Celeste traveled from Peru to the United States two decades ago, then a young woman of 19, and exceeded her tourist visa. She had studied graphics at home but, unable to work in her undocumented field, had rather found difficult work to clean the hotel rooms and offices in Los Angeles. She has built a life here, having friends and following lessons in a local community college. She paid her taxes each year, hoping that she could one day earn legal status.
But years have passed without the dramatic reforms necessary to reshape and lead the legal paths to American citizenship. And in the months following President Trump who began his second term, his American dream imploded. She is upset by the images of news of undocumented immigrants responsible for planes, chained as violent criminals, and has returned to their country of origin. The idea of being torn from her house, without the time to have her personal effects or to say goodbye to friends, shakes her in the heart.
Thus, Celeste has made a difficult decision: she will continue to clean the offices and save money for a few more months, and will return to Peru by the end of the year.
Even with a plan to leave, she feels vulnerable and exposed. She now avoids restaurants, her favorite dance places, even trail hikes. She has stopped registering for online courses, she said, because she fears to record her name or address.
“The fear they can seize you is still there,” said Celeste, who asked that times do not use his full name for fear of making him a target for the immigration authorities.
Trump entered his second mandate promising the greatest effort to expulsion in the history of the United States. During the campaign, he concentrated his rhetoric on undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes. But shortly after taking office, his administration clearly indicated that they considered anyone in the country without authorization as a criminal.
During the months that followed, the new administration used a variety of tactics – explicit and subtle – to urge immigrants to leave the country of their own will.
The day it was inaugurated, Trump has disabled the CBP One mobile application that Biden administration had used since 2023 to create a more ordered process of applying for asylum from the American-Mexican border. Thousands of migrants camped on the border were suddenly canceled asylum meetings.
Instead, the Trump administration has launched a replacement application, CBP HomeThis allows immigrants to inform the government of their intention to leave the country. The Ministry of Internal Security has not responded to the request for Times data concerning the number of people who used the application.
Last month, the agency launched a advertising campaign Undering the country of the country without authorization to leave immediately. “If you do not do it, we will find you and we will expel you,” explains the secretary of the agency Kristi Noem in the ad. This week, Trump told Fox Noticias that he makes an allowance to give an allowance and a plane ticket to immigrants from the country illegally who choose to “self-conform”.
The administration does not only target undocumented immigrants. In recent weeks, Homeland Security has sent a message to the migrants who have entered the country using the CBP One One application of the Biden era, telling them that their temporary legal status has been terminated and that they should Leave “immediately”.
And then there are the images of migrants expelled towards a notorious prison of El Salvador, chained, one behind the other in prison costume, the head bowed and shave. The administration invoked the law on extraterrestrial enemies of 1798 to withdraw the Venezuelan nationals without regular procedure, alleging that they were all members of gangs.
“One of the impacts of the various measures of Trump’s policy is to make terror and to fear in immigrant communities,” said Kevin Johnson, professor of public interest law at the UC Davis School of Law. “It is designed to show immigrants:” We went out to get you. »»
Three months later, it is difficult to estimate the number of people who make the exhausting decision to leave life and families built here in the context of more indulgent application policies to return to countries of origin that many have not seen for decades.
But even in liberal California, where undocumented immigrants benefit from better access to social services than in many regions of the United States, the defenders say that they answer more questions from people who fear being torn and expelled and plan to go on their own conditions.
Luz Gallegos, executive director of the Todec Legal Center in the Inland Empire, said that her staff were talking about “daily” with people who plan to leave. Struck by “constant attacks” against immigrants, she said, people ask logistical questions: can they take their cars? What happens to the education of their children?
“What’s going on in the sessions is, is, “Prefers irme con algo, that Imme sin nada,”“Gallegos said.” I prefer to go with something to go with nothing. “”
To considerably reduce the country’s unauthorized immigrant population, currently estimated at around 11 million, the administration and the congress should make spectacular changes, according to experts. Rounding and packing millions of people across the country would require a massive deployment of resources and a much more detention capacity. The vast backwards of the courts of the immigration courts – there were more than 3.6 million cases pending at the end of March, according to the trac reports – also efforts.
“Given the current level of current resources and strategies, you cannot delete 11 million people from the country,” said Johnson. “They need some people to leave.”
This is where the notion of encouraging self-empowerment comes into play. Mitt Romney proposed the idea During the 2012 Republican primary, suggesting that his administration would make it so difficult for undocumented persons to obtain jobs that they would leave for a country where they could legally work.
At the time, his embrace of the concept was largely considered a reason why he lost among Latin American voters in the general elections. But more than a decade later, the strategy gained ground.
Numbersusa, a basic organization focused on immigration reform, said on its website that the encouragement of people to return to their country of origin is “key” to reduce the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States demanding that employers use E-VERIFY people to prove that their employees can legally work is the “number” to encourage people to leave, according to the director of Numberusa Ruark.
Elena, an unauthorized Mexican immigrant who has lived in the inner empire for almost two decades, said that she and her husband were one of those who decided to self-conform. They will return to their homeland in the southern state of the chiapas at Christmas.
She was shopping recently when an employee of the store told her that she had seen an immigration agent flowing into the neighborhood. Do not go out if you don’t have papers, warned the employee. A few months ago, she was traveling along Interstate 8 near the southern border and passed an immigration control point where she saw detained and handcuffed people.
“My heart hurt so much,” said Elena, who also asked to be identified only by her first name because she fears paying attention to the immigration authorities. “I saw workers and people travel with their families, people who had made their lives here, and suddenly it happens and their dreams are destroyed.”
In recent years, the couple’s ability to work has been limited by age and illness. Elena, 54, has fibromyalgia and arthritis, and her husband, 62, had a heart attack. However, he found work repairing cars and trucks; Together, they organize birthday parties and baby showers, offering large buffets of meat, rice, beans and salsas. In Chiapas, they have almost five acres of land, where they hope to build a ranch, raise animals and grow cultures.
“Many people have said that I might be more free there,” she said in the kitchen of her tidy house, “because here you feel chained. You want to do a lot of things, but you can’t.”
She has three adult children – two born in the United States – and two grandchildren in California. She is choking at the idea of being thousands of kilometers away.
“I think of my grandchildren and I cry, I suffer,” she said. “I love them so much. Who will take care of them as their grandmother? ”
About 100 miles in the southeast, Maria, also undocumented immigrants 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, she asked to be identified only by a first name.
She lives with a paralyzing fear of being hunted down and expelled without a chance to make sure that her belongings are in order. She hesitates to go to church, has not visited a doctor for months and cannot go shopping with any peace of mind. Anxiety has literally sent its packaging. Over the years, she has supported herself by selling enchiladas and tacos of a small food stand. She plans to bring her kitchen equipment with her to Mexico in the hope of living there.
She will leave behind three daughters and six grandchildren, but bringing together two sons in Mexico.
“It is as if I were divided into two parts,” she said. “I was not happy here, and I will not be happy there.”
This article is part of the time ‘ Actions report initiative,, funded by the James Irvine Foundationexploring the challenges faced by California’s economic divide.
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