As Day One of the second Trump presidency nears, concerns about his immigration plans grow | In Conversation

On Jan. 20, Donald Trump will return to the White House. A notable part of his campaign was his promise to deport the estimated 11 million people who are in the country without legal authorization, end temporary immigration protection programs, disregard asylum law, and curtail legal immigration.

Luis F. Carrasco, deputy opinion editor, spoke with Sabrina Vourvoulias, senior editor for commentary, ideas, and community engagement, about what the future may hold for immigration under Trump. Vourvoulias grew up in Guatemala and Carrasco in Mexico. Both are U.S. citizens.

Luis F. Carrasco: I am not prone to hyperbole, but I am deeply worried. Not only about what will happen during Trump’s second term, but what is likely to happen the day he’s sworn in. His campaign promised two big things: bring down prices, and mass deportations. Since he’s already walked back doing anything about Americans’ grocery bills, that leaves immigrants as the target (yet again) of his shock and awe Day One posturing. Now, even if he could swing the logistics of it, I don’t believe he will ever get to deport millions of people — if voters aren’t swayed by families being torn apart, perhaps crashing the economy will do it — but how many will suffer from even a perfunctory attempt to fulfill his xenophobic campaign promises?

Sabrina Vourvoulias: I try to limit my hyperbole and catastrophizing to the fiction I write, but I, too, am deeply worried. Trump’s proposed “border czar” Tom Homan is already prepping the ground for separating parents from their U.S.-born children and holding families in detention in “soft-sided” tents (conjuring images of Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Tent City” jail). And over on Fox News, Stephen Miller, the incoming White House deputy chief of staff for policy, is reiterating that deportations are Trump’s No. 1 priority. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have never stopped casing certain neighborhoods — particularly in the early morning hours when people are going to work or taking their kids to school — in order to apprehend folks they suspect are undocumented, but I imagine that activity will escalate exponentially with any “Day One” directive from Trump.

Carrasco: Homan has said the administration will initially focus on immigrants with a criminal history and those with open deportation orders (probably the closest Trump will ever get to being compared with Barack Obama). I’m sure that’s part picking the low-hanging fruit and part generating goodwill, but I doubt it will end there — or that plenty of other immigrants won’t be caught up in any roundup. There’s also the caveat of “criminal history.” To Obama’s credit, enforcement under the so-called deporter-in-chief did focus primarily on those convicted of serious crimes. I get the feeling that under Trump, the bar will be, “Well, they already broke the law by being here.” Now, most immigrants would come here legally if they could (and a country should be able to control its borders), but the system is broken. America needs immigrants to thrive, but the politics make dispassionate legislation impossible. During the campaign, we already saw JD Vance say he was “still going to call them [Haitians] an illegal alien,” even though they are in the country legally under the Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, program.

Vourvoulias: Trump has said he wants to revoke TPS designation for Haitians, but it is unclear whether he can legally do so. The current TPS for Haitians expires in February 2026, and while federal regulations permit a designation to be terminated before the predetermined expiration date, that hasn’t happened since TPS was first established back in 1990. The regulations also require 60 days’ notice of termination, so it’s definitely not a “Trump on Day One” thing. However, 16 nations are currently designated for TPS, and Trump can decide not to extend their TPS designations when they expire. Those impacts could be felt as early as March when the designation for El Salvador expires, or April when the designations for Ukraine, Sudan, and Venezuela expire. But, back to your first point, I have no reason to believe the Trump administration will focus only on what is popularly imagined as “criminal immigrants” in its deportation efforts since so often, already, just being undocumented itself is treated as a crime. Unauthorized reentry (Section 1326 of Chapter 8 of the U.S. Code) is a felony violation, for example, and though it may well be unconstitutional as administered, it can (and probably will) be used to justify the deportation of people who have not been criminally involved in any other way. Is a father or mother of U.S. citizen children who was deported after a workplace raid, and then reenters the country without authorization to rejoin them, really “criminal”? When I put myself in their shoes, I’d probably make the same choice in order to get back to take care of my loved ones.

