The phone calls began streaming in to immigration lawyers in Polk County soon after November’s presidential election.
“So, I did have a lot of people calling right after the election — very worried, very scared,” said Ivelisse De la Fe, a Lakeland lawyer. “It was very sad, just hearing these people crying, ‘What is going to happen now? Where do I go?’”
Those callers were concerned that Donald Trump’s election to a second term as president signaled a harsh approach toward undocumented immigrants after he takes office Monday. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to conduct “mass deportations” if elected, even suggesting that he would use the military to carry them out.
Alison Foley-Rothrock, another immigration lawyer with a Lakeland office, also received a spate of calls following the election.
“Actually, most of the people that I’ve spoken to about it are people who have legal status but who are still terrified for themselves and their families, other people, family members that maybe don’t have status — but also, like I said, for themselves,” Foley-Rothrock said, “People are afraid that even if they have legal status, they’re going to be under attack. That’s our concern too.”
Trump made immigration a chief element of his campaign. While he attacked the Biden Administration for a significant increase in illegal crossings at the southern border, Trump also talked about removing millions of people living in the country without authorization.
Of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, approximately 1.2 million reside in Florida, according to the Pew Research Center.
De la Fe has been seeking to calm the nerves of local migrants, while also recognizing the likelihood that a dramatic change in national immigration policy is coming.
“I do not want for people to be more scared than what they are,” she said. “I know it is a scary situation, but I do not want to instill that fear. It’s not definitely what I am. I’m telling my clients, ‘We have to wait. We have to see what really and truly happens. And of course, we have to be prepared.’”
The Ledger spoke to lawyers and advocates before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called for a special session of the Florida Legislature. Among other actions, DeSantis has asked lawmakers to mandate “maximum participation” by local law enforcement in cooperating with federal immigration authorities, establish unauthorized entry to the country as a state crime and create a “rebuttable presumption that illegal aliens are flight risks” to deny them bail.
Is Trump’s plan feasible?
Just how realistic is Trump’s pledge to deport millions of people?
Jean-Pierre Espinoza, a Lakeland immigration lawyer with more than a decade of experience, said the new administration will face many obstacles. One factor: The aggressive approach the Trump Administration took in his first term has left the immigration court system overwhelmed, with cases backed up for years.
Pressured to reach quotas for removals, many immigration judges became burned out and quit, Espinoza said.
“So, if you put more people in remote proceedings, without opening more courts and training more judges or having more detention centers — I mean, if you put more people in removal proceedings without the logistics, what is going to happen is that the system is going to be backlogged,” Espinoza said. “There’s no way to go around and try to remove people without — I mean, they have the right to defend themselves in a court of law.”
Foley-Rothrock agreed that the immigration system is still feeling the effects of Trump’s first term.
“He eliminated targeted immigration enforcement,” she said. “He said that it’s basically open season — ‘We’re not going to just target people who have criminal records or prior deportations. We’re going to go after everybody.’ But what that led to was this incredible slowdown in the system, so that even today we’re getting court hearing dates that are two, three, four years out for hearings.”
Currently, certain charges against undocumented immigrants require mandatory detention, but others often result in releases, Espinoza said. Republicans have signaled a willingness to see more suspects held for collection by agents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. In the first days of the new session, the U.S. House passed the Laken Riley Act, which would require the Department of Homeland Security to detain certain undocumented immigrants arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting.
The Senate had not passed the bill as of Thursday morning.
“So, if you get the resources to open more immigration courts with more judges and more detention centers, more prosecutors, maybe at least some of his idea of removing more people might be doable, but only in that scenario,” Espinoza said.
Enforcement changes expected
The Trump Administration could try to speed the cases of people who already have received removal orders, De la Fe said.
“You can’t just go knock on doors and be like, ‘Hey, show me your papers,’” she said. “So, I do think that there has to be some sort of order. And I guess those people that already have an order of removal, that have been checking in with ICE for a while, would be on that priority list.”
Trump does have other options for prompt deportations, Espinoza said. One is to discontinue Temporary Protected Status designations from some of the 17 nations whose migrants now have it, among them El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras.
The most significant tactic Espinoza expects is a change in DHS’s approach toward prosecutorial discretion. Each administration determines priorities for the removal of undocumented immigrants. President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s policies upon taking office in 2021, directing DHS to center its enforcement actions on immigrants considered a threat to national security, border security or public safety.
Trump administrationPolk County native Morgan Ortagus offered role as envoy to Middle East
Under Biden, the right to exercise discretion has extended from prosecutors down to ICE agents, Espinoza said. Trump is likely to greatly curtail the discretionary authority of all in the system, he said.
The Trump Administration could also expand the “expedited removal” program, which allows prompt deportation without due process if the government establishes that the person entered the country without authorization within the past two years.
