(start with a scene. I don’t have a good one yet. This is a backup in case I don’t find a better one: Just two days after the presidential election results were announced, a group of recent migrants gather around a dozen or so round tables inside Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. They are here to share their stories with a group of student journalists. The environment was casual and welcoming, despite the tension in the air from the looming second Trump presidency just around the corner. One of those migrants is Sebastian Galeano, a 29-year-old asylum seeker from Colombia.

Galeano has only been in the U.S. for seven months. He says he might get killed if he goes back home. [insert quote from Galeano])

Although it is not yet clear how Trump will enforce his proposed immigration policies like mass deportations, immigrants and advocates are bracing themselves. Most are preparing for increases in detention, deportation, and family separation, in addition to fear within immigrant communities.

Trump made gains with groups of voters that the Republican party has not had this level of success with in recent years. For example, Trump won over many Black and Latino voters, especially men, which surprised people who were not closely following these groups in the past few years. He also made gains with young voters. 

[List key results/stats]

Experts who study political trends among Latino voters, however, were not surprised by the results. Julio Ricardo Varela, MSNBC columnist and founder of The Latino Newsletter, wrote on X as election results rolled in, “[I] am not engaging anyone who can’t understand why Latinos voted who they voted this election cycle. If you need explanations today, you can read my last 3 years of work. This was always possible. The results do not surprise me.”

Patricia Fernández-Kelly, a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University, says her research shows that anti-immigration sentiment is present even among immigrant populations. The longer an immigrant stays in a country, the more they absorb some of the attitudes of the larger population.

“Older immigrants from anywhere, the longer they have resided in the country, the less sympathetic they are going to be towards more recently-arrived immigrants,” she said. “Even fairly recently arrived immigrants don’t want other immigrants, even from their own country.”

Recent migrants from Central and South America are reacting differently to Trump’s gains among Latino voters. While some are disappointed in what they feel is their own community turning on them, others understand where the resentment is coming from, even if they don’t agree with it. 

Luz Herrera, one of the migrants at the church in Brooklyn, says she and her family are getting many services that previous migrants did not get, which can understandably lead to frustration and resentment. 

Herrera, a 39-year-old asylum seeker from Ecuador, is one of the over 200,000 bused to New York City from the southern border, along with her husband and four children. They are currently staying at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, one of the many places functioning as shelters for migrants. She and her husband have work permits and are undergoing the asylum process. She has access to English language classes. Her children are all studying.

[Luz Herrera quote about fleeing because of violent groups, so understanding the sentiment of wanting people to be safe]

“We aren’t criminals, but there are some who give us a bad name,” says Sebastian Galeano. “Let’s hope Trump doesn’t get confused between us and them.”

Though some of these migrants are hopeful that Trump will only go after criminals, he has vowed to target all undocumented migrants, so it is not clear whether he will make that distinction. For instance, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric targeting Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, is leading many of them to leave Springfield. They are deciding to leave despite being there lawfully – many of them are on Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Trump’s campaign pushed forth highly inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric, but Trump has not shared many details on how he plans to accomplish his sweeping immigration proposals. At an Arizona rally in October, Trump mentioned wanting to hire an additional 10,000 agents to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, with no plan for how he will accomplish that or secure funding for it. Trump has also proposed mass deportations of millions of people and building new detainment centers.

According to the New York Times, Trump will have a very difficult time getting the resources to implement his proposed policies. Many candidates, especially Donald Trump, rely on hyperbolic rhetoric on the campaign trail to energize their base without any realistic details on how they will put their proposals in action.

However, experts and advocates are making predictions for what’s to come based on what they saw during the first Trump presidency. This includes policies like Safe Third agreements, Remain in Mexico, and Title 42. Safe Third agreements with countries in Central America required asylum seekers traveling through those countries to first seek protection there before they get to the U.S.-Mexico border. Remain in Mexico is a Department of Homeland Security policy which requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico until their U.S. court date. Title 42 is a policy that was revived during the COVID pandemic which allowed for turning away migrants arriving at the southern border on the basis of public health concerns. This policy ended in 2023 by the Biden administration with the end of the pandemic.

Amelia Frank-Vitale, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University says, “the discourse that came from the Trump administration the first time around is very similar to the discourse that’s coming this time, which is terror…emboldening ICE agents and border patrol and terrorizing immigration.”

Frank-Vitale adds that this is not just about discourse, but that one unique thing about asylum law compared to other areas of law is that its interpretation can be changed at the hands of judges. The Attorney General can make decisions which set new precedents for asylum law, which we saw during the first Trump administration.

“The incoming Trump administration is going to build on what the Biden administration has done to basically make people who show up at the southern border ineligible to seek asylum,” she says. “Although US law says that you can seek asylum in the United States regardless of how you enter the country. It’s very, very clear in the 1980 Refugee Act.” She says that people who come to the southern border to seek asylum will have to eventually prove in court that they first tried applying for asylum in other countries they crossed through.

“I am not hopeful that anything that makes things fairer or better for immigrants is coming in the next administration,” she says. She thinks the incoming Trump administration will “make a whole lot of people removable who aren’t currently removable,” such as people on TPS and DACA.

One thing we know based on previous border crackdowns is that stricter immigration enforcement does not necessarily deter  migrants who want to cross the border. Anuj Gupta, CEO of The Welcoming Center (TWC), says the grit and perseverance of migrants who go through difficult journeys to get to the United States shows that they are determined to make it to their final destination. He says the U.S. should welcome people with that level of grit and determination.

“The issue is not that people want to come to this country,” he says. “The problem is that we don’t have a system to accommodate them.”

As a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization, TWC provides community support and a wide range of services for migrants, including language training, entrepreneurship support, and leadership workshops. Elizabeth Jones, Strategy and Impact Director, says preparing for the possibility of a second Trump presidency means responding to changing community needs and emphasizing wellness, while maintaining TWC’s current programming.

“We need to provide a way for people to be able to express their fears,” she says. “Wellness will be threatened.”

[End with something from migrants at the church in Bay Ridge]