Immigration is once again a central focus in Donald Trump’s pursuit of the White House. In fact, he was reminding rallygoers of his administration’s record curbing illegal border crossings when an attempt was made on his life a couple of weeks ago.
Less than a week later, during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Mr. Trump promised “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” Like his previous campaigns, he focused on stories of violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants rather than the causes that drive migrants north and the contribution they make to American society.
“His words aren’t empty. It’s not just rhetoric,” Dylan Corbett, executive director of Hope Border Institute, told America. “Unfortunately, because of the division in our country right now and the lack of solutions from Washington for so long, there’s a space that politicians can exploit and promote a politics of fear and instrumentalize immigration for their own personal benefit.”
Mr. Corbett said promising mass deportation may be a way to “score political points,” but the prospect of such a measure “causes a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety among ordinary newcomers in our country, among families, among people in our community.”
Five years ago in El Paso, the border community where Mr. Corbett is based, a gunman entered a Walmart and took the lives of 23 community members in what authorities deemed a racially motivated massacre. “So those words can have a ripple effect that are quite dangerous,” Mr. Corbett said.
Mr. Corbett noted that a quarter of El Paso’s residents are foreign-born and estimated that 50,000 are undocumented, including Dreamers (undocumented immigrants who arrived as children) and their families. Immigrants establish ties where they live, with many attending Catholic parishes, working and raising their families, he said.
A campaign of deportation “would be terrorizing,” Mr. Corbett said. “It would mean the division of families, it would mean fear and constant anxiety for families with children. It would represent a real attack on the family and our community. It would rip us apart.”
Mr. Trump's deportation plan, similar to recent immigration crackdown efforts in the state of Texas, would rely on local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law.
“If we weaponize peace officers against the migrant population, we all lose because the whole community, the whole country, will be less safe because of it,” Mr. Corbett said. “Because we can’t trust each other. And that’s what a politics of exclusion does.”
Anxiety is also rising in immigrant communities in California, according to Isaac Cuevas, director of Immigration and Public Affairs for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Many who may qualify for citizenship or legal residency are rushing to get their application in before the election, he said.
The archdiocese puts on “Know Your Rights” seminars and collaborates with the local Catholic Charities to host citizenship workshops to educate the immigrant community. But leaders have also considered creating new programs that would serve families separated by immigration enforcement efforts.
“It’s a sad reality, but we may have to go down that road,” Mr. Cuevas said, decrying Congressional inaction on the issue. He was also quick to point out that deportations have been a focus for administrations of both parties.
“We need to focus on making the country better, working on creating policies that help people, not that hurt them, that keeps families together rather than keeping them apart,” he said. “We have such a need for reform. Any candidate who looks at that and really sees it as an opportunity for change could really stand to better this country in a way that we haven’t seen in decades.”
Most immigration reforms have focused on enforcement and border security. But the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which President Ronald Reagan signed, legalized millions of undocumented immigrants. The U.S. bishops responded to the measure by creating the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, or “Clinic.”
Today, Clinic has 430 affiliates across the United States that provide immigration and legal services to poor and low-income immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, according to Anna Gallagher, executive director of Clinic.
“The needs are so great, some affiliates have a two-year waiting line for a consultation,” she told America, citing a Center for Migration Studies report finding more than 1,400 undocumented immigrants for every nonprofit legal representative.
“We saw some really bad things happen in the prior [Trump] administration,” Ms. Gallagher said. “We turn back to our Gospel mission, to welcoming the stranger. Mass deportations or family separation goes against our Catholic values. We don’t talk politics. We talk about our Gospel and our mission.”
In 2019, Immigration and Customs Enforcement targeted undocumented immigrants in raids of chicken processing plants in Mississippi. Federal agents detained 680 individuals, many of whom had children in a local school at the time. Ms. Gallagher noted the reaction of the community members, who were heartbroken to see their neighbors deported.
“Proximity changes everything because you see the complexity,” she said. “You have common sense people across this country—across the board politically—and they recognize the needs of the country and that people are fleeing persecution. We could uphold our values and our commitment to human rights. If we could sit down and talk about it, we could fix it.”
The Pew Research Center estimated there were 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States in 2022, about 23 percent of the foreign-born population. Those millions include Dreamers, immigrants who arrived more than 20 years ago and others who have just recently arrived. Around 60 percent of undocumented immigrants entered legally and overstayed their visas.
“A large number of immigrant families are of mixed status, where the children are U.S. citizens, but the parents might be without legal status,” according to Kevin Appleby, senior fellow for policy and communications at the Center for Migration Studies in New York.
In June, President Biden announced executive actions that protect undocumented immigrants who are spouses of U.S. citizens from deportation. But the measure could be reversed by the next administration.
“The biggest issue from a church perspective would be the separation of families and the prospect of children being left alone without their parents,” Mr. Appleby said of the mass deportation plan. “If you were to go through with this, it would impoverish immigrant families. It would leave children traumatized and alone. And it would rip up the social fabric of immigrant communities.”
It often goes unrecognized by voters, but undocumented immigrants enrich the United States socially and economically, he said. Undocumented immigrants provide labor, pay taxes and into the Social Security system. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there are 8.1 million job openings and only 6.8 million unemployed workers.
“They contribute to our society. They are full of faith. They want to be good citizens,” Mr. Appleby said of undocumented immigrants. But Mr. Trump’s base doesn’t see it that way, he said.
“They see immigrants as a threat to their livelihoods and their way of life,” he said. “And [Mr. Trump] taps into that, fully knowing how the system works. So it’s very disingenuous. We have to take him seriously, but whether he follows up on these proposals remains to be seen.”
Despite the negative voices that “dehumanize immigrants,” Mr. Appleby argued that the church and immigration advocates could do a better job articulating the contributions of undocumented immigrants to Middle America. The church, he said, recognizes the need to legalize many of the millions of undocumented immigrants and give them a path to citizenship “so they can be fully incorporated into society.”
“That would be the church's response,” Mr. Appleby said. “It’s quite the opposite of what Trump is proposing, actually.”
