Illegal migrants in deportation proceedings and other foreign nationals hoping to remain in the country are flooding immigration attorneys with phone calls for advice as President-elect Donald Trump is just days away from re-entering office, the Gothamist reported Wednesday.
The Immigrant Defense Project — a New York-based organization that provides training to immigration attorneys and other assistance to those in the United States unlawfully — says its hotline has received more than double the number of phone calls compared to this time last year, according to Gothamist, which confirmed citing the hotline’s director. The rise in calls comes as Trump has pledged to conduct the largest deportation operation in the country’s history, potentially removing the millions of foreign nationals who poured into the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration.
There were roughly 8.5 million migrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border during the four fiscal years of the Biden-Harris administration, resulting in massive numbers of asylum applications that have overrun the immigration court system. Many illegal migrants are now scrambling for ways to avoid repatriation as a new administration is set to take over.
Trump, who won election on a hardline enforcement platform, has also vowed to dramatically beef up security along the southern border and end birthright citizenship for those born to illegal immigrants. He’s tapped border hawks like Tom Homan to lead deportation efforts, longtime aide Stephen Miller to spearhead White House policy and nominated South Dakota GOP Gov. Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security.
Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he will focus on the “worst first” when he begins the administration’s mass deportation operation, focusing on public safety threats and other criminals, but he cautioned that anyone in the country unlawfully is up for grabs.
“Like the first Trump administration, we’re going to prioritize public safety threats, national security threats and fugitives,” Homan stated to the DCNF, adding that gang members and other criminals would be their main focus. “Those that had due process at great taxpayer expense, were given orders of deportation, never left and became a fugitive – them too, they’re a priority.”
“The ones who pose the biggest threat to the country – they come first. The worst first,” he continued. “But let’s be clear, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table.”
In response to Trump’s election victory and his proposal for mass immigration enforcement inching closer to reality, a number of Democrat-led jurisdictions have enacted or doubled down on sanctuary policies. Lawmakers in Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego County and elsewhere have all voted to either make their sanctuary laws official or reaffirm what laws they already had on the books, and other Democrat mayors have voiced open defiance to Trump’s hardline immigration enforcement agenda.
However, Homan said such laws won’t stop the Trump administration from sweeping deportation raids, noting that he will simply deploy more ICE agents to cities that refuse to cooperate.
“Just because New York may be thought of as a sanctuary city, it doesn’t mean that people in New York are immune from ICE enforcement,” Cheryl Andrada, an immigration attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s public defender’s office in New York City, said to the Gothamist about the limitations of sanctuary policies.
New York City has been hit particularly hard by the nationwide immigration crisis. The city is home to hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, with many of them arriving in just the past few years. Local officials have spent billions on the crisis, and the situation even forced Mayor Eric Adams to announce sweeping budget cuts on schools, the police and other services for citizens.
Shortly after Trump swept the presidential election, winning in an electoral landslide and also clinching the popular vote, the Immigrant Defense Project released a statement vowing to fight tooth and nail against the president-elect’s enforcement agenda. Other left-wing organizations, like the American Civil Liberties Union, are also working meticulously to stymie the Trump administration with as many legal roadblocks as possible.
The Immigrant Defense Project didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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