The president-elect of the United States has vowed to mount the largest deportation campaign in the country's history. In the south of the country, concern rose a notch as soon as the results were announced.
Will Trump 2 be tougher than Trump 1? Throughout the campaign for the White House, the Republican billionaire hammered home his violent rhetoric towards migrants who “poison the blood“American or”eat cats“, while reaffirming his plan for mass deportations. Re-elected for four years with ease to everyone's surprise, Donald Trump did not wait: he once again mentioned his desire to launch the largest campaign of mass expulsions in the history of United States.
If this migration management is still poorly defined, a feeling of anxiety, even panic, is gaining on migrants on American territory. This is particularly the case in Arizona where it is estimated that 250,000 people do not yet have authorization to live in the United States.
Leaving the immigration services building in Phoenix, Sara, who arrived in 2021 from Honduras, is anxious. She walks quickly and hesitates to answer our questions. She confides: “If they don't grant me asylum, they're going to give me a deportation order… I don't think I'll be able to get it before Trump arrives in January, it rarely lasts less than a year before they respond to you. It's a very long process.”she laments.
“We are no longer in a marathon, here we are running a 100 meters” confides, for his part, José Patino. With a lump in his throat, this coordinator of the migrant aid association Aliento has just come out of a meeting with migrant aid associations, during which all the participants studied possible legal recourse when Donald Trump is inaugurated.
However, it is not Donald Trump who scares him the most. Some asylum seekers say they have discussed a plan for “self-deportation” if the persecution proves unbearable. José is therefore considering solutions for rehousing migrants in Mexico, or in other countries.
“What scares me is not the president, but those who are behind him,” he confides. Before specifying: “People, like his advisor Stephen Miller or those at the Heritage Foundation, I was able to speak with them. And they told me that it disgusted them to imagine living next to people like me… I think that to satisfy them, Trump will have to give them a piece of meat, and deport certain migrants. The most horrible thing today is the pleasure they take in watching us suffer. concludes, sorry, José.
Larry arrived from Vietnam two years ago. Since then, he has been trying to renew his work permit. Today's migrants (whom he calls “boat people“) are not doing things correctly, according to him: “Every day, you see the boat people for the papers… But you have to do it legally, not illegally. You have to do like me and follow their rules, work and pay your taxes. That's all!“
Felix doesn't worry about it either. Arriving from Rwanda in 2017, he is convinced that Trump is bluffing with his mass expulsions. Depending on their situation, the degree of concern varies among these Arizona immigrants. But a feeling of “every man for himself” is emerging, without anyone yet knowing precisely what Donald Trump's migration policy will look like.
