A look at the current state of immigration crackdowns

Since President Donald Trump has taken office, his cabinet has continued to ramp up mass deportation efforts. These efforts have led to immigration raids and a massive drop in border crossings. In some instances, ICE agents were seen raiding workplaces while hiding their faces.

Joining “Horizonte” to discuss the current state of ICE crackdowns and the short and potentially long term impacts of what is happening on Arizona is Dr. Edward Vargas, an Associate Professor in ASU’s School of Transborder Studies, immigration attorney Delia Salvatierra and Reyna Montoya, a DACA recipient and founder of Aliento AZ, a group that serves immigrants.

When asked how Salvatierra advises her clients, she said, “It’s very difficult, and it’s on a case by case basis. The motto in the office is, ‘One client, one case, one family at a time,’ and you handle it as best you can. And when there are no options, you are as honest as you can be. When there are options, and especially when there are citizen children, in the middle of this tug of war between whether they should leave or stay.”

According to a study by Dr. Vargas and others, “There’s an uptick in people who are are saying that they’re not, for example, reporting crimes, what we call the chilling effect of people not engaging with, whether it be police, city folks, school officials, so on and so forth.”

And according to Montoya, that fear does not just exist in the parents, but the kids too.

“You have to think about it, is your in constant level of hyper vigilance,” Montoya said. “Since the moment that you wake up, and your parents are dropping up into school, our kids are going into school constantly thinking with that fear. And that anxiety is the last time that I get to hug mom and dad. And when they’re in the classrooms, we’re not only shielded from the students, we work with educators, with school teachers.”