An estimated 4.7 million households are “mixed families,” including undocumented members and others who are American citizens or legal residents. During an interview in December, Trump suggested that such families should be deported together, a concept also espoused by Tom Homan, Trump’s announced “border czar.”
“I don’t think anyone looks at that as a realistic possibility,” Foley-Rothrock said, noting that it would require a constitutional amendment to revoke birthright citizenship.
“And at the same time, we know from our first go-round with the Trump Administration, that they don’t care what the law is,” she said. “They will ignore the courts. They will ignore the law. They will ignore their own regulations. They’ll even ignore what they said yesterday and basically just do what they want. The name of the game seems to be causing fear by causing confusion and mayhem.”
DACA recipients worried
Local advocates worry about the status of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program created by former President Barack Obama in 2012. That program granted protection from deportation for certain undocumented immigrants who entered as children, allowing them to pursue work permits.
DACA has faced legal challenges that are not yet resolved. The first Trump Administration halted new applications for DACA status, though two-year renewals have continued.
Nancy Futch of Lakeland has been an advocate for immigrants going back to the 2000s, when she was a high school recruiter for Traviss Technical College. She worked to help undocumented students obtain their GEDs so that they could enroll at Traviss.
Futch formed closed bonds with many students from migrant families. Some of her former students went on to obtain DACA status and now have good jobs and children of their own, she said. She has helped many former students with applications for DACA renewals, and she encouraged them to renew early, before Trump took office.
“I have one girl that I know she’s concerned,” Futch said. “She called me in the middle of the night, both nights that Trump was elected.”
Jessica Sanchez, an immigrant from Mexico who became a U.S. citizen, has long advocated for undocumented migrants. She said some seem more concerned than the first time Trump was elected, even though he did not manage to deport massive numbers in his first term.
“I think so, especially because it’s not only him, right?” Sanchez said. “I think that the rhetoric and all of the just horrible language and the outlook that a lot of his supporters have championed is really scary — especially for me, as an immigrant mom with children in our public schools, I’m afraid of the hatred that has been shared toward immigrants.”
Sanchez said she was dismayed to hear reports that increased percentages of Hispanic residents voted for Trump in the 2024 election. That seems to fit with the response that Lourdes Villanueva, director of farmworker advocacy for RCMA, a Florida-based migrant advocacy nonprofit, said she has heard from some undocumented residents.
Many who could be vulnerable to deportation take comfort in statements suggesting that the Trump Administration will concentrate on removing “the worst of the worst.”
“Now, most of the emphasis has been, at least in the talking, is that they will start with criminals,” Villanueva said. “So, I think that has sort of given some relief in terms of, it makes sense that they’re going to focus on criminals. At least, they don’t feel like, ‘We will be the first ones to be targeted or to be deported.’”
‘Preparing for the worst’
As Trump’s inauguration approached, lawyers and advocates concentrated on preparing undocumented residents and their families for what might come.
“The one thing you can always advise is, just the same way you have been, ‘Stay out of trouble,’” De la Fe said. “‘Do not get into a fight. Do not drive. Do not commit a crime.’ That’s what I tell my clients all the time, because the majority of my clients do not have a criminal history.”
De la Fe said she encourages all potential clients to consider every potential option they might have to avoid deportation.
“Every case is individual,” she said. “We need to assess and see, ‘Hey, how is this going to affect you?’ And then let’s look for your options. Unfortunately, that’s the part that breaks my heart. A lot of people might not have other options.”
Foley-Rothrock is taken a similar approach.
“There are some things that can be used defensively in immigration court that aren’t available for them to apply for proactively,” she said. “One of the things that we’ve been doing is talking about being prepared for the worst, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst — doing things like making sure that your children know who they call if you don’t come home from work, that everybody in the household knows not to open the door for strangers, that you know that they cannot search your home without a warrant, and how to assert your rights and to have a lawyer on speed dial.”
Migrant advocacy organizations and some local churches have organized workshops to educate undocumented residents about their rights, she said.
Espinoza also said that he looks for any element that could allow a client to avoid removal. But he said many are preparing themselves for the possibility of deportation, such as by preparing guardianship papers for their children.
Villanueva with the RCMA said her organization also warns migrants to be wary of unscrupulous people, including some lawyers, who will target them with unrealistic promises of legal help.
Villanueva spoke of undocumented immigrants who have been in the country for 15 or 20 years and would do anything required to become legal residents. She said that she hopes Floridians understand the effect that mass deportations would have on agriculture and other industries.
“A lot of the communities would suffer if, in reality, everybody that is undocumented is gone,” she said. “In Florida, the majority of the hospitality, farm work, and all of that — I mean, for Florida, it would be devastating. So again, we are just hoping that there will be some commonsense conversations and not just, throw out the net and send everybody, good and bad and ugly.”
Gary White can be reached at [email protected] or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
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