Celeste traveled from Peru to the United States two decades ago, then a 19 -year -old girl, and exceeded her tourist visa. He had studied graphic design at home but, unable to work in his field without papers, instead found hard work cleaning rooms and hotel offices in Los Angeles. She builds a life here, making friends and walking courses at a local community university. She paid her taxes annually, with the hope of power someday gain legal status.
But the year approved without the dramatic reforms necessary to remodel and deactivate legal paths to US citizenship. And in the months since President Trump began his second term, his American dream has been implored. It is bewildered by the images of the news of undocumented immigrants who are loaded in airplanes, are locked as violent criminals and returned to their native countries. The idea of being torn from your home, without time to pack the rehearsal or say goodbye to friends, shake it to the core.
Then, Celeste has made a difficult decision: it will continue to clean the offices and save money for just a few more months, and return to Peru at the end of the year.
Even with a plan to leave, he feels vulnerable and exhibiting. Now avoid restaurants, your favorite dance places, even path walks. He has stopped enrolling in online classes, he said, because he is worried about registering his name or address.
“The fear that they can grab you is always there,” said Celeste, who asked that the Times not use its full name for fear of turning it into an objective for immigration authorities.
Trump entered his second term promising the greatest deportation effort in the history of the United States. Campaign duration, rhetoric focused on undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes. But shortly after him, his administration made anyone in the country without authorization as a criminal.
In later months, the new administration has used a variety of tactics, explicit and subtle, to urge immigrants to leave the country on their own.
The day it was inaugurated, Trump Disabled the CBP one Mobile application that the Biden Administration had used since 2023 to create a more orderly process to request asylum from the border between the United States and Mexico. Thousands of migrants camping on the border had their asylum appointments arrested.
Instead, the Trump administration launched a replacement application, CBP houseThat allows immigrants to notify the government of their intention to leave the country. The National Security Department did not respond to the application of the Data Times on the number of people who have used the application.
Last month, the agency launched a Advertising campaign Urge people in the country without authorization to go immediately. “If you do not, we will find it and we will deport it,” says the secretary of the Kristi Call agency in the announcement. This week, Trump told Fox News that it is Formulate a plan to give a stipend and a plane ticket to immigrants in the country illegally who choose to “self -support.”
The administration not only addresses undocumented immigrants. In recent weeks, national security has sent messages to migrants who entered the country using the IDEN-IRA CBP One application, they say that their temporal legal status has been completed and should Leave “immediately.”
And then there are the images of the migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, chained one behind the other with the prison attire, their boed and shaved heads. The Administration invoked the Alien Enemies Law of 1798 to eliminate Venezuelan nationals without due process, claiming that all gang members.
“One of the impacts of the various Trump policy measures is to attack terror and fear in immigrant communities,” said Kevin Johnson, a professor of public interest at the UC Davis Law Faculty. “It is designed to show immigrants,” we are to catch you. “
Three months later, it is difficult to estimate how many people make the exhausting decision to leave lives and families build here under more indulgent application policies to return to countries of origin that many have not seen for decades.
But only in California Liberal, where undocumented immigrants enjoy greater access to social services than in many regions of the United States, defenders say they send more questions from people who fear being in Ownperse.
Gallegos Luz, Executive Director or Todec Legal Center In the inner empire, he said that the members of their staff speak “daily” with people they consider to leave. Pumed by the “constant attacks” about immigrants, he said, people are raising logistical questions: can they take their cars? What about the education of your children?
“What appears a lot in the sessions is, “I prefer to go with something, to go with nothing,”“Gallegos said.
To significantly reduce the population of unauthorized immigrants from the country, currently estimated at approximately 11 million, administration and congress would need to make dramatic changes, experts say. Rounding and packing millions of people throughout the country would require a massive deployment of resources and much more detention capacity. The extensive accumulation of cases of the Imigration Court: there was more than 3.6 million pending cases At the end of March, according to Trac reports, it also hinders such efforts.
“Given the current level of resources and current strategies, he cannot eliminate 11 million people from the country,” said Johnson. “They need some people to leave.”
That’s where the notion of promoting self -sports enters. Mitt Romney Propose the idea Duration The republican primary of 2012 suggests that their administration would make it difficult for undocumented people to obtain jobs that would leave for a country where they could work legally.
At that time, his hug of the concept was widely seen as a reason why he lost among Latin voters in the general elections. But more than a decade later, the strategy has won traction.
Numbersusa, a base organization focused on immigration reform, says on its website that encouraging people to return to their countries of origin is “Key” to reduce The number of unauthorized immigrants in the US. Which require employers to use e-verify to demonstrate that their employees can legally work is the “number one” form of giving people an incentive to leave, said Number Research Director Eric Ruark.
Elena, an unauthorized Mexican immigrant who has lived in the inner empire for almost two decades, said that she and her husband are among those who have decided to self -information. They will return to their homeland in the southern state of Chiapas at Christmas.
He was shopping recently when a store employee told him that he had an immigration agent that sank the neighborhood. Do not leave if you have no papers, the employee warned. A few months before, he was traveling through the interstate 8 near the southern border and a point of immigration control passed where he saw detained and handcuffs.
“My heart hurts a lot,” Elena said, who is also asked to identify only by his first name because fears call the attention of immigration authorities. “I saw workers and people travel with their families, people who had made their lives here, and balance, this happens and their dreams are destroyed.”
In recent years, the couple’s ability to work has been limited by age and disease. Elena, 54, has fibromyalgia and arthritis, and her 62 -year -old husband has had a heart attack. Even so, he has found work fixing cars and trucks; Together they serve to birthday parties and showers, which provide large buffets of meat, rice, beans and sauces. In Chiapas, they have almost five acres of the country, where they hope to build a ranch, raise animals and grow crops.
“Many people have said that maybe I feel freer there,” he said from the kitchen of his ordered home, “because you feel chained. You want to do many things, but you can’t.”
She has three adult children, two born in the United States, and two grandchildren in California. She drowns the thought or is thousands of miles away.
“I think of my grandson, and I cry, I suffer,” he said. “I love you very much. Who will take care of you like your grandmother?”
Around 100 miles to the southeast, Maria, also undocumented immigrant from Mexico, said that after 30 years in the Coachella Valley, she also plans to return to her country of origin and try to forge a new life in the western state of Michoacán. Like the other women interviewed for this article, he asked to be identified only by a name.
She lives with a paralyzing fear of the hunted and deported bee without the opportunity to ensure that her affairs are in order. She doubts to go to the Church, has not visited a doctor in months and cannot make errands with peace of mind. Anxiety, quite light, has sent him to pack. Over the years, it has been supported by selling enchiladas and tacos of a small food post. She plans to bring her cooking team with her in the hope of making a living there.
She will leave three daughters and six granddaughters behind, but meeting with two sons in Mexico.
“It’s as if I were divided into two parts,” he said. “I have been happy here, and I will not be happy there.”
This article is part of the times’ Variable income report initiative“ Financed by him James Irvine FoundationExploring the challenges faced by low -income workers and the efforts that are being made to address The Economic Division of California.
