On the Lake Street corner where Edwin, an undocumented Ecuadorian, waits for work, he’s heard two responses since former President Donald Trump was re-elected this week.
One is fear, from undocumented workers or asylum-seekers who fear they will be deported.
The other is support for Trump — from day laborers with green cards who say there is too much competition for too few jobs.
Twin Cities immigrant rights and legal groups, meanwhile, say they’ve been flooded with calls since Trump’s re-election.
During his campaign, Trump promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, put an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and curtail the use of temporary protected status, which allows immigrants to live and work in the U.S. if conditions are unsafe in their home country.
Minnesota immigrant rights groups say they plan to push back on the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies they fear are coming. They have already swung into action, educating immigrants about their rights, forming crisis legal teams to halt deportations, helping undocumented immigrants get driver’s licenses, and pushing for state action, like passage of the North Star Act.
Edwin, 37, spent the last seven months standing on the sidewalk on Lake Street near Interstate 35W that workers call “la parada” or “la oficina,” Spanish for “the stop” or “ the office.”
While he has already started the asylum process and hopes that provides him some protection if new laws are put in place, he says many of those on the corner don’t have that buffer.
“In the case of my colleagues here, they do have that fear because they don’t know if they will be deported,” he said.
‘Always attacking us immigrants’
On Wednesday, when Donald Trump’s victory was confirmed, Ma Elena Gutierrez, executive director of Fe y Justicia, received many calls from other immigrants, who like Edwin, were wondering what they should do from now on, or what will happen if they get deported. Gutierrez tried to reassure them and promised that they will continue to organize.
“I feel concerned, there are a lot of exaggerated measures that I heard he (Trump) wants to implement, ” she said. “And that’s the rhetoric, everything he has talked about during this election has always been attacking us immigrants.”
Fe y Justicia provides legal help and health care services for immigrant workers and their families in central Minnesota. Gutierrez said the nonprofit will keep training workers and informing immigrants of their rights.
She remembers when the border patrol showed up to people’s workplaces during the first Trump presidency. The community was scared, and Gutierrez said that fear also passed down to the children. Members of the community did not report racist crimes out of fear.
On the day after the election, Pablo Tapia, executive director of Asemblea de Derechos Civiles (ADDC), brought a group of people to pass the Minnesota drivers license test, as part of the state’s Drivers Licence for All program. Six out of seven people passed the test, and Tapia said some of them cried with joy.
Tapia said ADDC is also planning to inform the community about their rights, and organize workshops to make sure the community is safe.
“We are just going to have to be very proactive, creative and fearless,” Tapia said. “A lot of people know what to do, but there are a lot of newcomers, and those are the ones we want to reach, they are the priority.”
During the previous Trump presidency, activists and immigrant groups in Minnesota had deployed different strategies to defend immigrant rights; placarding “know your rights” signs on police cars, or setting up rapid response teams in case of deportations by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“We have to leave the fear, because with fear, we cannot achieve this,” Gutierrez said. “What we want is to be safe.”
Micaela Schuneman, senior director of immigration and refugee services at the International Institute of Minnesota, remembers that fear was already a tactic used by the Trump administration in 2016.
“One of the things that we learned from the first Trump administration is that they stoked a lot of fear in immigrant communities,” she said. “They used very inflammatory language to create a sense of fear, to create a sense of instability.”
The future administration does not have the infrastructure to carry out mass deportation as it promised, said Schuneman, at least not as quickly. However, in addition to scaring communities, Trump might go back to other policies he implemented during his first term in office.
“The most immediate change that impacted our work directly was to reduce the number of refugees that we resettled each year,” said Schuneman. “We anticipate that it would be something he would want to do again; he has said that he wants to reduce the number of refugees that enter the United States.”
Pushing back on fear
Agencies will resettle up to 125,000 refugees in the United States in fiscal year 2025, and the International Institute of Minnesota will keep providing its services. The Immigrant Law Center will do the same. Its policy director, Julia Decker, stressed that the law remains as it was before the election.
“Nothing in the immigration law has changed even though the election has happened and we know with a fair amount of certainty that there will be a new administration in January. Nothing right now has actually changed in terms of the immigration laws or processes,” Decker said.
She said while there’s been some declarations of what Trump’s immigration policy could look like, nothing has been set in stone.
Decker said that uncertainty can cause some stress or anxiety for some people but the recommendation is to fact-check with a legal expert anything people hear regarding immigration cases.
Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid has already scheduled community outreach sessions. On Nov. 13 they’ll be at Waite House and on CareerForce on Lake Street. Some of the sessions will be focused on immigration court.
Danielle Hendrickson, managing attorney for Mid-Minnesota, also said the group is planning additional educational sessions for December to teach community members how Trump’s proposed policies could affect them.
Edwin said it’d be helpful for more people to hear from an expert. He said lack of reliable information among the group of laborers has led to increased arguments since the election.
“There are many things that my colleagues don’t know and that’s why they have that fear,” he said.
COPAL, a Latino advocacy organization, said Trump’s threat of mass deportations isn’t the first time immigrant communities have been targeted.
Wendy Zúñiga, communication director for COPAL, said the fear comes from past experiences.
COPAL’s executive director, Francisco Segovia, said he remembers seeing the impact and fear in the Latino community after the 2006 ICE raids at the Swift meat-processing plant in Worthington.
The group has been focused on helping undocumented Minnesotans obtain their drivers license since the passing of the Drivers License for All law.
But with Trump’s re-election they expect to do other work as well.
“We’re also working on creating pamphlets and documents to help fight that psychological fear that comes with a new president that, for some reason, is not targeting your demographic in a positive way,” Zúñiga said.
Segovia said Latinos across the country, regardless of documentation status, could be affected by Trump’s victory given his rhetoric.
“People who have those biases will look at us all in the same way,” Segovia said.
But on a state level, local rights groups still hope to make a difference. If Democrats hold enough seats in the Minnesota House, activists plan to push the North Star Act again. During the last legislative session, the DFL trifecta failed to pass this bill that aimed to make Minnesota a sanctuary state for immigrants and prevent police from cooperating with ICE on deportations. This is already the practice in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
“They need to make it their No. 1 priority to protect immigrants on a state level, because they won’t have that protection on the federal level,” said Erika Zurawski, co-founder of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC).
The group also plans to push for temporary protected status for Ecuadorian immigrants while President Joe Biden is still in office.
MIRAC participated in a Minneapolis protest on the day after the election along with multiple activist groups. Demonstrators condemned anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, attacks on reproductive rights and police violence as well as the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza.
“The Republicans will try to pass federal legislation that will be very harming to a lot of people, and not just immigrants, [but] trans rights, women’s rights, we should be watching out for attacks on voting rights, especially for African Americans,” said Zurawski. “We can stay strong together, we can build a movement that makes it very hard for this government to do its day-to-day work.”
