Donald Trump will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, and law offices and nonprofit organizations across the country are warily counting down the days—and bracing for what’s to come. That includes Raíces, a Texas-based refugee and immigrant center for education and legal services.
Given Trump’s wall-building, family-separating track record during his first term and his present-day mass deportation threats, this nonprofit in particular is preparing for everything.
"We experienced the trauma of the first Trump administration firsthand,” Raíces spokesperson Faisal Al-Juburi told Daily Kos.
Some of the xenophobic Trump administration’s first-term “wins” included slashing the rate of legal immigration and denying green cards to abandoned children or young people fleeing abusive homes.
Notably, Trump has changed his tune regarding legal immigration for certain workers in the heated H-1B visa debate that’s currently tearing MAGA world apart. It seems Trump and his tech billionaire sugar daddies are happy to welcome immigrants—so long as they don’t come from the Southern border and are willing to work for their businesses at low wages.
As for the border battle still raging in the Southern U.S., Raíces isn’t taking any chances ahead of Trump’s second term.
"We're very well aware of the risks for our community,” Al-Juburi said. “We have kind of a perfect storm of anti-immigrant policymakers at the federal and state levels who will be working in tandem, and that's something that we are not naive about going into this next administration."
However, the nonprofit acknowledges that, despite fighting for immigrant rights in Texas since 1986, they are in the heart of an extremely hostile anti-immigrant territory.
“Many of the [immigration] cases would end up being routed through the Fifth Circuit in Texas. And that is one [court] that has not necessarily set precedent for positive outcomes,” Al-Juburi said.
Raíces is also preparing for potential challenges as Tom Homan, Trump’s hand-picked “border czar,” promises to bring back family detention centers.
Homan’s solution? Build “soft tents” to house the migrant families he intends to apprehend at the border—and snatch from neighborhoods and homes across the country.
“Here’s the issue,” Homan told The Washington Post. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position.”
Recalling what these centers were like during Trump’s first term, the Raíces spokesperson said immigrant advocates saw “significant physical, mental and behavioral health ramifications for children and families that were held in family detention under the Trump administration.”
As Daily Kos previously reported, these facilities have historically been compared to prisons due to inhumane conditions.
“To think or assume or hope that the [family detention centers] would yield more human-centered results during this incoming administration would be naive,” Al-Juburi said.
However, he pointed out that President Joe Biden put an end to the family detention centers in 2021 following widespread outrage and calls for change.
Al-Juburi said it’s more important than ever to remember the power of a collective voice.
"We should not be discouraged from making our voices heard,” he stressed. “And if there are policies that are enacted that are in opposition to what we as a public feel to be our American values, then we must make our voices heard.”
