The owners of American green cards cancel the trips, on the edge after the detentions

A few weeks ago, New York immigration lawyer Pouyan Darian sought to reassure the legal permanent residents that he was sure to travel outside the United States without compromising their status under the Trump administration. With rare exceptions, he said in a viral YouTube video, those who have green cards have the “absolute right” to reintegrate the country.

Darian rethures his advice. Several recent federal application measures against holders of green cards have acquired generalized notoriety and have thrown a cloud of fear and anxiety with regard to many estimated legal residents of the country whose legal right to live and work in the country gave them confidence that they were sheltered from the mass deportation campaign of President Donald Trump.

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The number of confirmed detention seems to be limited to a handful of highly publicized incidents, including the arrests of a pair of campus activists in New York, a German national who returns to New England on a trip abroad and a Philippine woman in Seattle who lives in the United States for three decades.

But these apprehensions as well as reports – including a Tik Tok viral video – legal permanent residents interviewed at the control points of the American airport and pressures to sign forms renouncing their status have been the subject of rumors on social networks, prompted the holders of green cards to cancel the travel plans and have generated a flow of frantic calls to immigration lawyers.

Darian says that his advice to customers have “absolutely changed” and that he now tells them to consider not traveling because “you are submitting to a meticulous exam when you try to return to the United States”.

“I did not expect them to attack holders of green cards,” he said in an interview. He published a new video on Wednesday warning that the Trump administration will start focusing on permanent residents.

These concerns are involved as the Trump administration, frustrated that the pace of deportations is not below its ambitious quotas, has taken more aggressive measures in recent weeks, in particular by deporting 238 migrants to a mega-prison in Salvador without regular procedure. The administration’s apparent will to expand its expulsion campaign to immigrants who are legally highlights a new phase of Trump’s immigration repression, legal analysts said.

When asked if the administration promulgates a stricter verification, Hilton Beckham, deputy commissioner for customs and American borders, said in a statement: “The Trump administration applies immigration laws – something that the previous administration has not done. Those who violate these laws, which will be treated, detained and deleted, as required. Nothing to fear when entering and leaving the country. »»

Besides American citizens, green cards holders have traditionally enjoyed the largest legal rights, and the legal permanent residence has long been a springboard for migrants to continue naturalization. Under the federal immigration law, holders of green cards cannot vote but are allowed to live and work in the United States, they can also travel abroad, provided they are not confronted with criminal accusations and do not remain outside the United States for long periods.

Among some green cards holders, increased at the end of February when a woman published a Tiktok video warning that her niece, a 23 -year -old nursing student with a green card, had been arrested and expelled after trying to return to the country at Los Angeles International Airport, after attending her mother’s funeral in Laos.

In mid-March, two very publicized arrests of green cards holders still ignited fears. The federal authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian protest leader at Columbia University, accusing him of supporting Hamas. Khalil, whose wife must give birth next month, is detained in a federal immigration establishment in Louisiana. His lawyer described his detention an illegal act of the Trump administration targeting Khalil’s political beliefs.

A few days later, customs agents at Logan International Airport in Boston arrested Fabian Schmidt, a legal permanent resident since 2008 who returned to New Hampshire to travel to his native Germany. Schmidt’s mother told journalists that he had been violently interviewed and in a hurry to sign a document I-407 renouncing her green card status. He is detained in the Rhode Island, pending a hearing of the immigration court in June.

DHS officials challenged Schmidt’s ill -treatment and underlined information that he had faced an accusation of marijuana offense in 2015, which was then rejected, then a condemnation for drunk driving.

“People are terrified, completely panicked,” said Joshua Goldstein, an immigration lawyer for Los Angeles. “I even receive questions from American citizens to ask,” Can I travel? ” »»

Goldstein underlined the appearance of Vice-President JD Vance on March 13 on Fox News in which, questioned about Khalil’s arrest, he said that green cards holders do not “have the indefinite right to be in the United States of America”. Vance said that the question, at the base, does not concern freedom of expression or national security, but rather represents a fundamental debate on which is authorized to be part of American society.

“If the Secretary of State and the President decide that this person should not be in America and that he does not have the legal right to stay here, it is as simple as that,” said the vice-president.

Goldstein said that the Trump administration clearly indicates that the mass expulsion effort is much greater than the fact of immigrants who have entered the country illegally.

“If they make permanent residents and American citizens with immigrant history, it is quite different from the search for people with legal records,” he said.

Immigration lawyers interviewed by the Washington Post said their offices had been flooded with calls for green cards asking for advice. They said that many had decided to cancel or postpone the holidays, honeymoon or visits to parents abroad, including for funerals of family members. Similar accounts have been published in the comments of social media sites, including Facebook, YouTube, Tiktok and Reddit.

But holders of green cards have been reluctant to speak publicly about concern that they could become targets of the Trump administration, according to conversations with more than half a dozen immigration lawyers and several legal permanent residents contacted by the post.

A Venezuelan man who works in the Ohio medical industry declared in an interview that he had asked for refugee status in the United States in 2019 and that he had received a green card in 2022. Last summer, he married an American woman, and they hoped to plan a honey moon in Spain while they were waiting for his refugee travel documents to use instead of Pasport.

The couple initially agreed to allow the post to identify them, but later asked for anonymity for fear that this could invite more government control. After Trump was elected, they decided to take their honeymoon this month in Puerto Rico, an American territory, by abundance of prudence.

“It is a truly frightening thought that he could be forced to go somewhere – forced to go somewhere without me,” said the wife about the prospect that her husband could be detained or expelled. “Yeah, it’s emotional.”

Another man, from South America, who obtained a green card a decade ago after being sponsored by his American spouse and worked in communication on the west coast, said that his anxiety had increased in recent months.

“Am I afraid? I think the most precise word is to say that I am worried,” he said. “I feel a little, in my daily life, quite sure … It’s more that I am uncertain, and I have a lot of questions about what to do with my life: should I ask for citizenship?” Should I leave the country? Should I have plans? “

Some legal experts have warned that it was too early to assess how the Trump administration plans to contact holders of green card.

Latoya McBean Pompy, an immigration lawyer in White Plains, New York, said that she had regularly dealt with cases before Trump took office as clients whose immigration status was reported at the airport control points. The anxiety of certain green cards holders, she suggested, has been accentuated by the pure aggression of global tactics of the Trump administration’s immigration.

McBean Pompy highlighted a wave of mobile phones videos captured by passers -by who have been published on social networks representing federal immigration agents conducting loaded measures in local communities.

“When you see these things, you think:” Oh, Wow, it comes close to me “,” she said.

Legal analysts said it should not be surprising that Trump administration is willing to target green cards holders. During his first mandate, Trump’s administration has greatly reduced the number of green cards that the United States government has published over four years over 418,000 compared to the second mandate of President Barack Obama, according to an analysis of the Libertarian Cato Institute.

New efforts are underway to slow down a certain treatment of green cards. The Trump administration would have adopted a measure to suspend the requests for immigrants who obtained refugee or asylum status, which the authorities called for an effort to implement a strict security verification, according to a report by CBS News.

“Directionally, this is where they wanted to go all the time. Now they are much clearer in their intention,” said David J. Bier, director of Cato immigration studies. “They are clear that they do not see a distinction between a non -citizen category and another. They will stop and expel you if you run unlike their goals. This is what we see. “

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