What Donald Trump’s ‘mass deportations’ may mean for Michigan immigrants

• President-elect Donald Trump plans ‘mass deportations’ on day one, according to a campaign spokesperson
• Undocumented immigrants account for about 1.3% of Michigan’s population, according to a 2022 estimate
• Agencies that help refugees start new lives in Michigan predict a surge in arrivals later this year

An early promise for Donald Trump’s second term as president is swift mass deportations once he takes office, a threat Detroit City Council Member Gabriela Santiago-Romero said “is real to many of us.”

The Mexican immigrant is working to protect the interests of the Southwest Detroit communities she represents as well as her own family members, some of whom, she said, are documented and others who aren’t.

“Last time (Trump was in office) it was the federal government sweeping through the streets, and that’s something that I can’t control,” she told BridgeDetroit. “I don’t know what that’s going to look like (this time). All I know is that I’m preparing to lose any kind of power that we have, and then preparing to organize with my community to get it back.”

On Election Day, the Republican candidate swept battleground states, handily defeating Vice President Kamala Harris. National exit poll data shows that Latino voters, particularly Latino men, came out to support Trump in bigger numbers than his previous two runs for the Oval Office. 

While Trump and his advisers have offered outlines, questions remain about how they would deport anywhere close to the 11 million people estimated to be in the country illegally. People who are not US citizens at birth, including immigrants, refugees and naturalized citizens, account for nearly 7% of Detroit’s population. 

Related:

• Trump in Michigan: What data says about illegal immigration, crime and economy
• Blue wall crumbled, Michigan is a swing state again. Maps show how it evolved
• How despair over Gaza war helped Donald Trump win Dearborn. It’s complicated

Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, told Fox News Wednesday morning that Trump plans to implement “mass deportations” on day one. In April, Trump told TIME magazine he would use local law enforcement and the National Guard to implement that plan. 

Immigration advocacy organizations, Southwest Detroiters and others are bracing for whatever decisions Trump and his incoming cabinet make regarding immigration and deportation policy. 

“I was angry, I was crying, I was very upset,” 72-year-old Detroiter Anita Vargas told BridgeDetroit while playing in the park with her great-granddaughter. “I still think he’s gonna manage to send people back that have been here forever.”

Vargas said she didn’t have family members deported, but did have some neighbors and community members face the threat of deportation during Trump’s first term. 

“Even if they came over here legally, I still feel he’s going to want to send them back,” she said. 

Santiago-Romero said her focus is on ensuring there are “local protections” for the immigrant and refugee community in Detroit. In the immediate, she said, the Detroit Police Department has internal policies that prevent officers from profiling and asking for immigration status. DPD is also not allowed to coordinate with US Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) to profile.

Preparing for changes

Agencies that help refugees start new lives in Michigan, often after fleeing war and turmoil in their home countries, have predicted a surge in arrivals at the end of this year.

The uptick is attributed in large part to federal policy that has been admitting more refugees, especially as people escape instability in their home countries.

The nonprofit Samaritas recently estimated it will work with more than 2,000 refugees through next September — a roughly 14% increase from the 1,750 refugees the organization helped by the end of the last fiscal year.

Kelli Dobner, Samaritas’ chief growth officer, said her organization is preparing to see a bulk of the more than 2,000 refugees between now and Jan. 20 — Inauguration Day. She suspects the current administration will be expediting arrivals for new families and individuals. 

“It puts a tremendous strain on us as an organization,” Dobner said. 

During Trump’s first presidency, an early action was implementing a ban preventing citizens from Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, from entering the US. The policy also affected two non-Muslim countries, blocking travelers from North Korea and some Venezuelan government officials and their families. 

At that time, Samaritas was down to “skeleton staff” and resettled few people, as the borders closed and travel bans were issued, Dobner said. There are still unknowns around who exactly would be impacted by Trump’s immigration policies.

Employers rely on refugee populations coming into Michigan, she said. 

“We’ve seen businesses come back from almost going out of business because of these populations. … In the workforce, it will have a tremendous impact here in Michigan if the refugee resettlement program takes a turn downward like it did in Trump’s first term,” Dobner said. 

The Office of Global Michigan, part of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, said 3,775 refugees and special immigrant visa holders came to the state by the end of September 2024. As of July, 2,915 people had arrived from 39 countries, including Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan.

In 2016, Michigan was the fourth-largest state for refugee resettlement, according to a 2017 study from the economic development organization Global Detroit. Most refugees lived outside Detroit in communities such as Warren, Sterling Heights, Southfield, Troy, Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, the report notes.

Undocumented immigrants account for about 1.3% of Michigan’s population, according to a Pew Research Center analysis using 2022 American Community Survey data. 