Carrasco: As you mention putting yourself in others’ shoes, in a way I am heartened by the fact there is a real disconnect between what people think they want and what they will actually tolerate — but it seems that it takes being confronted with reality for that empathy to set in, which by then is a little late for the immigrants caught up in the system. I was chilled with poll results last year that showed around half of Americans support mass deportation (it was closer to 75% for Republicans). Yet, some of those same polls saw a drop in support for deportation once those immigrants were humanized even a tiny bit (“They’ve been here a long time, they have a job.”). Or look at family separation during Trump’s first term, when even Republican support eroded once kids crying out for their parents became the face of the administration’s hard-line immigration policies. But again, by the time people start seeing the kind of “Monkey’s Paw” resolution to their wish of getting rid of undocumented immigrants, bad things have already happened to too many people.

Vourvoulias: Absolutely. The way many ICE arrests took place during the first Trump administration is that agents went into workplaces looking for one undocumented person, and not finding them there, took in others on suspicion of being undocumented, as well. The justification for suspecting someone of being undocumented could range from “looking nervous,” as the link above cites, or being ethnically profiled at a workplace, as in a case that came before a Pennsylvania judge in 2018. And being associated with someone with an immigration retainer could land you in trouble with ICE. I’ve heard from undocumented folks that they will not enter undocumented friends into the contact lists on their phones since phones are one of the first things ICE agents confiscate and comb through to find more people to bring in for interrogation. Grassroots activists often advise undocumented folks not to open their doors to ICE agents unless they have a judicial warrant for a named individual — for fear that if they do open the door, not only the person opening it but everyone else in the house may be taken in for interrogation on suspicion of immigration violations.

Carrasco: You know, I couched it initially as saying I was deeply worried, but the truth is I am afraid. I am afraid not only that families will see their lives upended, but also that things could escalate very quickly into violence. Part of the Trump plan is to use sheriffs (who in a lot of places are almost cartoonishly right-wing) and other local law enforcement to round up immigrants. He has also floated using the military. Those are an awful lot of guns with emotions running high. I think Trump can miscalculate, see this as some sort of macho challenge, and charge headlong into a dangerous confrontation as communities rise up to protect their own. Once it hardens down to those “defending law and order” and those “protecting the vulnerable,” it could tap into all the self-righteous anger and tribalism that’s out there. Here’s that hyperbole again, but I seriously think a worst-case scenario could tip this over into civil conflict.

Vourvoulias: When I was growing up in Guatemala (during the undeclared civil war), American kids who would come to visit were always astonished and horrified at the number of guns out in the open; everyone was armed and uneasy. I can’t believe we’re now imagining the tables turned. But, I am trying to take a cue from immigrants in terms of not diving headfirst into the panic-about-what-will-happen rabbit hole. Ginning up the fear level is Trump’s easiest and most effective “Day One” policy. Fear makes people hide, disengage, cower. But the immigrants I’ve heard from aren’t cowering or disengaging. They’re focused on reinforcing and strengthening existing relationships with business owners, religious leaders and congregations, local officials, and their neighbors. El pueblo salva al pueblo, that’s what I keep hearing.

Carrasco: Well, I hope the people will save the people. I will try and remain hopeful that communities will stand alongside immigrants through peaceful civil resistance, if necessary. That the current clash between Elon Musk and some very vocal xenophobic right-wing activists makes it clear to those who still don’t get it that it was never about illegal immigration at all. That the industries that depend on immigrant labor realize their self-interest now means they must protect those they are willing to exploit. I hope that out of Trump’s fearmongering and promised overreach comes a true reckoning that takes us beyond the easy platitude that we are a nation of immigrants, and to the hard truth that we must defend immigrants if we want to continue being a nation.