Immigrants in limbo
Other than those indigenous to this vast and blessed land, we are all immigrants here in the United States of America, with rights enshrined in the Constitution, no matter our status, agreed advocates at a March 28 American Community Media briefing on the frantic mass deportations pushed by the current administration. Sweeping reforms have eliminated due process in a web of reinterpreting archaic laws like the Alien Enemies Act and have revoked Temporary Protection Statuses (TPS), affecting hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including visa holders, asylum seekers, tourists, and legal citizens.
At the same time, ICE and other law enforcement have picked up students and lawful residents off the street and sent them to far-off prison systems, where their lawyers and family struggle to get access and help. While there are hundreds of such cases emerging every day, the sheer lack of accountability and upholding of the law has shocked advocates, activists, and legal experts from across the country.
“The weakening of rights for immigrant communities is the weakening of rights for everyone,” said Martin Kim, the Director of Immigration Advocacy at AAJC (Asian American Justice Center). He spoke at the ACM briefing, along with three other immigration specialists, who echoed his sentiments that this issue would spiral outwards and affect all Americans.
Asylum seekers stuck
This demonization also spills over the border to derail the carefully conceived plans of tens of thousands of asylum seekers who are now stuck, said Zenobia Lai, the Executive Director of Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative (HILSC) and a veteran immigration lawyer and advocate. ”There is no asylum possible from asylum seekers coming into the country. People who waited for two or three year passed through all the weeding processes. All their flights were canceled. Thousands of people were stuck and had to either resume the process or just stay in limbo.”
Lai broke down the current deportation strategies into three categories: let no one in, kick everyone out, and shut the back door. These verticals have overarching themes that straddle all three, like the elimination of due process.
“People have a right to due process,” said David Leopold, a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, “People have a right to defend themselves. People have a right to be heard. If we continue to let it go, (it could mean) a destruction of American due process. It completely bypasses, circumvents the removal deportation apparatus that we have in the United States.”
Kim, who echoed Leopold’s views on due process, added, “ICE, has always been a rogue agency, and some of the tactics you’re talking about have occurred in the past. That’s why advocates and lawyers have sought to restrict how and when ICE could use certain tactics. But now under President Trump,” continued Kim, “what we’ve seen is that they are taking away some of the restrictions on immigration enforcement. And what we’ve seen is immigration enforcement does not care about due process.”
Due process in danger
As all the experts agreed, these sorts of punitive actions that are outside the framework of the legal system do not exist in functioning democracies, where due process is sacrosanct.
The methodology being used by the administration to execute these plans is varied and often invokes archaic laws like the Alien Enemies Act, which singles out countries that are either invading the USA or in an active war with it. Leopold offered some clarity about its origins: “This act was last used during World War II. It’s what led to the incarceration, and internment of Japanese Americans, as well as Germans and Italians, into internment camps. So it’s got a long sordid history for which President Ronald Reagan actually apologized.”
The act has been applied especially to Venezuelans, many of whom came to America to seek refuge from a volatile political climate back home. “We cannot allow it to be okay that a president invokes wartime powers by using things like an invasion,” said Todd Shulte, the president of FWD.US, an immigration forward, criminal justice nonprofit. He went to add, “We are not, in fact, at war with Venezuela. Venezuela has not invaded the United States and taken over large amounts of territory. So that is false. Migration is not an invasion. Certainly, the act of people seeking refuge is absolutely not an invasion here.”
Rendition
Shulte vehemently discouraged the use of the Alien Enemies Act, now or in the future, especially to “go after children.” Both Shulte and Leopold asked for the use of “rendition” to describe the current wave of mass deportations. “That is much more accurate. We are as a country arresting people and secretly sending them away to another country where they are not from, where they are being incarcerated in one of the most abhorrent prisons in the world,” said Shulte, referring to the El Salvador’s Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT).
On March 15, 2025, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an innocent father of three who escaped violence directed at his family by El Salvadorian gangs, is now being held at CECOT after being picked up in Baltimore, MA, following what the US government called an “administrative error,” an incident that spread fear among lawful immigrant communities.
Concessions like TPS, Parole Pathway, Sensitive Locations, and the CBP One app were used to ensure that millions of asylum seekers had access to a legal framework that not only granted them rights but also allowed them to work and live their lives without a daily fear of deportation. These frameworks have existed for over half a century with multiple presidents across the political spectrum honoring them as a way to literally save lives. Now experts fear that millions within and outside of the US borders will be adversely affected by these changes.
Changing the rules
One strategy being used by the Trump administration is the elimination or altering of TPS (Temporary Protection Status), including the well-known DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. “Temporary protected status is something that has been, again, used by presidents in both parties going back many decades,” explained Shulte. “There’s over a million people who have a TPS. In many of these cases, people have been living in the United States for decades.”
A recent manipulation of the CBP One app developed by the Customs and Border Patrol as a means for prospective immigrants to schedule appointments has been rebranded with a different set of directives. Now, says Lai, “they encourage people to leave and if you don’t leave, they’ll find you and deport you.”
Asylum seekers to the USA have also used the parole pathway that provides a safe, legal path for people seeking to escape humanitarian crises. It has been used to legally resettle and support people escaping wars in Ukraine and Afghanistan or gang-related violence in Latin and South America. “These parole efforts have been a tremendous success,” emphasized Shulte. “There are around 900,000 people, a half million of those people who have the CHNV (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela) parole. The results of these programs were that people were able to come to the country in a safe and orderly fashion, they were vetted, sponsored by someone in the United States, and they’re able to work. What you saw was a reduced pressure and a huge reduction in unauthorized border crossings.”
“The sensitive locations policy is a long-standing common sense policy barring immigration enforcement from entering schools, hospitals, places of worship,” said Kim. “We want to make sure that people feel safe accessing education, healthcare, and worship. But this was removed by this Trump administration and replaced with rhetoric about needing to go into those spaces to go after immigrants.”
Immigrants pay taxes
Organizations like the IRS and Housing and Development Services are being instructed to cooperate with security agencies like ICE and Homeland Security to share data. Leopold pointed out, “The rhetoric has always been during the campaign before that immigrants are undocumented immigrants are taking advantage of Americans living off the country, not paying their taxes. The screaming headline from this last week should have been Immigrants pay their taxes, and the government admits it. Because why else would they be going to the IRS to get the information?”
In an atmosphere of chaos and fear, both force multipliers, it is important not to fall into a downward pressure spiral, say immigration advocates who still see hope and a possibility of a reversal. “My grandfather didn’t outsmart the Nazis to get to the United States so that I could cower in fear,” asserted Shulte, “I have worked with people in totalitarian regimes. The best cover, the best protection is public honesty.”
Shulte also explained how immigrants are and have been central to the success of America throughout its history. “The act of immigration is incredible. Immigrants have done such amazing, beneficial work to the United States,” he said.
Zenobia Lai concluded with a very poignant and ringing reflection: “Telling the truth and seeking justice is what governs my life. Because I know very well, if I’m not If I’m not speaking up for the people who are not in the best position to speak up, no one is going to speak up for me when it comes my turn.”
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