The American Immigration Council, a national organization that advocates for immigration policies and practices that benefit the country, estimates that the cost of a one-time mass deportation effort of all undocumented people would be no less than $315 billion. 

Some immigration attorneys across the state are feeling the concern from their clients in the wake of the news. 

Susan Reed is the director of the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, a legal resource center for the state’s immigrant communities. Reed said Wednesday that she’d been receiving calls all morning from current and former clients who are terrified that they will be deported.

“Many of them are already US citizens, but they are worried that it won’t matter, or that some issue in their background might still cause a problem,” Reed told BridgeDetroit in an email. “I’m doing my best to reassure them, but that is my experience as a practicing immigration lawyer today.”

Veronica Thronson, a clinical law professor at Michigan State University, said the free immigration clinic she leads has been getting calls nonstop from worried clients – even before Trump was elected. 

“People are worried that they are just going to get stopped, mostly because of the color of their skin or because they speak with an accent and so that is pretty scary for people. And people were very scared before, and there’s a reason to be scared now, because we know what the Trump administration is capable of,” she said. 

Her clients include asylum seekers and refugees from Mauritania, Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine and Afghanistan who reside in cities across the state, from Detroit to Holland. 

“We are going to be busy. I’m trying to mobilize my clients. If they qualify to become US citizens, I want to help them apply to become US citizens,” Thronson said. “If someone wants to file a family petition, and they qualify, I am definitely going to help them apply as well, because we need to make sure that we are getting people the relief they deserve under the law.” 

During Trump’s last presidency, immigrant advocates were taken by surprise, but now, they know what to expect because Trump has not been shy about sharing his plans, she said. 

“We learned our lessons from last time, and so we definitely need to be prepared for the worst,” Thronson said. 

Fear of vital funding cuts

Freedom House Detroit CEO Elizabeth Orozco-Vasquez said the organization exists to provide a lifeline to those seeking asylum, refugees and humanitarian protections under US law. In its 40 years of service, she said, the most significant hardships have come under Trump’s administration and she fears it’ll be increasingly challenging when he returns to the White House.

“From early in the Trump campaign, we anticipated that his proposed policies would have a severe impact on our residents,” she said in a Thursday statement. 

Besides the Muslim ban, she cited significantly longer waits for work authorization, inhumane treatment in detention centers, a reduction in asylum cases being approved, cuts in refugee admissions and children being separated from their families, 1,000 of which are still in the US and have not been returned to their parents. 

“This had and continues to have a profound impact on our community, our staff, and city,” she said. “Based on the Trump Administration’s current statements we believe these policies will be reinstated and/or worse.” 

She fears a second Trump term will mean further cuts to vital funding for clients amid an increasing demand for services. 

“We will need the community’s help more than ever in the coming months and years,” she added. “Despite these uncertainties, our commitment to our mission remains steadfast. Supporting those who were forced to flee their country due to violence and persecution is far too important for us to waver.”

In Southwest Detroit, some Latino voters are feeling uneasy, too. Beto Gallegos, a 30-year-old Mexican-American Detroiter, said seeing Trump win the election was “painful to watch.”

“One of the things that was painful for me was seeing that Latino men in the country gave their support to Trump despite this threat of mass deportation,” Gallegos told BridgeDetroit Wednesday afternoon at Clark Park. “My grandpa used to say that you can’t know where you’re going unless you remember where you’re from, and I feel like a majority of our people have forgot where they came from.”

According to a report from the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health on the impacts of separating children from their families, more than 2,300 children were separated from their parents at the country’s southern border between May and June 2018 as part of the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance border policy in an attempt to deter illegal immigration, something that did have an impact in Michigan. 

There was widespread confusion among government agencies and nonprofit organizations working to reunite families in Michigan, and across the country, about how many children had been separated, where their families were and the timeline for when they might be reunited. 

Not all of the voters in Southwest Detroit were feeling as pessimistic about another Trump presidency though.

Harris supporter Ernesto Alonzo is disappointed at the outcome of the election, but he believes things will be “more or less the same as they are now.”

“(Trump) talks about doing a lot of things, he did that before too, but he probably won’t do a lot of the stuff people are scared of like Project 2025 and the deportations,” Alonzo said. “This isn’t what I wanted or who I supported, but we’ll be OK.”

Alonzo, a 51-year-old Detroiter, was sitting on the porch Wednesday with his friend and fellow Detroiter, David Noyce. However, Noyce voted for Trump. 

The 40-year-old said he’s also skeptical that Trump will do much of what he promised, but he believes the economy will improve under his leadership. 

“Bring gas prices back down and bring food prices back down, that’s it,” Noyce said. “The rest of that stuff, I’m not a fan of. I used to hate Trump, but things were more affordable then.”

Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat and Gisela Salomon contributed