Summary
Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign has reignited fears among undocumented migrants with promises of “mass deportations” and migrant communities are bracing for uncertainty and a new wave of nativism.
His administration plans to target those deemed public safety or national security threats, potentially reinstating workplace raids and using military resources.
Advocates warn that “collateral arrests” could sweep up migrants without criminal records.
Many, like “Dreamers” protected under DACA, fear family separations, while others, such as Carlos in NYC, hope Trump’s economic policies might benefit them.
“A lot of Latinos, those who can vote, did so because they think he [Trump] can improve the economy. That would be very good for us too,” said Carlos, an undocumented Mexican who lives in New York City.
20 years ago I read an article in the Atlantic or New Yorker or salon or something good and it was a Japanese American author talking about going home over Thanksgiving and how her family and relatives were super gung-ho about the, then new, anti-arab, thinly veiled “anti-terrorist” initiatives that Shrub’s administration was ratcheting up after successfully getting the left to support The Patriot Act, which enshrined surveillance at a level that had never been tried before.
Anyway, the author then revealed that her grandmother had been sent to Internment camps in the 1940s in the US and her dad had been born there.
TLDR;racism overrides all rationality. If Japanese Americans who were interned as villains during WWII 100% due to pure racism can’t understand that scapegoating a minority group only leads to bad things, then the broader public has no hope.