Yorkerin Queens and theUNLV Immigration Clinicin Nevada. In Kansas City, Missouri, immigration attorneys have begun passing outred cardsthat list residents rights should they be approached by immigration officials.
Garc a said he s been advising families to keep an easily accessible cache of documents somewhere in their homes in case of a removal order. Their birth certificate from their country of origin, proof that they have been in the United States and have paid taxes, money, and, if they have children who are citizens of the United States, a power of attorney allowing someone to act on their parents’ behalf in court should the parents be deported would all be included in that file.
That s exactly the kind of precaution Maria, whose last name is being withheld because of her undocumented immigration status, is working on now.
Maria left her home country 18 years ago, leaving her then-infant son with extended family to earn a living doing farm work in the U.S. Since then, she and her husband had twin daughters, who are now in their teens and are U.S. citizens. She pays LUPE $40 a year for access to legal and other services in Hidalgo County.
She has been paying attention to the incoming president s words through news reports and social media.
Now we are more than scared, we are frightened, tortured, day after day, she said in Spanish.
She said her family doesn’t ask for anything “we know how to live with very little” but she has one request to the incoming Trump administration: that her family be allowed to stay together, so her daughters can have a better life in the country where they were born.
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