Eric is a Mexican immigrant living in New Haven, Connecticut. He has been in the United States for eight years, and is a member of Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), a local immigrant rights organization that works to win back stolen wages, fight deportations, and educate immigrants about their rights. He’s happy he found work and a supportive community in New Haven, where his three children were born. But in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s re-election, he’s worried.
“I haven’t committed any crime, but I’m afraid because of what I’ve heard about immigration raids,” says Eric, who asked that his last name be withheld due to concerns for his safety. “I think it’s very bad because this country was built by immigrants from all over the world.”
New Haven currently has many protections in place to prevent the kind of immigration raids Eric fears. General orders prevent police or other city employees from assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in enforcing federal immigration law, except in relation to cases in which a crime was committed beyond simply crossing the border illegally. Longstanding federal policy currently labels schools, clinics, hospitals, courts, houses of worship, and rallies as “sensitive locations” where ICE agents cannot enter to make arrests for immigration violations. New Haven in particular has a long history of hosting undocumented residents in churches while they fight deportation.
But Trump, who has repeatedly promised to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, plans to revoke the “sensitive location” policy, leaving undocumented immigrants further at risk. Undocumented immigrants are not the sole targets of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda: Those granted Temporary Protected Status after fleeing war, gang violence, or natural disasters in other countries, who are here legally, are also at risk of deportation should the incoming Trump Administration phase out those protections. Trump has even talked about revoking birthright citizenship, which would require a Constitutional amendment, as well as denaturalizing immigrants who have become U.S. citizens.
With Trump’s Inauguration less than two weeks away, city officials, nonprofit organizations, and hundreds of the area’s residents are preparing to help defend undocumented New Haven residents, even while acknowledging the power of the federal government in determining immigration policy. New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, who issued the general order preventing city officials from collaborating with ICE in 2020, says the city is now engaged in scenario planning, including locking in federal grant money in contracts so that it can’t be clawed back. Elicker urges against labelling New Haven a “sanctuary city,” however, as he believes that the distinction could paint a target on the city after the Trump Administration takes office—he instead uses the term “welcoming city.”
Kica Matos, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Immigration Law Center (NILC), says her organization has been engaged in scenario planning around a second Trump presidency for the past eleven months. “We’re going to be using the law, particularly litigation and advocacy, to fight off the extreme anti-immigrant agenda of the Administration and challenge the Constitutionality of some of the [Trump] Administration’s plans,” says Matos, who helped formulate New Haven’s 2007 general order banning police from collaborating with ICE while serving as a top city official, and still lives in the Fair Haven section of New Haven, which is home to a majority of the city’s immigrants. “We have also begun to engage in collaboration with other organizations that focus either on mass mobilization or advocacy to make sure we are coordinating our efforts.”
Since Trump’s election, the Fair Haven Immigrant Support Coalition has brought together a wide range of partners—including immigrant groups such as ULA, CT Students for a Dream, and the Semilla Collective; nonprofit organizations such as Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services; activist groups such as Indivisible; New Haven’s public schools, police department, and libraries; legal aid groups; and churches—to make plans to counter Trump’s threats. “We want to build leadership in our community,” says Fatima Rojas, one of the coalition’s volunteers. “We’ve been talking a lot about defeating fear with our strength, with our experiences and knowledge, with our leadership.”
Eino Sierpe
John Lugo speaks at a May Day solidarity rally and march for social justice, human, labor, and immigrant rights in New Haven, Connecticut, May 2017.
“I know the mayor promised he would help our community, but I think the first line of defense for our community is our community,” said John Lugo, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Colombia and co-founder of ULA, after a recent rally in front of City Hall. “We need to understand that if they decide to mobilize ICE agents, we’re the ones who need to know who [ICE agents] are and how we’re going to tell the other people where they are and how we’re going to react when they come to our communities.”
Shoreline Indivisible, an Indivisible chapter based in the eastern suburbs of New Haven, recently hosted an information event with 100 attendees, and has raised several thousand dollars for ULA since the November election. One of Shoreline Indivisible’s leaders, Charla Nich, said they are considering returning to strategies used to combat ICE actions during the first Trump Administration. “We would get a phone call or a text saying, ‘Hey, word is that ICE is at, say, [a business] on Route 80 in East Haven.’ And then whoever was available would just show up,” says Nich. “We’d just stand back, we would watch, we wouldn’t interfere, we would record, and make that available. We might also call the media.”
Matos says that unlike in 2016, when many people were shocked by the election outcome and unprepared for the first Trump Administration’s agenda, “This time around, all over the country, there were really serious efforts to engage in scenario planning so people are more prepared than they ever were. There is also the benefit of having the experience of the first Trump Administration, so people are bringing that wisdom and that level of analysis to be able to guide and help us prepare for this go-round. Our efforts, both from the national perspective and the local perspective, are geared to make sure that we are ready, no matter what comes our way.”