Immigrants’ Resentment Over New Arrivals Helped Boost Trump’s Popularity With Latino Voters

At first, she didn’t think much about the Nicaraguan asylum-seekers who began moving into town a few years ago. Rosa was an immigrant too, one of the many undocumented Mexican immigrants who’d settled nearly 30 years ago in Whitewater, a small university town in southeast Wisconsin. Some of the Nicaraguans had found housing in Rosa’s neighborhood, a trailer park at the edge of town. They sent their children to the same public schools. And they got jobs in the same factories and food-processing facilities that employed many of Rosa’s friends and relatives. Then Rosa realized that many of the newcomers with ongoing asylum cases could apply for work permits and driver’s licenses — state and federal privileges that are unavailable to undocumented immigrants. Rosa’s feelings of indifference turned to frustration and resentment. “It’s not fair,” said Rosa, who works as a janitor. “Those of us who have been here for years get nothing.” Her anger is largely directed at President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for failing to produce meaningful reforms to the immigration system that could benefit people like her. In our reporting on the new effects of immigration, ProPublica interviewed dozens of long-established Latino immigrants and their U.S.-born relatives in cities like Denver and Chicago and in small towns along the Texas border. Over and over, they spoke of feeling resentment as they watched the government ease the transition of large numbers of asylum-seekers into the U.S. by giving them access to work permits and IDs, and in some cities spending millions of dollars to provide them with food and shelter. It’s one of the reasons so many Latino voters chose Donald Trump this election, giving him what appears to be Republicans’ biggest win in a presidential race since exit polls began tracking this data. Latinos’ increased support for Trump — who says he could use the military to execute his plans for mass deportations — defied conventional wisdom, disrupting long-held assumptions about loyalties to the Democratic Party. The shift could give Republicans reason to cater to Latinos to keep them in the party’s fold. On the campaign trail, Trump singled out Whitewater after the police chief wrote a letter to Biden asking for help responding to the needs of the new Nicaraguan arrivals. While some residents were put off by Trump’s rhetoric about the city being destroyed by immigrants, it resonated with many of the longtime Mexican-immigrant residents we interviewed. They said they think the newcomers have unfairly received benefits that they never got when they arrived illegally decades ago — and that many still don’t have today. Among those residents is one of Rosa’s friends and neighbors who asked to be identified by one of her surnames, Valadez, because she is undocumented and fears deportation. A single mother who cleans houses and buildings for a living, Valadez makes extra money on the side by driving immigrants who don’t have cars to and from work and to run errands. It’s a risky side hustle, though, because she’s frequently been pulled over and ticketed by police for driving without a license, costing her thousands of dollars in fines. One day two summers ago, one of her sons found a small purse at a carnival in town. Inside they found a Wisconsin driver’s license, a work permit issued to a Nicaraguan woman and $300 in cash. Seeing the contents filled Valadez with bitterness. She asked her son to turn in the purse to the police but kept the $300. “I have been here for 21 years,” she said. “I have five children who are U.S. citizens. And I can’t get a work permit or a driver’s license.” When she told that story to Rosa one afternoon this spring, her friend nodded emphatically in approval. Rosa, like Valadez, couldn’t vote. But two of Rosa’s U.S.-born children could, and they cast ballots for Trump. One of Rosa’s sons even drives a car with a bumper sticker that says “Let’s Go Brandon” — a popular anti-Biden slogan. Rosa said she is glad her children voted for Trump. She’s not too worried about deportation, although she asked to be identified solely by her first name to reduce the risk. She believes Trump wants to deport criminals, not people like her who crossed the border undetected in the 1990s but haven’t gotten in trouble with the law. “They know who has been behaving well and who hasn’t been,” she said. Immigrants seeking asylum arrive in Philadelphia in December 2022. They had been bused in from Texas, which has sent thousands of immigrants to cities around the