Edited by Martine Dosa
Immigration has long been a controversial issue. People have argued about newcomers to the United States for years. But with Donald Trump as President, immigrants may have a lot to worry about.
Trump has told news outlets he plans to deport 15-20 million immigrants. He said he would have “mass deportations” right at the start of his presidency. There are reports that he plans to separate family members from one another. During his campaign, he also made racially-charged and negative comments about immigrants.
He falsely claimed during the debate with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, that immigrants, specifically Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s cats and dogs. This statement stirred outrage. Some people claimed that it was a joke.
This issue, however, is no joke. Mr. Trump has stood by the false claim about immigrant pet consumption and even said that immigrants eat “other things” as well. Such anti-immigrant talk is having a serious and negative effect around the country — and in New Haven.
“It impacts our clients. They feel afraid,” Maggie Mitchell Salem, the Executive Director of Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS), which helps newcomers to our state, told East Rock Record reporters in an interview.
In this climate immigrants and refugees are “often threatened,” said Mitchell Salem. She said that people who hear about the claims and “who don’t know that it’s not true, sometimes attack our clients verbally. You’ve probably seen some news stories of people being physically attacked.”
Wesnel Joseph is a local Haitian immigrant who works at IRIS helping to resettle and integrate Haitian immigrants into the community. He told reporters that some Haitian children have worried about interactions at school following Mr. Trump’s false claims. Some have told him that students said others laughed around them and that “they didn’t know if they were laughing at me.” This feeling of “shame,” he said, led some parents to stop sending their children to school.
Mr. Trump’s false claims about immigrants have certainly spread. According to the East Rock Record Fall 2024 Survey, 64 percent of students had heard Mr. Trump’s charge that immigrants “are eating the dogs” and “are eating the cats.”
And more than one-quarter of the 205 students who answered the survey, believed it was true. That is almost half of those who responded that they heard it! It is a serious concern that Mr. Trump can say things that are not true and people believe him.
This has created deep concerns for immigrants in our community and at East Rock Community & Cultural Magnet School. We spoke with immigrant students in grades 4 through 8 who shared about the effect of anti-immigrant talk on how they feel and act. “I pretend to laugh when my classmates make fun of my culture, but it actually hurts,” said one student. “Their jokes remind me that I don’t fit in and that I’m just a target for laughs.”
Another student noticed that, “it feels as if students have to fit in.” When a joke starts off in a rude way about them, they have to “find a way to play it cool,” including to “maybe laugh it off or make a worse joke towards the other, making it a never-ending argument.”
Another student said that some students “take it as jokes” because “it’s never really a big deal to them.” When we asked a follow-up question about whether this behavior was “a big deal,” reporters heard that “it depends” but that “some people don’t take it too lightly.”
Our reporting found that young people believe there is rudeness and discrimination towards many students about their race, beliefs, and skin tones. Many times, according to those we interviewed, the situation escalates. This causes an argument that goes back and forth between students, with both sides making a competition of whose comments are worse and more racialized towards the other.
Perspectives on immigration can be complex, including in voting. This election, there was a big controversy over which cultures or ethnicities should vote for which candidate. Now that we are past the election, there is more information about the subject.
As reporters, we were surprised that many immigrants supported Mr. Trump. According to The Brookings Institution, 38.3 percent of immigrants said they planned to vote for him in a pre-election poll. (Election results showed that Mr. Trump made small gains among Hispanic voters compared with 2020.)
We don’t really know the reason for this, but an East Rock Record reporter had a conversation with a local resident to better understand: “I voted for him because when he was in office last, my bank numbers went up and dropped when Biden got into office.”
While it’s unclear what Mr. Trump will actually do for the economy, it is clear that he is against immigration, even threatening to deport those who entered the country legally. If he does deport 15 to 20 million people, that is almost six percent of the country!
The battle over immigration will likely get complicated because of differences in local, state and federal rules. New Haven is a sanctuary city. That means the local government has promised to resist attempts by federal officials to deport immigrants.
That is good news for immigrants in New Haven. But it could cause tension between the local and federal government. It would not be the first time: In 2007, the local government fought the federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) after the agency unconstitutionally raided several New Haven homes and detained 32 immigrants.
This happened 36 hours after the Mayor’s Office announced plans to offer Elm City Resident ID cards to residents regardless of immigration status. Therefore, many saw a connection between the two events. A group of Yale Students fought back in court and won. Evidence gathered during the raid was deemed inadmissible in court, according to a 2009 Yale Daily News report.
Such federal-local conflict is an example of what may happen under the Trump administration. Local organizations like IRIS, and individuals are prepared to protect our local immigrant population. In the state legislature, Rep. Roland Lemar told East Rock Record reporters that he and his colleagues “are spending these next few weeks and months trying to figure out how we can protect our residents and try to figure out what our state response will be.”
The state currently allows undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses and to register their children in school. To do this, they need to share information with the state. “Now we are concerned that, are we going to inadvertently put people in harm’s way?” he said. There is some worry that the federal government may demand access to state records. As a result, said Rep. Lemar, officials are taking stock of “exactly what information the government holds” and how legislators might “create laws at the state level to protect” immigrants.
Immigrants and refugees are an important part of the New Haven community. At East Rock School, teachers said they teach immigrant students every day.
“At East Rock, we have a history of welcoming people into the classroom and into school,” said Mr. John Kennedy, a 7th and 8th grade math teacher. To help English Language Learners, Mr. Kennedy uses many different examples to make his math lessons more accessible. He told reporters that there is a universal “language of mathematics” that he teaches every day.
Mrs. Stephanie Boeher, a 7th and 8th grade English Language Arts teacher, said students should learn vocabulary, including some words in non-English languages, “I think it should be half and half,” she said, adding that “both putting in to work to learn each other’s vocabulary, even if you don’t learn it perfectly, it’s better to try and look into each other’s perspectives.”
One thing to remember, said Mitchell Salem of IRIS, is that “we’re a country of immigrants. It’s who we are. So, to be anti-immigrant is, to me, to be anti-American.”