ST. PAUL — Immigration experts and advocates in Minnesota are both preparing for and wondering what changes may happen to an already complex immigration system under another Trump administration.

Julia Decker, policy director with the Immigrant Law Center in St. Paul, says while it is still uncertain what may happen under a Trump presidency, she wonders about changes to programs like Temporary Protected Status, which allows people fleeing violence, political unrest and instability to get immediate work permits and temporary protection from deportation.

“I wish I could have a crystal ball to be able to know what exactly will be different from the current immigration landscape to a future immigration landscape after January 2025, but it’s unfortunately, very, very, difficult,” she said.

Decker also says she’s concerned about the future of DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows young immigrants who grew up in the U.S. to seek temporary protection from deportation and to have the ability to work.

Trump’s first administration declared DACA illegal and ended the program. However, the Supreme Court blocked the administration’s action.

Decker says while DACA faced threats by the Trump administration previously, the Biden administration did not necessarily create a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients.

“Those folks who have been here often for the vast majority of their lives, but they really sort of are just stuck in DACA status, unless there’s sort of an external event, like perhaps they marry a U.S. citizen, or something like that. But if they are just in DACA status, they can never move out of that DACA status to more permanent status,” she said.

Trump calls for mass deportations

As part of his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to start mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and has said the National Guard may be needed to help carry out those orders.

In a California campaign speech, Trump promised to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. The law, which was enacted in 1798, has been used most notably to remove Japanese Americans from their homes and place them in internment camps during WWII.

Ana Pottratz Acosta, professor of law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, says the new Trump administration could use a more recent law to carry out large-scale deportations. In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

Under the act, “the president or the executive branch has the authority to expand expedited removal, which is sort of like a fast-track deportation process that happens with fairly limited procedural due process rights, and there’s no ability for the decision to be reviewed by a federal court,” she said.

Currently, Pottratz Acosta said expedited removal under the act applies to people who are in the U.S. for 14 days or less and who are found within a 100-mile perimeter around border zones.

However, Pottratz Acosta said the first Trump administration proposed expanding expedited removal to people found anywhere within the U.S. and here for two years or less.

“So my fear, and this is sort of like my worst-case scenario, is that expedited removal gets expanded to the entire interior of the United States,” she said. “And basically, anyone who is stopped if they don’t have proof on their person that they’ve been present in the United States for longer than two years, there’s a possibility that they could be swept up in a mass deportation effort with expedited removal.”

Policy differences

Pottratz Acosta says there are key differences in immigration policy between the Biden and Trump administrations. She says prosecutorial discretion was emphasized under the Biden administration, reducing backlogs and creating lawful pathways for asylum seekers. Trump’s potential policies could change that.

“During the first Trump administration, they did get rid of prosecutorial discretion, so it was sort of like everybody was fair game, and that created a lot more chaos or uncertainty in the system,” Pottratz Acosta said. “I think that was one thing that led to a lot of the backlogs that we’re seeing in the immigration courts. There was a lot of enforcement or placing people in removal proceedings, but not the same level of hiring of immigration judges and certain actions to process people once they were in the system.”

Pottratz Acosta said under the Biden administration, cases that were “low priority” were cleared out.

“A good example of that would be someone who is a long-term undocumented immigrant that had no prior criminal record, they kind of were put to the bottom of the list and afforded prosecutorial discretion to have their case dismissed,” she said.

Advocates and experts are keeping in mind, however, that they weren’t entirely satisfied with immigration policies under Biden, either.

The Biden/Harris administration has been active when it comes to deportations and removals. According to data from the Department of Homeland Security, in 2023, the agency “repatriated” more than 1 million people. About 361,000 of those people were removed due to enforcement actions.

A return of the ‘Muslim ban’?

In 2017, Trump signed an executive order that banned travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries. That order was expanded to also include several other countries like Venezuela and North Korea, although there were exceptions.

Biden rolled back the restrictions after he gained office; however, families have said they have remained separated for years following the enactment of the ban.

During the campaign, Trump reportedly told a group of donors that he plans to restore the ban and expand it to prevent refugees from Gaza from coming to the U.S.

Also in 2017, Trump signed an executive order that would withhold federal funds from so-called ”sanctuary cities” like Minneapolis. A federal judge later blocked that executive order.

The city previously adopted a policy that prohibits police and other city employees from asking about the immigration status of people unless it’s clearly relevant to a crime being investigated by law enforcement.

Following Trump’s reelection, several Minneapolis City Council members have issued statements saying they will continue to support and protect the rights of immigrant and refugee communities.

An uncertain future

Jane Graupman, executive director of the International Institute of Minnesota, expressed concerns about the potential effects of new policies on legal immigration pathways and the country’s refugee program, which she notes has been crucial for many immigrants, including in Minnesota.

“We’re going to have to be paying a lot of attention to what the policies are of the new administration, tracking those policies, understanding how they impact the people that we serve,” she said.

Graupman says the institute is also preparing to receive more calls and help immigrants navigate an uncertain future. They recently shared a statement on their website encouraging community members to “stay informed.”

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