country this way during the Biden administration. Credit:Photo by Ryan Collerd/AFP via Getty Images In the months leading up to the presidential election, numerous polls picked up on the kinds of frustrations felt by Rosa and her family. Those polls indicated that many voters considered immigration one of the most pressing challenges facing the country and that they were disappointed in the Biden administration’s record. Biden had come into office in 2021 promising a more humane approach to immigration after four years of more restrictive policies during the first Trump administration. But record numbers of immigrants who were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border began to overwhelm the system. While the Biden administration avoided talking about the border situation like a crisis, the way Trump and the GOP had, outspoken critics like Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott amplified the message that things at the border were out of control while he arranged to bus thousands of immigrants to Democrat-controlled big cities around the country. In Whitewater, hundreds of Nicaraguans arrived on their own to fill jobs in local factories, and many of them drove to work without licenses, putting a strain on the small local police department with only one Spanish-speaking officer. While the Biden administration kept a Trump expulsion policy in place for three years, it also created temporary parole programs and an app to allow asylum-seekers to make appointments to cross the border. The result was that hundreds of thousands more immigrants were allowed to come into the country and apply for work permits, but the efforts didn’t assuage the administration’s critics on the right or left. Meanwhile, moves to benefit undocumented workers who were already in the country were less publicized, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. Conchita Cruz, a co-founder and co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, which serves a network of around 1 million asylum-seekers across the country, said that because of either court challenges or processing backlogs, Biden wasn’t able to deliver on many of his promises to make it easier for immigrants who’ve lived in this country for years to regularize their status. “Policies meant to help immigrants have not always materialized,” she said. Cruz said that while the administration extended the duration of work permits for some employment categories, backlogs have hampered the quick processing of those extensions. As of September, there were about 1.2 million pending work permit applications, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data, with many pending for six months or more. USCIS said the agency has taken steps to reduce backlogs while processing a record number of applications. Biden’s attempts to push for broad immigration reform in Congress, including a proposal his administration sent on his first day in office, went nowhere. Earlier this year, in an effort to prevent a political win for Biden before the election, Trump pressured Republicans to kill bipartisan legislation that would have increased border security. Camila Chávez, the executive director of the Dolores Huerta Foundation in Bakersfield, California, said Democrats failed to combat misinformation and turn out Latino voters. She recalled meeting one young Latina Trump supporter while she knocked on voters’ doors with the foundation’s sister political action organization. The woman told her she was concerned that the new immigrant arrivals were bringing crime and cartel activity — and potentially were a threat to her own family’s safety. “That’s our charge as organizations, to make sure that we are in the community and educating folks on how government works and to not vote against our own self-interests. Which is what’s happening now,” said Chávez, who is the daughter of famed farmworker advocate Dolores Huerta and a niece of Cesar Chávez. Trump has made clear he intends to deliver on his deportation promises, though the details of how he’ll do it and who will be most affected remain unclear. The last time Trump was elected, he moved quickly to issue an executive order that said no “classes or categories” of people who were in the country illegally could be exempt from enforcement. Tom Homan, who Trump has picked to serve as his “border czar,” said during a recent interview with Fox & Friends that immigrants who were deemed to be a threat to public safety or national security would be a priority under a new administration. But he said immigrants with outstanding deportation orders will also be possible targets and that there will be raids at workplaces with large numbers of undocumented workers. