Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:
Approaching the end of a complicated and tumultuous year, in so many ways, immigrants and their advocates are regrouping to face 2025 with bigger challenges because the promise of Donald Trump’s mass deportations could become a reality.
Recently, I wrote that during a time of festivities, where many are planning celebrations, trips, and meetups, there is a broad sector of the population, undocumented people and their citizen relatives, who are refining plans to confront a possible deportation by preparing powers of attorney, and looking for other mechanisms to avoid being separated from their families. Some may opt to deport themselves, with their U.S. citizen kids and everything, to avoid the trauma of detention and family separation.
The press is recounting the stories of DACA and TPS beneficiaries preparing themselves for the worst, exposing a broken immigration system where people without criminal record, who work and pay taxes, who have citizen children, and who are active in their communities, cannot legalize their immigration situation in a permanent way.
Some of these stories mention tensions among relatives, as there are some who voted for Trump, thinking that his deportation threats would be centered on “criminals” and would not affect their undocumented relatives. The reality is different.
Ironically, this December 18 commemorates the International Migrants Day, and this year it has a special meaning. Because far from celebrating their contributions, in the United States those immigrants are under attack and at the mercy of Trump’s actions as soon as he takes control on January 20, 2025.
There are marches, hunger strikes, and petitions from pro-immigrant groups and Democratic legislators asking President Joe Biden to renew TPS for certain beneficiaries before Trump takes office next month.
It remains to be seen what actions Trump will take against the people protected from deportation through DACA or TPS, since he opposes both programs. Court battles on various fronts are anticipated. Trump also wants to revoke U.S. citizenship for the children of undocumented parents.
While this legal and human drama develops, at the political level, Republicans are celebrating close majorities in both chambers of Congress and applauding mass deportation. The Democrats continue to look for who to blame for the electoral defeat in 2024, without turning that bright eye on themselves.
Which leads me to a reflection at the end of this year. This immigration stagnation has been in the making for decades. It’s a snowball that becomes larger, downhill, because of politicians’ incapability of seeking consensus to arrive at solutions.
It’s clear that the Republicans are principally responsible for the roadblock obstructing immigration reform at each step, because they believe that legalizing undocumented people, whose labor is vital to our economy, is “rewarding” them, or they are motivated by prejudice or the desire to support many of their campaign benefactors, like those who operate jails or detention centers.
The Democrats’ case is more complicated, because they claim to defend immigrants but have infinitely failed to take advantage of opportunities to advance reform when they controlled the White House and Congress. Acting always on the defensive, especially on border issues, also does not help.
The reality is that, in the 2024 election, voters who bought Trump’s version of “open” borders were motivated, in some cases, by their own prejudices, but also by their fears of what the flow of migrants seeking asylum and arriving in cities around the country would mean for their pocketbooks and livelihood.
And despite everything, those same voters support immigration reform that legalizes undocumented people who are established in the country and, at the same time, brings order to the border. One thing should not preclude the other.
The bombardment of images and messages of chaos and lack of control over immigration and the border helped lead Trump to victory, although the statistics do not support that notion. But he already won, and now the legal battles to stop his extreme proposals begin.
The foundation can still be laid to educate voters about how immigration reform benefits everyone: legalizing essential work in our economy — workers who, with their taxes, finance programs that benefit everyone — and allowing us to know who represents a threat to our security and our communities. I call it getting back to basics.
The best that God did was day by day. There is also one election after another. Formidable challenges lie ahead for immigrants and their advocates. But within the crisis exists the possibility for all parties to evaluate themselves, and discard failed strategies in favor of solutions that have support from a majority of the country. Consensus, and not the extremes, must be our north star.
The original Spanish version is here.
