Trump has promised mass deportations. What’s that mean for immigrants living in Idaho?
Idaho immigration lawyers and advocates said they started getting messages from clients within hours of Donald Trump’s election victory Wednesday morning.
During his campaign, Trump offered a series of immigration ideas that included mass deportation of people in the United States without legal status. In his term as president from 2017-21, he limited immigration from certain countries and attempted to end DACA, which offers deportation protection for undocumented people brought to the U.S. as children.
“The real question is how is it going to trickle down here,” said Maria Andrade, a prominent local immigration lawyer.
Andrade said she expects three main impacts in the Gem State.
The first would be exacerbation of a “crisis-level agricultural labor shortage,” she said, if mass deportations took place. Idaho’s dairy industry is dependent upon foreign-born workers, according to previous Statesman reporting, and so are other agricultural ventures.
The second would be a potential slowing of legal immigration that could impact Idaho’s companies, Andrade said. Some highly skilled workers could be dissuaded from coming to the country at all due to an overall more difficult environment for immigrants, and might particularly avoid states that take a hard stance with Trump’s policies.
And third, Andrade expects the number of refugees coming to Idaho to drop.
The Idaho Office for Refugees declined to comment to the Statesman. However, the national cap on refugees and the number of admitted refugees dropped dramatically when Trump was president last time, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
In its community newsletter, the Idaho Office for Refugees said it recognized many were anxious and told people that the group remained committed to supporting refugees who relocate to the state.
“Despite our differences, we’re working together to pursue a path toward a brighter future,” the newsletter said. “We remain dedicated to collaborating with community members, partners, and leaders to build a society of belonging, peace, and opportunity.”
After blocking bipartisan bill, Trump to focus on border
Immigration was a contentious topic during the 2024 campaign, with Republicans blaming Democrats for an increase in border crossings and Democrats criticizing Republicans for blocking a bipartisan border security bill at the behest of Trump, who has made anti-immigrant rhetoric a cornerstone of his political life.
The Biden administration has prioritized arresting and deporting immigrants who are criminals or multiple violators, lawyers told the Statesman. But in Trump’s previous administration, there weren’t a lot of priorities other than people who were in the United States without authorization.
“What I expect is there’s going to be broad arrests and deportation of all kinds of people, regardless of who the administration says they’re targeting,” Andrade said.
And Trump’s mass deportation plans could increase backlogs in immigration courts, according to a CBS News story, which is what happened in his first term. In January 2017, immigration courts had over 500,000 cases. That number almost doubled by 2019, according to the American Immigration Council.
Alycia Moss, a partner and immigration attorney at Hawley Troxell, said she expects to see more enforcement on immigration. She said that could have an impact on a number of people in Idaho, from mixed families to those who employ undocumented workers.
Families could be scared to send their children to school or go to the doctor, Moss said, for fear of being discovered as undocumented.
Under a new Trump administration, people in the U.S. under DACA, Uniting for Ukraine or temporary protected status could be affected by executive decisions, Moss said. People in the country on asylum status would likely be less affected, because that’s under the purview of Congress and not the executive branch, she said.
She also said some of the president’s decisions could be challenged by lawsuits.
On the whole, mass deportations would be “logistically intense,” Moss said.
“I think we have issues right now with having enough bodies on the ground for enforcement,” Moss said. “If the numbers are correct and there’s 11 or 12 million (undocumented immigrants) ... it’s hard to see how that would happen without significantly more resources than I see available.”
Luis Campos, the legal director of the Alliance of Idaho in Blaine County, said that local and state officials would have to buy in for mass deportations to happen. Idaho Gov. Brad Little, who has sent state troopers over 1,000 miles away to the Mexico-Texas border, and the state’s congressional delegation did not return requests for comment.
What could enforcement and deportation effort look like?
Trump has not provided details when it comes to carrying out deportation plans. USA Today did a review and found that many ideas were floated, including use of the military and National Guard, and local and state police; using executive authority to bypass laws that include protections for immigrants; and using the Alien Enemies Act, which dates to the 1700s and was employed to detain Japanese and German people during World War II.
In the 2024 legislative session, Idaho Republicans tried to pass a bill that would have allowed local law enforcement and judges to check people’s immigration status and order them returned to their home country if they weren’t here legally, according to legislative documents. The bill, HB 753, died in the Senate.
Campos said he is concerned for asylum seekers in Idaho. In 2018, the first of Trump’s two U.S. attorneys general, Jeff Sessions, said that asylum seekers claiming domestic violence or gang violence shouldn’t qualify, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. It’s possible the new Trump administration could take a similar stance.
Problems at the border need to be solved, Campos said, and the United States can’t accommodate the whole world. But the processes in place have to be “humane and lawful,” he said.
“All this impacts Idaho because we do have a significant population of immigrants,” Campos said. “Immigration is good for the state of Idaho in terms of economics. Immigrants, regardless of their status, are consumers. They have buying power.”
Immigrants bring more than just economic benefits to Idaho, said Estefanía Mondragón, executive director of PODER of Idaho. They bring culture, music and food as well, Mondragón said, while doing work the state’s economy needs.
“Our economy is thriving. We have houses, homes being built left and right,” Mondragón said. “Who is building those houses? Immigrants ... immigrant labor is building Idaho.”
PODER is a nonpartisan organization, Mondragón said, and no one political party or candidate represents what is best for the community. The organization was founded, however, after the Trump administration attempted to rescind DACA protections.
Mondragón said the group is having discussions about doing community meetings around the state to determine needs and answer questions for immigrants.
ACLU of Idaho Spokesperson Rebecca De León said having a new Trump administration on the horizon will exacerbate an existing anti-immigrant trend in the Gem State.
For example, many Eagle residents brought concerns about undocumented people to the Eagle City Council earlier this year, according to previous Statesman reporting. The council embraced a resolution barring services for immigrants who don’t have permanent legal status.
“I think that there’s a lot of uncertainty,” Mondragón said. “We don’t want to build an Idaho that is built on fear of immigrants.”
This story was originally published November 8, 2024 at 4:00 AM.
