Young immigrants in the US are preparing for 4 years of fear under the threat of deportation
The immediate danger after the US presidential transition next week is not for the residents of those countries that Donald Trump has considered attacking. For the millions of people inside the United States who will enter four years of terror: undocumented immigrants Trump has vowed to deport en masse.
They include young people who arrived as children and all of their memories of life are only within the US
These people prepare in a thousand ways. They fetched a digital panic button to warn loved ones, when federal agents come. They read their rights and save the phone numbers of lawyers.
Families are encouraged to plan for the worst: having food, shelter and childcare ready in case the adults disappear one day.
Their status will come to light on Wednesday, when US senators will have a chance to question Trump's nominee to lead the border and deportation agencies at his confirmation hearing for homeland security secretary.
“It's a crippling fear,” said Saúl Rascón Salazar, who arrived in the country 18 years ago, at the age of five. His Mexican family came on a temporary visa and never left. She is now a college student and works in fundraising for a California private school.
“I say [this] as a person who hates the terrible and is completely against it. [But] I don't think things are looking good. About everything – emotionally, financially, verbally. I don't see this situation getting any better.”
These young people did not expect to be here again.
Four years ago, they were and hope. Joe Biden, newly elected president of the US, supports a the plan to allow them to stay in this countryand talk of a new immigration law lingered in the air.
Those hopes were dashed. Congress who lack votes legally, Trump has been reelected and immigrants now face a double threat – from the next president and the courts.
Real strikes on election night
Rascón said he felt optimistic, until election night. He did not believe that Trump would win. But the new reality sunk in when he ran for the November 5 election and returned with friends from Arizona.
“It was bitter in the house,” he said, remembering how he and his friends began to face things that would change.
Rascón is an international relations grad at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, so, he said, his first thoughts went 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 moving to another country, and he insists that it took a few days for his personal truth to really hit home.
For example, Rascón said, he urges people in families like his, if they use social networks like him, to avoid publishing their specific hangouts and where they are.
They should set aside lawyers' fees, transportation fees and, in the worst case scenario, long-term babysitters, he said.
Trump insists he has no intention of firing young people like Rascón.
He is one of the most half a million people he enrolled in a program created by Barack Obama in 2012, suspended by Trump during his first term as president and renewed by Biden known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). It permanently delays their deportation if they arrive young, go to school or work and have a clean criminal record.
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Trump is trying to empower the new 'Dreamers'
In a recent interview, Trump suggested that he would deport these young people one last time, referring to them by the common nickname, “Dreamers”; the incoming president even said he would like Congress to protect them with a permanent law.
“We have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people who were brought here at a very young age,” 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 enough reason to be skeptical. “Words are empty,” said Rascón.
After all, during his first term, Trump tried to cancel the DACA program. In his words, he would evicting entire families where the children were born in the US and are full US citizens. In addition, there is a legal challenge to DACA winding its way through the courts.
Above all, Trump's allies vow to punish and prosecute people who disrupt deportations.
A young woman, a college 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 keep the woman's name confidential, as she fears being fired for speaking publicly about what happened to her).
He described being brought by car from El Salvador at the age of two. She received permission a few years ago to travel and re-enter the US to see an ailing grandparent in her home country, which she describes as culture shock.
President-elect Donald Trump unveiled his cabinet picks over the weekend, including Stephen Miller and Tom Homan – who will be tasked with Trump's promise to deport the most people in American history.
A woman recalled one encounter with an El Salvadoran street vendor who called her “chele,” or white. Some started calling him Mexican. Although he is fluent in Spanish, his language is influenced by the voices of the many Mexican Americans around him.
As for the fact that you might be treated like a criminal now, you call it cruel.
“I didn't choose to come to the US,” he said. “How is that?”
Same family, different situation
Another big unknown is the fate of mixed-status families, like Rascón's: His parents and older sibling are completely undocumented, he is in the DACA program and his two younger siblings are natural-born US citizens.
Trump said all families like this can be deported. His ruler of the incoming border later he clarified that he could not fire Natural US citizens – but if their parents are deported, they can decide whether to go with their children.
It is not always clear where they would go. Take the case of Marina Mahmud.
He was born in the Golan Heights in Israel to a Syrian father and a Ukrainian mother. His family's common language at home is Russian.
Mahmud was a toddler when his parents took a trip to the US 20 years ago and never returned home. Now she has a college degree and is working in Michigan as a janitor.
In 2016, he was pulled out of class the day after Trump was elected to meet with his parents and a lawyer and discuss next steps, such as whether to flee the country and whether to go into hiding.
His situation has changed a lot since then: Mahmud has recently received permanent residency through a relative, which means, in theory, he has survived. He is even allowed to travel internationally and has visited Canada three times.
But on election night, he was overcome with grief, thinking of the hundreds of thousands of other Dreamers who don't have the security he found.
When he got off work that night, he heard about Trump's lead on the radio and tried not to cry at the wheel. He got home, opened multiple screens and broke down.
“I cried all night,” said Mahmud. “I couldn't stop.”
He likens it to survivor's guilt.
Mahmud promised his friends in the DACA movement that he will continue to support them and protest with them.
He described sending a text message to his friend after the election: “I will be your shield if I have to be,” said Mahmud, recalling the message.
But he admits that his situation is not guaranteed. Trump and his team have it he thought about undressing immigration and challenging the US Constitution citizenship laws.
Being a human shield in a protest is also not without risks. A permanent resident may still face deportation if convicted certain crimes.
For undocumented immigrants and their allies, four years of fear begin when Trump takes the oath of office in Washington, DC, on Monday at noon ET.
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