Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by ALEJANDRA MARTINEZ, BERENICE GARCIA and ALEJANDRO SERRANO on the Texas Tribune on December 18, 2024.
As Republican Texas leaders show support for Trump’s mass deportation plans, undocumented people — some who have lived in America for decades — are weighing their options amid mounting fears.
DALLAS — In public, he uses his commanding baritone voice to rally and inspire people as an immigrant activist. In private, the 41-year-old man says he lies awake at night, consumed by fear and aware of the fragility of his life in the United States.
After coming to the U.S. at age 7 with his mother and two siblings from Monterrey, Mexico, the man — who is undocumented and asked to remain anonymous for fear of deportation — has spent most of his life navigating a U.S. immigration system that could send him back to Mexico at any time.
“People take for granted how beautiful it is to be free,” he said.
The threat of deportation that has followed him throughout most of his life in the U.S. became exponentially larger when President-elect Donald Trump won the November election after loudly and repeatedly promising mass deportations for immigrants who lack the legal authority to live here.
“We saw this coming,” said Susana Herrera, a 50-year-old undocumented woman who lives in El Paso with her husband and has two grown children who are U.S. citizens. “He is coming with, like, more force, more power.”
For four years, the Dallas activist said he put up a strong front to mask his fears about being undocumented. He’s the co-founder of a nonprofit aimed at increasing civic engagement among Latinos, while keeping his undocumented status secret from people outside his immediate family and closest friends.
“I am not happy. I am very disappointed in this country and very sad about the situation I am in. I feel like my existence is threatened and that is the worst place to be in,” he said.
“Our blood is boiling in fear”
A 43-year-old Edinburg woman said she and her husband have spent years working in the fields picking onions, cleaning houses and picking up garbage since they came to the U.S. from Mexico in their 20s. Eventually, they earned enough to buy a home.
But now she fears losing it all and leaving nothing for their three U.S. citizen children.
“Our blood is boiling in fear because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” said the woman, who also asked that her name not be published because she fears deportation.
The family is contemplating moving back to Mexico rather than wait to see if they’ll be deported. However, the dangers across the border give them pause.
“Here, we’re afraid because of the government, and over there we’re afraid because of what’s happening,” she said, referring to drug cartel-related violence that has plagued Mexico for years. It was the reason some of her relatives also left her hometown of San Luis Potosi to live in the U.S., she said.
“We don’t know yet what we’re going to do,” she said. “We’re confused. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Back in Dallas, the activist worries he will be deported and have to leave his family, who all now live in the U.S.
Because he came to the U.S. as a child, he qualified for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, launched by the Obama administration in 2012, which provides temporary status to some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. He applied and got approved when he was 30, and he said he finally felt like he had a tangible safety net.
He lost that protection in 2020 when he said he couldn’t afford the renewal fee, which costs $555 to $605.
“When I lost it, I felt ashamed and angry with myself. It was like letting my family down,” he said.
Now, he is the only one in his family without protected status, a reality that weighs heavily on him. For him, identity and self-esteem has been shaped by U.S. immigration laws and policies. For years, he said he used the label “illegal” to describe himself until a mentor urged him to stop.
Resisting fear
At one of the dozens of flea markets throughout the Rio Grande Valley, located just yards away from the border wall, a Mission woman works among the makeshift shops selling produce, vintage electronics, used clothes, toys, shoes and furniture.
The woman, who also requested anonymity, said she and an older brother came on their own to the U.S. when she was 13 to find their mother. They first lived in the Valley but she went alone to Houston about three years later to reunite with her mother. Shortly after, she decided to move to Tampa, Florida, with her romantic partner, whom she met in Houston. They had two children and made a living in produce markets, cleaning fruits and vegetables.
