Fears grip New York's migrants as Trump’s executive order sparks deportation panic
Fears grip New York's migrants as Trump’s executive order sparks deportation panic
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Beneath freezing skies, a shadow looms over the thousands of migrants living in New York. The city has for centuries been a magnet for refugees whose descendants built America into the world’s most powerful nation. The famous poem from 1883 on the base of the Statue of Liberty promises a new life for the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.
But a few days ago all that changed as new President Donald Trump vowed to send “millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came”. One of his first acts was to give immigration officers sweeping powers to detain and deport people with little or no legal process. And laws preventing arrests at sensitive locations like churches and schools have been ripped up.
These measures, coupled with Trump’s demonisation of migrants as rapists and murderers, have placed a target on the backs of some of America’s most vulnerable people. Federal immigration agents have already started rounding them up in the Denver area.
The crackdown has sent shockwaves through New York where migrants we spoke to believe it is only a matter of days before armed agents come for them. As Usman, a 45-year-old dad from Senegal, put it: “Every sound, every shadow – it could be them. They’ll take us and we’ll never see our children safe again.”.
For hundreds like him, returning to their homelands means facing the violence and persecution they fled, often with little more than the clothes on their backs. Mamadou, from Guinea, said: “I’ll grab my kids and run. We’ll live on the streets, hide in basements, anything but go back. If we’re deported we’re in fear for our lives.”.