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist, said it’s wishful thinking to believe Trump will give any special treatment to undocumented immigrants who have been living and working in the U.S. for a long time. But he’s heard that sentiment among Latino voters in focus groups. “They believe that they are playing by the rules and that they will be rewarded for it,” Madrid said. “Republicans have never been serious about legal migration, let alone illegal migration. They’re allowing themselves to believe that for no good reason.” Sergio Garza Castillo, who owns a gas station and convenience store in Del Rio, Texas, had long voted for Democrats. But his frustration with border policy led him to vote for Trump this year. Credit:Gerardo del Valle/ProPublica The Republican Party’s growing appeal to Latino voters was especially noticeable in places like Del Rio, a Texas border town. As ProPublica previously reported, Trump flipped the county where Del Rio sits from blue to red in 2020 and won it this year with 63% of the vote. Sergio Garza Castillo, a Mexican immigrant who owns a gas station and convenience store in Del Rio, illustrates that political shift. Garza Castillo said he came to the U.S. legally as a teenager in the 1980s after his father, a U.S. citizen, petitioned and waited for more than a decade to bring his family across the border. Ever since Garza Castillo became a U.S. citizen in 2000, he has tended to vote for Democrats, believing in their promise of immigration reform that could lead to more pathways to citizenship for long-established undocumented immigrants, including many of his friends and acquaintances. But the Democrats “promised and they never delivered,” Garza Castillo said. “They didn’t normalize the status of the people who were already here, but instead they let in many migrants who didn’t come in the correct way.” He believes asylum-seekers should have to wait outside the country like he did. Denver Rallied Behind Arriving Immigrants. Now Its Homeless Population Feels Shortchanged. He said he began to turn away from the Democrats in September 2021, when nearly 20,000 mostly Haitian immigrants seeking asylum waded across the Rio Grande from Mexico and camped out under the city’s international bridge near Garza Castillo’s gas station. Federal authorities had instructed the immigrants to wait there to be processed; some remained there for weeks, sleeping under tarps and blankets with little access to water and food. Garza Castillo said he and other business owners lost money when the federal government shut down the international bridge, an economic engine for Del Rio. Some of the Haitian migrants were eventually deported; others were allowed into the U.S. to pursue asylum claims and given notices to appear in court in a backlogged immigration system that can take years to resolve a case. “That to me is offensive for those who have been living here for more than 10 years and haven’t been able to adjust their status,” Garza Castillo said. He hopes Trump seizes on the opportunity to expand support from Latino voters by creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who’ve been here for years. “If he does that,” he said, “I think the Republican Party will be strong here for a long time.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

USCIS Reaches Fiscal Year 2025 H-1B Cap

USCIS has received enough petitions to reach the congressionally mandated 65,000 H-1B visa regular cap and the 20,000 H-1B visa U.S. advanced degree exemption, known as the master’s cap, for fiscal year (FY) 2025. We will send non-selection notices to registrants through their online accounts over the next few days. When we finish sending these non-selection notifications, the status for properly submitted registrations that we did not select for the FY 2025 H-1B numerical allocations will show: · Not Selected: Not selected – not eligible to file an H-1B cap petition based on this registration. We will continue to accept and process petitions that are otherwise exempt from the cap. Petitions filed for current H-1B workers who have been counted previously against the cap, and who still retain their cap number, are exempt from the FY 2025 H-1B cap. We will continue to accept and process petitions filed to: · Extend the amount of time a current H-1B worker may remain in the United States; · Change the terms of employment for current H-1B workers; · Allow current H-1B workers to change employers; and · Allow current H-1B workers to work concurrently in additional H-1B positions.

