Updated Jan. 10, 2025
As Trump prepares to take office, undocumented immigrants navigate heightened vulnerabilities and uncertainty
The 2024 election ignited widespread anxiety, but for undocumented immigrants, including college students, the stakes are even higher. In Northwest Washington and around the nation, they are bracing for the fallout from President-elect Donald Trump’s renewed promises of mass deportations and immigration raids.
“We need to take these threats extremely seriously,” said Anabel Mendoza, director of communications at United We Dream (UWD), a national support organization supporting and staffed by immigrant youth. “We need to know that what we saw under Trump’s first four years in office was horrific when it came to the attacks against immigrants, and he is ready to double down on those come the second term.”
Undocumented immigrants contribute significantly to the nation’s economic and social fabric. Yet, they remain disproportionately vulnerable, receiving little support in return for their contributions.
“Our schools, our hospitals, our churches, every single industry that we may work in, there are immigrants who are part of those,” Mendoza said.
Fighting for undocumented immigrants’ rights
Since its founding in 2008, UWD has built a network of more than a million members, pushing for federal policies that safeguard immigrant rights while organizing at local and state levels.
Similarly, the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) has united more than 400 organizations across Washington state to protect immigrant communities. Founded in response to Trump’s win in the 2016 election, WAISN works to uplift immigrant communities while advocating for their rights and protections.
Nedra Rivera, manager of WAISN’s Deportation Defense Hotline, emphasized that threats to their status are not new for the undocumented immigrant community.
“This isn’t the first time that undocumented immigrants are being attacked or had their contributions diminished,” Rivera said. “This is not the first time we’ve heard about mass deportations. It doesn’t matter who’s in the White House, detentions and deportations happen all the time.”
According to the Detention Watch Network, the U.S. government had approximately 37,500 individuals in detention as of July 2024 through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These individuals are held in facilities nationwide — detention centers, jails and prisons — while awaiting determinations on their immigration status or deportation.
WAISN’s statewide hotline provides support
WAISN’s statewide hotline is one of its key initiatives, providing individuals with resources to learn about their rights, report ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) activity, and, when necessary, mobilize the network’s rapid response teams.
When someone calls the hotline, operators start by gathering details about the situation, including time, location and events. If the case involves serious incidents like ICE or CBP involvement, the operator alerts a rapid response organizer, who activates local partners to verify and address the situation. This may involve filming, reporting, offering support and resources to the community, or engaging with officials.
Thanks to WAISN’s community teams across Washington, the hotline has become a trusted resource, averaging about 50 callers per week.
“We’re serving them in a way that is caring, humble and responsive, but also that builds agency and empowers the communities,” Rivera said. “We’re not here as a charity. We’re here as mutual aid and a form of engaging people in their own power.”
Since the November election, more individuals have been calling seeking connections to legal advocates or attorneys, asking about their rights, and looking for ways to protect themselves. More immigrant allies also are reaching out to learn how they can get involved in advocacy efforts.
“We welcome allies. We need allies. We want allies. This coalition is built on allies as well as immigrants,” Rivera said.
Attacks on DACA
Among many of Trump’s threats toward the undocumented immigrant community are his previous attacks on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). This policy temporarily protects undocumented individuals brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and grants them a Social Security number and renewable two-year work authorization.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), there were 528,300 active DACA recipients as of March 2024.
During his first term, Trump rescinded DACA, effectively halting new applicants from benefiting from the policy’s protections. DACA reopened briefly to new applicants after Biden’s election, but has been mired in court cases since 2021.
Hannah Stone, a Bellingham-based immigration attorney with nearly 20 years of experience in family-based immigration, deferred action, naturalization and asylum cases, recalls when DACA was enacted in 2012. Although the policy allows recipients to work and grants a degree of legal status, Stone believes this deferred action perpetuates negative societal views of undocumented immigrants.
“The U.S. government knows that you’re in the country without authorization, but is going to defer or put off any enforcement and action against you,” Stone said. “To me, the motivation for that wasn’t humanitarian or to really serve or benefit those receiving DACA. Rather, it was the use of immigrants as political pawns.”
Stone’s perspective ties into a broader conversation about the undocumented community’s needs for more than just DACA.
UWD prioritizes DACA as a form of stability for undocumented immigrants. However, Mendoza acknowledges that it is far from the ultimate solution.
“DACA is not the end of what we’re fighting for. Ultimately, what we know our communities deserve is a pathway to citizenship,” Mendoza said. “People should be able to have the stability to continue to build their lives here like everybody else.”
