Illegal immigrants prepare for possible deportation

Marcos Gutierrez, director of Hispanic recruitment at John Brown University, came to the United States from Panama with his family in 2003. He was 10 years old. “There was anxiety underneath all the time … kind of a constant trust in God to take care of us,” he said.

Gutierrez’s family, originally from Costa Rica, moved to California, where they applied for permanent residence through a U.S. relative. They followed a legal process, requesting the change of status before their tourist visas expired. But months passed, and no answer came from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Gutierrez’s parents could have returned to Costa Rica to wait for an answer, but the average processing time for their application was between 15 and 22 years. They decided to stay.

“The waiting period was very hard, and I think we didn’t really talk about what it’s like to be here without legal status,” Gutierrez said. “I always thought that if they ever took us back to Panama, that would be fair. Not everyone sees it that way, but that is the law.”

U.S. border authorities have reported roughly 11 million encounters with migrants since 2020, with fiscal year 2023 seeing America’s all-time high of illegal crossings in a single year. At least 1.7 million undocumented migrants have avoided apprehension. These high numbers have strengthened support for President-elect Donald Trump’s continued calls for mass deportations but also prompted questions about how the policies will affect U.S. industries and illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for years.

Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, told an audience last year that if Trump was elected, Homan would oversee “the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.” About two weeks after the election, he said the administration would first deport illegal immigrants with violent records or existing deportation orders.

According to a June CBS News/YouGov poll, 53% of U.S. Latinos favored removing illegal immigrants. But that number drops when asked about blanket removals: Only 24% of Latinos support the deportation of all undocumented migrants living in the United States.

“I definitely think that it’s totally wrong that they opened the border just the way they did,” Gustavo Moran, a Mexican graphic designer for Dallas Baptist University, told me. But when asked about the specifics of mass deportation, he gave a caveat. “I don’t think it’s fair to apply the same rule to everybody in the same way, because if you consider people that are serving in the military … certainly they can be considered for merit,” he said.

Most illegal migrants might not receive deportation orders, depending on the pace of immigration enforcement. “Only 1.3 million people are even ordered deported, and you cannot deport people who are not legally ordered deported,” Daniel Di Martino, graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told me. “People who have committed crimes and the people who have active deportation orders are the ones that Trump appointees said they’re going to go after first.”

Di Martino said the growing number of illegal immigrants entering the country during President Joe Biden’s term may encourage the incoming administration to further prioritize deportation. “I think a lot more attention and resources are going to be paid into how we ramp up deportations in a way that wasn’t paid into [Trump’s] first term,” he said.

Sectors of the U.S. economy that rely heavily upon the migrant labor, especially agriculture and construction industries, could be affected by mass deportations. Reforms that expand legal residence opportunities while reducing migratory backlog could stimulate the economy as deportations take place. Di Martino, who specializes in immigration policy, estimates that young immigrants with a graduate degree or higher reduce the U.S. budget deficit by at least $1 million each over their lifetimes if allowed to stay in the country.

But many Republicans argue that current immigration policies incentivize breaking the law and endanger jobs or other opportunities for Americans. “Because of the great border crisis, there is no appetite among Republican legislators to pass anything that would give legal status to anybody that doesn’t have it,” Di Martino said.

However, Trump’s recent support for H1-B visas and his renewed push to naturalize participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program could mean that a new form of Republican pro-immigration policy is on the rise. In 2018 the Senate repeatedly rejected his offers to legalize 1.8 million DACA recipients in exchange for border wall funding, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week that, this time, “We’d welcome it.”

Di Martino thinks that a bipartisan deal is still unlikely, but a united Republican front in Congress might be enough to tackle the ongoing inefficiencies of the immigration system. “After securing the border, I think that if somebody could lead immigration reform, it would be somebody like Donald Trump,” he said. “And if he supports an immigration reform bill, I think that would make it pass.”

Gutierrez received DACA status in 2014, allowing him to become a high-skilled immigrant and work in the United States. He eventually married, and he gained his citizenship in 2021. But for him, immigration reform continues to be as essential as national security.

“Having laws in place and following through with the consequences is a good thing,” he said. “I think the U.S. can do that and at the same time keep and have those amazing people that really want to contribute to this country. If we’re able to do both of those well, it could help all of the Americas.”