DACA recipients worry their protection from deportation won’t last another Trump term

Reyna Montoya was 10 when she and her family fled violence in Tijuana and illegally immigrated to the U.S. Growing up in Arizona, she worried even a minor traffic violation could lead to her deportation. She didn’t feel relief until 11 years later in 2012, when she received a letter confirming she had been accepted to a new program for immigrants who came to the country illegally as children. “All of the sudden, all these possibilities opened up,” Montoya said, fighting back tears. The Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program granted her and hundreds of thousands of others two-year, renewable permits to live and work in the U.S. legally. But as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, after an unsuccessful bid to end DACA in his first term, the roughly 535,000 current recipients are bracing yet again for a whirlwind of uncertainty. Meanwhile, a years-long challenge to DACA could ultimately render it illegal, leaving people like Montoya without a shield from deportation. Advertisement “I have to take his (Trump’s) words very seriously, that when they say ‘mass deportation,’ it also includes people like me,” said Montoya, who runs Aliento, an Arizona-based advocacy organization for immigrant rights. Related Stories Trump's return to White House sets stage for far-reaching immigration crackdown Trump's return to White House sets stage for far-reaching immigration crackdown Trump's deportation plans worry families with relatives in US illegally Trump's deportation plans worry families with relatives in US illegally Judge strikes down Biden administration program shielding immigrant spouses from deportation Judge strikes down Biden administration program shielding immigrant spouses from deportation Uncertainty is nothing new for DACA recipients. As many matured from school age to adulthood, they have witnessed a barrage of legal threats to the program. DACA hasn’t accepted new applicants since 2021, when a federal judge deemed it illegal and ordered that new applications not be processed, though current recipients could still renew their permits. The Biden administration appealed the ruling, and the case is currently pending. For those who secured and renewed DACA permits, the benefits have been life-changing. With DACA, Montoya for the first time was able to work legally, get health and dental care, and obtain a driver’s license. 0:00 / 58 AP correspondent Jennifer King reports on DACA recipients who grew up in the United States, but are worried about being left without a shield from deportation. AP correspondent Jennifer King reports. Advertisement Many recipients had hoped Vice President Kamala Harris would win the presidency and continue fighting for them. But the reelection of Trump, who has repeatedly accused immigrants of fueling violent crime and “poisoning the blood” of the United States, has heightened their fears that DACA could end and they could face deportation. Out of caution, some are rushing to renew their permits, according to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which has been providing free legal aid to help them through the extensive process. Others are preparing for potential family separations. Phoenix native and DACA recipient Pedro Gonzalez-Aboyte said he and his immigrant parents, along with his two U.S.-born brothers, recently discussed the possibility of being split. Gonzalez-Aboyte recalled his parents, who immigrated from Mexico, saying that even if they were unable to stay in the country, “as long as the three of you are here and you’re OK, then that’s what we want.” “That was a very real conversation we had,” Gonzalez-Aboyte said. Officials for the Trump transition team did not respond to emailed requests for comment. Advertisement While it is unclear how Trump could impact DACA this time, he has suggested scaling back other programs that offer temporary protection for immigrants and is staffing his incoming administration with immigration hardliners, including Stephen Miller and Thomas Homan. 0:00 / 18 In an AP interview, Reyna Montoya says a years-long challenge to DACA protection could ultimately render the program illegal. During his first term, Trump tried to rescind DACA. But in 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded his administration ended the program improperly, though it didn’t rule on the program’s legality. But DACA’s fate won’t be immediately left up to Trump, if at all. A three-judge panel on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — regarded as the country’s most conservative appeals court — heard arguments in October concerning the legality of DACA. The case, initially filed by Texas and other Republican-led states in 2018, now focuses on a Biden administration rule intended to preserve and fortify DACA. Attorneys for DACA opponents argued that immigrants in the country illegally are a financial burden on states. Meanwhile, the Biden administration, along with intervenors, contend that Texas has not shown the costs it cites are traceable to the policy and, therefore, lacks standing. Advertisement The panel doesn’t have a deadline to issue a ruling. Regardless, its ruling will likely be appealed, potentially elevating the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell University, said the most likely scenario is the panel affirming that DACA is illegal and that the case goes before the Supreme Court. He doesn’t anticipate Trump immediately trying to end DACA but didn’t rule out the possibility. “I don’t know that they could