Migrants, fearing Trump presidency, rush to secure status
CHELSEA From her room in the emergency shelter at the former Chelsea Soldiers Home, Stephanie Jean has been watching news clips on TikTok with a rising sense of dread: What will happen to her and her 4-year-old daughter, Cricia, if former president Donald Trump is elected in November?
Last week, as the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee seethed with anti-immigrant rhetoric, Jean, a migrant from Haiti, continued her frantic search for a lawyer. As a Haitian who fled violence in her home country, she has temporary permission to be in the United States, but it is set to expire in less than two years. She is determined to apply for a longer-term form of immigration relief; becoming undocumented, she said, is a huge fear.
If we are deported to Haiti, we will die, said Jean, 29.
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With the election looming, migrants in the Boston area are scrambling to secure their legal status, terrified of what the future could look like under a second Trump presidency. In recent campaign speeches, Trump has promised a sweeping range of hard-line immigration policies, including ending birthright citizenship and commencing a mass deportation effort to expel millions of immigrants.
There have been lots of calls for mass deportations. My guess it will take at least the four years Trump may get to get any deportations under way. The lawsuits against them will be multitudinous, the injunctions legion. My advice would be to focus on those with criminal records and young men, if there’s a legal way to do that. Republicans would do better to focus on election integrity and border security, even at this late date.