Oscar Silva, who arrived illegally in the United States and after spending the majority of his life there, is threatened with deportation with the return of Donald Trump to the White House on January 20 and his program on immigration.
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Born in Mexico, Oscar Silva, 24, was still a baby when he crossed the border between Mexico and the United States with his parents.
The young man went to university in Texas, a southern American state, did an internship in Congress in Washington and then married an American, Natalie Taylor. Despite this, he cannot access a work permit or a driving license.
“I’m American in every way, apart from papers,” he explains in his home in Denton, near the Texan city of Dallas.
AFP
Many, like Oscar Silva, are nervously waiting to know if the president-elect will keep his promise to expel all illegal immigrants from the United States, as well as to end land tenure.
Oscar Silva had hoped to benefit from the “Keeping Families Together” program aimed at simplifying obtaining legal status in the United States for spouses of American citizens.
But this program announced by outgoing President Joe Biden in June was revoked by a federal judge because, according to the decision, it was contrary to American laws governing immigration.
It was to benefit 500,000 people. According to the immigration advocacy group FWD.us, 81% of these people are working and have lived in the United States for more than twenty years on average.
Further south, in El Paso on the border with Mexico, Mirna Cabral arrived in the United States at the age of five. Married to an American for ten years, she had two children before becoming widowed in 2023.
AFP
If this 37-year-old mother were to be deported after Trump came to power, her children, now aged 10 and 12, would find themselves without parents.
“For my children, I am American. And they’re ten times more American than even their father, you know. I couldn’t take them with me,” she explains.
“How could I separate them from their place of life, from their house, from their dreams, from everything that belongs to them?”, she adds, wishing “to be at their side (…) and see them become someone important, perhaps the next president of the United States. I want to be here to see it,” she concludes.
AFP
“Hope for the best”
Born in Sierra Leone, Foday Turay arrived in the United States at the age of seven. He was able to go to school, because in the United States public education is guaranteed regardless of the person’s legal status.
Married to an American and a father, he discovered that he was undocumented by his mother when he went to take his driving test.
“I started asking questions like: ‘How? What happened? Tell me how I came?'” he explains.
He and Mirna Cabral benefit from the DACA program, established under Barack Obama to protect from deportation immigrants who arrived illegally in the United States when they were minors and often nicknamed “Dreamers”.
“DACA is my last shield,” says Foday Turay. “All we know is America, and so if this program ends, it will put thousands of us in limbo.”
“I hope he only focuses on deporting criminals, because America is a country of immigrants,” he adds, referring to Donald Trump.
Getty Images via AFP
“We remember what we felt” with the first Trump administration between 2017 and 2021, explains Alan Lizarraga of the migrant defense organization Border Network for Human Rights.
“We remember what we felt when we saw children being taken from their parents (…) when we saw the dehumanization of a person who comes here for a better life,” he said. .
In his wallet, Oscar Silva keeps a card with the telephone numbers of his family and a lawyer, in case he is arrested.
“What I can do now is just hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” he says.
