“The way that vulnerable immigrant communities feel about the election is that he has been given license to do whatever he wants to do.” Reverend Juan Carlos Ruiz will not say Donald Trump’s name. Ruiz, the Reverend Pastor of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, is known throughout New York in the undocumented migrant community as a champion of undocumented people’s welfare and rights. He came to the US from Mexico in 1986 and was undocumented himself for eight years. “45”, as Ruiz calls the incoming President, is on his mind. Like so many other people and organizations who support undocumented migrants, he knows what is coming, and he is doing his best to prepare.

 

Three weeks have passed since President Donald Trump won the election to become the 47th President of the United States. In his first campaign for the Presidency in 2016, Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric focused on preventing migrants from reaching the US. He famously promised to “build a wall” on the US-Mexico border. This time, Trump has campaigned on deporting immigrants who are already in the US. Back in May, he told a campaign rally in Freeland, Michigan, “On day one, we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Since then, immigrant aid organizations have started planning for how they will oppose Trump’s planned immigration policies. However, the Trump administration is anticipating this battle. In his last presidency, Trump’s immigration policies aimed at ending TPS and DACA were hampered by legal challenges. Stephen Miller, who will be White House deputy chief of staff for policy in the new administration, recently told the New York Times that “Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.”

 

The primary immigration policy goal of Trump’s presidency will be mass deportations. Pew Research Center has reported that there are 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. These people are Trump’s first target. However, Trump has referred to different numbers, in excess of 11 million, for his deportation target. In August, incoming Vice President J.D Vance told ABC News’ Jon Karl, “I think it’s interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let’s start with 1 million. That’s where Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there.” There are a range of possible measures the Trump administration could take. Incoming Border Czar Tom Homan has promised to send ICE agents into cities to make arrests and raid workplaces.

 

Trump’s plan has echoes of Operation Wetback, a mass deportation program of Mexican immigrants under President Eisenhower that deported over a million people, including many US citizens. But what Trump is suggesting would go even further than Eisenhower did. The latest indication of how Trump might go about the deportations came on November 8th, when conservative commentator Tom Fitton wrote on Truth Social, “Reports are the incoming @RealDonaldTrump administration prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.” Trump responded to the comment, “TRUE!!!”. Under normal circumstances, the Posse Comitatus Act prevents the use of armed forces for law enforcement purposes. However, Stephen Miller has promoted the idea that the government would invoke the Insurrection Act which gets around this legal obstacle. Julia Preston, a former national correspondent for the New York Times, told me, “I don’t think that voters are prepared for the level of disruption that this is going to cause.”

 

[interview material about the economic impact of these raids.]

 

The evolution of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church under Reverend Ruiz speaks to demographic trends in America. The proportion of Hispanic people in Bay Ridge, a historically white and conservative neighbourhood, has doubled to 20% since the turn of the millennium. Zion (he would not tell me his last name), the caretaker of the building, showed me around the church’s hall, with its wooden floors, tables with bouquets of flowers, and high ceiling. On a lower level, down on the left, is the church. Rows of pews line an aisle, and at the front is a pulpit where Reverend Ruiz preaches during services.

Just like among voters across America, it seems that there is a sense of resistance to new immigrants and the cultural changes they bring with them at Good Shepherd. Zion, who holds a PhD from MIT and worked at Microsoft for 30 years, is an immigrant himself. “I was born in Soviet Azerbaijan. We fled. And my family has been here ever since. I was Bar Mitzvah’d at the synagogue across the street.” He told me that when Ruiz, who was originally ordained as a Catholic priest before converting to Lutheranism, was appointed Reverend of the Church, there were “suddenly a lot of Hispanic immigrants coming, and a bunch of old white people stopped coming”. In a small room filled with children’s toys just to the side of the hall, Zion points out what he is most proud of in the church: Tiffany-stained glass windows of Jesus and saints praying, now mostly covered up by bookshelves filled with children’s books. Before he leaves, he tells me to enjoy my conversation with “Don Ruiz about being Hispanic”.

[insert more transitory paragraph here – maybe interview w migrants here?]

Reverend Ruiz plans to use the lessons he learned during Trump’s first presidency when Trump returns to the White House in January. He told me, “What works is the very hyper-local organizing. So, during the 45th presidency, we had a corridor of sanctuary houses from Atlantic Avenue all the way to Coney Island, in which houses of worship.” When I ask how far he is willing to go to help undocumented migrants, he tells me, “I am more afraid for the people next to me. I think I know enough of the law that I know that I have within the Constitution. I am not doing anything out of bounds.” Tom Homan recently told the New York Post that harbouring illegal aliens is a felony. He warned people, “Don’t cross that line.” When ICE comes knocking, Ruiz explains, “You know, we have a kind of task force, or teams of people from ICE detention. You know that if one of our families is, you know, the ice police is knocking on their doors, we’ll have 50 people right there, you know, as witnesses or as shields, trying to stop them.” But it is unclear if Ruiz’s community organizers would be able to stop an arrest under the new administration.

 

 

[insert back and forth between immigration aid lawyers and Trump policy thinktank people]

 

[include interview with migrants about how they feel]

 

[end with going back to Ruiz and the church]