For those who received DACA status before Trump’s first term, the renewal process remains a constant challenge.
“Essentially every two years, [recipients] have to renew their application not knowing if bad faith anti-immigrant political attacks are going to throw their future and their lives completely upside down,” Mendoza said.
Barriers beyond immigration policy
Quacyya Cuaresma, the inaugural undocumented student retention specialist at Western Washington University, explained that many undocumented youth have been excluded from DACA protections.
“Undocumented students don’t have DACA most of the time now, so they really don’t have a safety network,” Cuaresma said. “With Trump having already rescinded DACA, I just have a lot of anxiety around the unknown, because he had already pledged to do some things that are extremely harmful to undocumented people communities.”
Undocumented students face additional barriers regarding tuition equity, financial aid and federal assistance.
“We see these issues among all of the Western community, in Bellingham and across college campuses, but it’s often trifold when you have this undocumented status on top of it,” Cuaresma said. “So it’s even harder to access housing and pay for basic needs. A lot of undocumented people don’t know where their resources are, because they often feel like the system’s against them — and oftentimes it is.”
Due to their status, undocumented immigrants cannot receive federal assistance, such as access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Federal Pell Grant or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
Washington is among 19 states that offer some relief through initiatives like the Washington Application for State Financial Aid (WASFA), ensuring in-state tuition, rather than being charged as an international student. Applicants typically are longtime residents of Washington and graduated from high school here.
“Tuition equity is really important because oftentimes undocumented people come when they’re a child, and this is all they know,” Cuaresma said. “To say that they’re an international student is totally wrong. They were raised in this country and should be treated in that way.”
In addition to those who were raised in the U.S., many undocumented immigrants initially came under a work or school visa and overstayed, and no longer have the proper documentation to be in the country.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in 2023, about 1.31% of individuals admitted into the country overstayed their authorized period. This means roughly 510,363 people remained in the U.S. without reporting their departure after their legal admission period expired.
“They are our classmates, our teammates, our friends and our community members, and to dehumanize them is wrong,” Cuaresma said.
University support for undocumented students
At WWU, Cuaresma oversees the Blue Resource Center (BRC) and Blue Group, which have advocated for and provided support and resources to undocumented students and mixed-status families in the community for over a decade.
The WWU BRC is one of just 56 centers for undocumented students in higher education nationally and one of three centers in Washington, along with the University of Washington and Washington State University.
With Western sitting just 30 miles south of the Canadian border, the BRC has been meeting with various departments on campus including the University Police Department, ensuring plans are in place if ICE or CBP comes to campus.
Know Your Rights cards have been distributed to students. In the event an officer is on campus and inquires about a student’s immigration status, the student can hand over this red card, which outlines their constitutional rights, particularly under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The back of the card features translations in multiple languages, including Spanish, Punjabi, and Tagalog.
This proactive measure aims to empower students with the tools to assert their rights in situations often fueled by systemic biases.
“A lot of these raids stem from racial profiling,” Cuaresma said. “They see a group of Black and brown people and decide to do a raid or check people’s status.”
Undocumented and unafraid
Despite the mounting threats, organizations like UWD, WAISN and the BRC focus on fostering joy and resilience. Cuaresma emphasized that undocumented individuals find strength in collective action and celebration, even amid uncertainties.
“We’re all kind of holding on to our seats waiting,” Cuaresma said. “As we’re celebrating joy within our communities, we have to make space for the negative and the harm being done. It’s going to come, so we’re just holding on.”
Mendoza echoed this sentiment, highlighting the determination of undocumented communities.
“In the face of that fear, they’re still going to show up. They’re not going to allow that fear to drive them back into the shadows, the same way that maybe they’ve seen loved ones be driven back into the shadows,” Mendoza said. “Our communities have lived in fear for far too long, and young people in particular, I think, have embodied this courage and this bravery to move forward even when we’re scared to.”
On Jan. 30, WAISN will host Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Day in Olympia. This event, alongside other local advocacy days, offers community members and WAISN partner organizations a platform to bring their concerns directly to the Legislature. [Ed.: Updated to clarify WAISN as host of Jan. 30 event.]
— By Sophie Cadran
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Bringing the butterflies home,” June 19, 2024
• “New safe-space resource center would assist immigrants,” June 24, 2022
• “Justice delayed by COVID creates hardships, weakens protections,” May 22, 2020