actually terminate the program any faster than the current ligation is going,” he said. “They could still do it, but they’ve got an awful lot of immigration policy matters on their plate.” Advertisement Yale-Loehr said the Biden administration is limited in how it could help DACA recipients at this stage, but it could enable recipients to renew their permits early and process them as quickly as possible. Greisa Martinez Rosas is a DACA recipient and executive director of United We Dream, a youth-led advocacy network for immigrants that boasts more than a million members nationwide. She said the immigrant rights movement has grown so much since Trump’s first term, and it’s been preparing for this moment for years, “building a nimble and responsive infrastructure so that we will make shifts as threats emerge.” She said they’re calling on Americans to offer immigrants sanctuary, preparing to ensure people’s physical and psychological safety in case of mass deportations, planning demonstrations and asking for help from the current administration. “We still have a couple of months for the Biden administration to use every single tool at its disposal to protect and defend as many people as possible,” Martinez Rosas said at a recent press briefing. “We’re expecting for them to do that now more than ever.” ___ For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

How Trump’s mass deportation plan can use AI to extend immigration crackdown

A signature campaign promise of President-elect Donald Trump is to initiate mass deportations of undocumented residents of the United States. At a Sept. 12 campaign stop in Tucson, Arizona, Trump promised to “begin the largest mass deportation mission in the history of our country.” Trump’s selection of Thomas Homan as “border czar” and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy, two officials seen as hard-liners on immigration, suggest that the administration’s approach to a crackdown will attempt to make good on that promise and be aggressive, though details have not been provided by the Trump transition team. Trump has said he will start mass deportation efforts with criminals, but he has also vowed to repeal Temporary Protected Status for individuals. He said in a brief post-election interview with NBC News that he has “no choice” but to pursue mass deportation after the election results, and that there is “no price tag.” Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said earlier this year that “No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder,” and he vowed to “run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.” Carrying out these pledges, though, is logistically daunting. Artificial intelligence may help. While AI wasn’t widely used during the first Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, the technology has become more accessible and widely deployed across many systems and government agencies, and President Biden’s administration began devoting DHS budget and organizational focus to it. In April, the Department of Homeland Security created the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board to help establish perimeters and protocols for the technology’s use. The 2025 DHS budget includes $5 million to open an AI Office in the DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer. According to the DHS budget memo, the office is responsible for advancing and accelerating the “responsible use” of AI by establishing standards, policies, and oversight to support the growing adoption of AI across DHS. “AI is a transformative technology that can unprecedentedly advance our national interests. At the same time, it presents real risks we can mitigate by adopting best practices and taking other studied concrete actions,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said when inaugurating the new board. Now there is concern among experts that DHS’s mission will pivot towards deportation and use untested AI to help. Security experts close to DHS worry about how an emboldened and reoriented DHS might wield AI. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman wouldn’t speculate on how AI might be used in Trump’s administration. The Trump transition and Homan did not respond to requests for comment. Secretary Mayorkas: Adoption of newly unveiled AI guidelines could ward off stifling regulationwatch now VIDEO07:19 Secretary Mayorkas: Adoption of newly unveiled AI guidelines could ward off stifling regulation Petra Molnar, a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in the impacts of migration technologies on people crossing borders and the author of “The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” has studied the use of technology along the border, which includes drones and robodogs, as faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She has been critical of AI’s use at the border under Democratic Party administrations, but does think that the weaponization of AI will grow under Trump’s administration. “Knowing the Trump administration has signaled they want to conduct the largest mass deportation in U.S. history and the fact that they have these tools at their disposal, it creates a surveillance dragnet not just at the border but inland that could capture communities all over the U.S.,” Molnar said, adding that an entire ecosystem of industry has been created to police borders and immigration. “There’s been a huge influence of the private sector in the growth of the border-industrial problem,” Molnar said, adding that private companies have led the way in introducing robodogs (with benign names like Snoopy and