‘Exponentially worse’: Immigrant rights groups brace for second Trump term
As Donald Trump prepares for his return to the White House on January 20, immigrant rights groups are bracing in anticipation of a crackdown promised by the president-elect and his allies.
With hardliners like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan selected for key positions related to immigration, humanitarian groups in both the United States and Mexico say they are determined to press forward with their work, but have no illusions about the challenges ahead.
“I’m expecting it to be exponentially worse than the first term,” Erika Pinheiro, director of the immigrant rights group Al Otro Lado, told Al Jazeera.
“I think political persecution is going to be supercharged,” she added, saying she believes rights groups will face spurious legal challenges meant to take up time and resources.
Interviews, campaign speeches and policies floated by Trump and his advisers suggest an ambition to fundamentally reshape the US immigration landscape, with a blitz campaign of mass deportations as well as potential attacks on longstanding rights such as birthright citizenship.
While rights groups say they are prepared to challenge such efforts, they also concede that a second Trump administration will be bolstered by a popular election victory and Republican majorities in Congress, along with experience gained from battles on immigration during Trump’s first term in office.
Mass deportations
Several immigrant rights groups that spoke with Al Jazeera said that not all of Trump’s plans for a second term are clear, but all agreed that one effort, in particular, would be front and centre come January: a campaign to round up and deport large numbers of undocumented people living in the United States.
Advisers such as Miller, an architect of policies such as the ‘Muslim Ban’ and a “zero-tolerance policy for criminal illegal entry” – which intentionally separated migrant parents from their children during Trump’s first term – have suggested that the number of undocumented people could be in the millions.
“He [Trump] seems far more prepared than in his first term,” Vicki Gaubeca, associate director of US immigration and border policy at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera.
“He’s stated over and over again that his day one agenda will be to carry out mass deportations, so we’re fully expecting to see that,” she added, noting that it remains to be seen how the administration will muster the resources necessary to carry out such a large-scale plan.
