Ahead of Trump’s second term, mixed-status families brace for the worst

This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 12 episode of “Velshi.”

Donald Trump has pledged to pursue the “largest deportation effort in American history.” The president-elect has spent months preparing his base for what is essentially a mass displacement of human beings by flooding the discourse with disinformation and conspiracy theories about immigrants.

If you recall, Trump’s family separation policy at the southern border under his first term led to one of the cruelest and most shameful chapters in recent American history. Thousands of children were forcibly separated from their parents at the border and transferred to shelters nationwide.

According to The Washington Post, “The intention was obvious, as was quickly made apparent: The administration sought to deter people from coming to the United States by presenting the very real possibility that they would lose their children by doing so.” In other words, the cruelty was the point.

As of last year, the Post reported that 1,400 children still have not been reunited with their families. And now, NBC News reports that the incoming administration is considering restarting family detention and potentially building more detention facilities.

This time around, Trump has also promised to recruit more state and local law enforcement to aid in this sweeping effort. Sources from the incoming administration have flagged the intention to roll back policies that protect sensitive locations, like schools, churches, and hospitals, from immigration raids.

For all this, Trump’s incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, who also served as acting head of ICE in the last Trump administration, wants Congress to approve at least 100,000 detention beds in preparation.

With just days until Trump returns to the White House, immigrants and advocacy groups are bracing for more families to be torn apart under a second Trump term. Up to 4 million mixed-status families — families where some members are undocumented while others are U.S. citizens — are at risk of being separated, according to estimates from the American Immigration Council.

In 2017, Viviana Andazola Marquez shared her mixed-status family’s story in an opinion piece for The New York Times. She wrote that she was a senior at Yale University when she offered to drive her father, Melecio, who was undocumented, to his routinely scheduled immigration appointment. Her father had migrated from Mexico in 1998 and worked in construction, paying his annual taxes and living as a model citizen, despite lacking legal immigration status. 

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Andazola Marquez had applied to adjust his immigration status just eight months earlier and she says they were told that he would be granted his green card at this appointment. Seeing how excited and nervous her father was that morning, she offered to drive him. 

At the appointment, their assigned immigration officer initially told them that their petition would be approved at a later date. But then, Andazola Marquez was asked to leave the room.

“She asked me to leave. I didn’t want to, so she turned to my father and asked him to tell me to leave,” she wrote. “As I waited, three Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents came in and took custody of my dad. When our lawyer reappeared, the look on his face told me everything I needed to know. The world felt ripped from under my feet.”

Andazola Marquez went on to launch a multinational campaign calling for her father’s release and demanding protections for mixed-status families. During this difficult period, there was one silver lining, she graduated from Yale with honors — though without her father by her side.

He was ultimately deported, forcing nearly her entire family, except for Andazola Marquez, to leave the only life they had ever known. In that same piece for the Times, Andazola Marquez wrote:

What happened to him is not an appropriate application of the law — it is cruelty. It’s not just my dad’s story. Under President Trump, every undocumented person living in the United States is a target. … Undocumented people want to cooperate with the law, but there is no path for them to do so without jeopardy of detainment or removal. So many families like mine are threatened by a deeply flawed immigration system in the United States, which is basically enforced in an ad hoc manner. If upholding the law is important, pulling families apart is no way to do it.

Erika Andiola was just 11 years old when she entered the U.S. in 1998 with her two siblings and mother, who was fleeing domestic violence in Mexico. They settled in Arizona, a state notorious for its harsh anti-immigration laws, where Andiola told AZ Luminaria, a local nonprofit newsroom, that the family struggled to fit in without a support system.

Classes were taught exclusively in English and undocumented students were forced to pay out-of-state college tuition costs. “I knew I was a smart young woman,” Andiola told AZ Luminaria. “I knew I was a young woman who was capable of a lot, but oftentimes I didn’t have the support I needed, when I had first arrived, to achieve my goals.”

She would soon find her voice in the DREAMer movement, becoming one of its prominent and widely respected leaders. The DREAMers are undocumented immigrants who came to America as young children, growing up with America as their home, but without legal status. 

For Andiola, activism became a lifeline, and she would soon help launch one of the most significant and historic movements in the U.S. on behalf of undocumented youth. As a prominent activist, Andiola organized civil disobedience campaigns at the U.S. Capitol and participated in hunger strikes.

Her efforts would pay off, and in 2012, the Obama administration approved the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, better known as DACA, granting Andiola and millions of other young people work permits, temporary protection from deportation, access to health care and educational scholarships. It would transform the lives of millions of undocumented youths around the country. 

In 2013, Andiola quit her job as a congressional staffer on Capitol Hill to help her mom and brother fight deportation. She was able to secure their release after mobilizing nationwide support in their defense.  

While Andiola’s brother has applied for U.S. citizenship, she told me on Sunday that her mother is still fighting deportation proceedings — a process she will now continue under Trump. 

“How is deporting a 66-year-old great-grandmother — who has done nothing wrong but leave Mexico because of domestic violence — how is that going to make anybody safer in this country?” Andiola asked.

Allison Detzel contributed.