Sniffer), drones, and AI-infused towers. “Much of the surveillance technology has been expanded under Democratic administrations, but there has been a signaling of the incoming administration that tech will be a tool to assist them in accomplishing their goals,” Molnar said. An AI immigration dragnet vs. AI deregulation and growth Remaya Campbell, acting commissioner for Homeland Security for the District of Columbia, said that AI could automate immigration-related decision-making, bypassing traditional processes. “AI could be used to identify individuals for deportation broadly. With little regard for privacy or due process,” Campbell said, adding that AI decision-making systems operate with the values their users impart. “And in the Trump administration, that could certainly mean reinforcing intersectional biases to align with political priorities,” she said. “At a minimum, we could expect AI to be leveraged not as a tool for efficiency, fairness, and safety in immigration-related decision-making, but as an instrument of systemic bias and authoritarian rule,” Campbell added. Neil Sahota, an AI advisor to the United Nations AI for Good Initiative, said he shares those concerns given that AI already has a muscular presence in managing the vast, challenging-to-monitor U.S. borders, and that usage will expand under Trump. DHS’s Customs and Border Protection already has employed AI-powered drones with machine-learning capabilities to identify unusual patterns that could signal illegal crossings, drones that can distinguish between people, animals, and vehicles, and help to minimize false alarms, Sahota said. Sensor towers equipped with AI provide 24/7 monitoring, allowing faster response times and freeing up human resources. “Expectations are that a Trump administration would push for even more AI surveillance, potentially introducing autonomous patrols and expanding biometric screening,” Sahota said. While this could improve border security, it could also spark concerns around privacy, particularly for those living near borders. And Sahota added that the Trump administration’s use of AI could expand beyond security and aid in deportation. “AI surveillance systems would be a cornerstone of Trump’s deportation strategy,” Sahotra said. “Enhanced AI could fast-track deportations,” Sahota added, which would come with the potential for rights violations and racial profiling. These systems use facial recognition and behavior analysis capabilities to identify people suspected of being in the country illegally, but he cautioned that these systems don’t always get it right. “How do we handle situations where AI makes errors in identifying people’s immigration status? What if the system mistakenly flags a legal resident or citizen for deportation? The consequences are devastating for families and our community,” Sahota said. Laura MacCleery, senior policy director of Unidos U.S., the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy group, said AI accuracy problems are well known, with systems making inaccurate conclusions, and data on people of color tending to be less accurate. DMV records, utility bills, and facial recognition technology at the border and the airports will all be tools that could be enhanced with AI to pursue deportation. “These technologies could be changed and altered and have different guardrails in a different administration. The concern about mass deportations is the enhanced use of AI by immigration enforcement and to superpower the ability to monitor public data, MacCleery said. It is inevitable, she said, that AI will sweep up U.S. citizens. “Because there are U.S. citizens that live with people of different immigration status and those people will get swept up and the due process rights of people who are here legally could be violated and that is super problematic and an inevitable consequence of the overuse of these kinds of technologies,” MacCleery said. But Marina Shepelsky, CEO, co-founder, and immigration attorney at New York-based Shepelsky Law Group, said she is not thinking about AI policy in the Trump administration as a dystopian technology to fear. “He is a businessman, he will see value in allowing AI to progress and grow to make the lives of lawyers like myself, doctors, scientists, etc., easier,” Shepelsky said. She thinks AI will blossom and be deregulated in a Trump administration. “Hopefully, with Elon Musk at his side, President Trump would push for more foreign tech AI experts to come to the U.S. quicker and with less red tape to improve AI and reduce its current awkwardness,” Shepelsky said. “I am not an alarmist and not tearing out my hair about Trump being our next president. I may not like all his policies, but with AI – I do think he will push for its growth, and for laws and regulations to be more flexible to allow AI to grow.” Related Police departments across U.S. are starting to use AI to write crime reports "It's not just 'the robots are coming' and we need to hunker down and prepare for it. The choices we make along the way will determine the impacts," Department of Labor Acting Secretary Julie Su said about AI and workers at the CNBC Work Summit. Recent data shows AI job losses are rising, but the numbers don’t tell the full story Voters fill out their ballots for the presidential election during early voting ahead of the polls closing November 5 at the Detroit Elections Office in Detroit, Michigan, U.S. October 28, 2024. Nate Silver: Don’t trust the Trump swing in 2024 presidential election polls, betting markets data For more inforrmation, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.