Not even hours after Donald Trump was declared the winner, immigration lawyers began receiving panicked queries: What happens to those of us on temporary status? Is there a way to speed up my application? Will I have to leave?
Almost a month later, the questions keep on coming. Earlier this month, we featured a Q&A with an immigration expert. This week, we continue that with an eye toward getting more concrete on what we can do to stay safe, and to keep our neighbors safe. To get a sense of what strategy immigrant New Yorkers might employ under Trump 2.0, we turned to Raluca Oncioiu, managing attorney at the immigration unit of the Catholic Migration Services. Emigrated from Romania as a child, Oncioiu has been working in this space for more than two decades and doesn’t sugarcoat what’s to come: Trump’s first term, she says, “was very exhausting and scary. Probably this time around will be similar. This will probably be the worst that we’ve seen.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
S. Mitra Kalita: There has been very little time from the declaration of the election results to fear over the future of immigrants in this country. While much of the country was in shock, immigrants right away went into action mode. I wanted to see what your experience has been and then we can perhaps address some of the areas they are asking about.
Raluca Oncioiu: Yes, we started getting calls from clients and other community members, whether they are clients or not. Their questions reveal a high level of apprehension. Plus, maybe some people who don’t need to worry are worrying. The hard answer is that right now, we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen and how and when. So it’s hard to respond, especially in a general sense. If a client calls and I know their immigration situation, I can answer some questions, and to others I can say, ‘We don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t know.’
SMK: Let’s dive into some of the questions, like ‘should I get a new passport’?
RO: That’s very hard to answer if you don’t know someone’s immigration status. Just to give you an example, someone who is applying for asylum normally should not. When you apply for asylum, you’re basically saying, ‘I need the United States to protect me because my own country cannot protect me from persecution or, in fact, is persecuting me.’ It undermines the asylum claim to then go ask that country for a passport. So again it’s situation dependent. Every case may have a different answer. Also in some countries you can’t get a passport. So if you’re Venezuelan and you don’t have your passport, you’re not going to be able to get one from your country.
SMK: Will denaturalization really be possible?
RO: Denaturalization is probably the hardest thing to do. But can it be done? Yes. Even though it’s hard right now to take someone’s naturalization away, could that change in the future? Yes, possibly. So, again, it’s very hard to answer these questions in the abstract.
SMK: What about TPS? People with temporary protected status, such as those from El Salvador, Nepal and Haiti.
RO: What’s going to happen? It’s hard to tell. Under the first Trump administration, they tried to terminate TPS for nationals of certain countries. That’s still in the courts and that hasn’t been decided yet. And in the meantime, more countries were designated for TPS. So will that be under attack? We all think so, but we don’t know what it’s going to look like.
SMK: Were you an immigration lawyer during the first Trump administration?
RO: Yes, I was. A lot of the things that the first administration tried to do were stopped by the court. I think they learned from that how to try how to do things differently this time around.
SMK: By they, you mean the administration? And that they might try to bypass the courts?
RO: Yes. On the other hand, the ACLU has been spending the past year getting prepared just in case. The two sides, neither of them know what the other one’s doing or anticipating. So a lot is up in the air. The only thing that I’m sure is going to happen is everything is going to get harder.
SMK: We’ve said as a news outlet, over and over, that it’s perfectly legal to enter the United States to seek asylum. That was stopped by the Biden administration. My question is about all the varying states of limbo. I know people who’ve been waiting decades for paperwork and I know people who’ve been in the country more recently.
Do you think that there will be any hierarchy from the Trump administration? Who’s most at risk right now?
RO: It’s just speculation at this point. It would seem that given the promises made during the campaign, that newcomers – people who arrived since 2022 – would be a priority. It’s hard to tell until January 21st [the day after Inauguration Day]. Of the people who came in the last two years, some have already applied for asylum. Will they be in a different situation than people who haven’t applied for anything yet? It’s hard to tell.
SMK: You’ve been doing this a while, two and a half decades. President Clinton kicked immigrants off some social service programs. Deportations grew under President Obama. Biden stopped asylum seekers from entering the U.S. There have been periods of rolling back the welcome mat. When did it feel hardest or the worst? Is there something different about Trump as president when it comes to immigration versus all the other administrations that you’ve been through?
RO: I think the worst has been under his first administration.
SMK: You say that with such certainty.
RO: We used to joke that every Friday, around 5 p.m., like clockwork, a new anti-immigrant measure was announced. We were often in a position of having started to look at the last measure and trying to figure out how it affects clients and what we can do. We wouldn’t even be done with that process when a new thing would come up and we’d have to drop what we were doing and look at the new measure. So it was very exhausting and scary. Probably this time around will be similar.
This will probably be the worst that we’ve seen. Part of it is because different campaigns before have tried to exploit anti-immigrant feelings. But I haven’t seen it as bad as it’s been this time. To be called an immigrant is a bad word.
SMK: Many of us in the news media felt the same way on Fridays at 5 p.m. And many of my colleagues this time around are saying they will approach it differently or maybe that they don’t know if they can go on.
RO: There are some organizations like the ACLU that have been anticipating things and growing plans and coming up with tentative arguments.
I think the risk for a lot of us who are actually working directly with clients, is that we’ve spent the last four years actually helping as many people as possible and really not so much thinking about what’s going to happen. We’ve been concentrating on the cases that we’re working on. Once the election results became clear, we started worrying about how the clients that I’m representing are going to be impacted. What can I do right now for this particular client?
What am I doing for this person before January 20? What do I tell them? What are the steps that I can take?
SMK: You’re trying to bolster each of your individual cases and their prospects of staying in the country.
RO: As attorneys, our first ethical responsibility is to our existing clients. And we all have a lot of them. In nonprofit legal services, we have huge caseloads. These are people I’ve been working with for years now and about whom I care a lot.
Certain agencies don’t provide direct legal services and don’t work directly with clients, and those are the agencies that have been preparing. Those are the agencies that right now are putting everything else aside to try to draft plans and trainings and presentations in anticipation of certain policies. You were asking about who will be prioritized, the hierarchy of who will be under fire first. I have some guesses but that’s just speculation. It could be people who already have deportation orders. Let’s say you applied for asylum and you lost in court. The judge found against you and ordered you deported. That’s one possibility.
The other possibility is, with all the movement and confusion– the new arrivals shifting from place to place–some people in this process will miss their immigration court hearings. If you don’t show up for your hearing, you get an in absentia deportation order for not showing up. So there are people in that situation who have not had their cases heard or were deported because they didn’t know they had court or couldn’t get to court. Those folks are probably going to be among the priorities. People with criminal records here are also going to be among the priorities.
SMK: When you see people with criminal records who are undocumented or even folks who are green card holders and have, say, a DUI or an arrest for something, are they at risk?
RO: Not every arrest and every conviction makes someone deportable who has status here, but that’s a whole other area of immigration law. We refer to it as crimmigration. There’s a lot of nuance to make somebody deportable.
SMK: Any do’s or don’ts you might share with both immigrants and those of us in New York who interact with them, which is pretty much everybody?
RO: Because I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen and who’s going to be targeted, it’s hard to actually be clear about anything.
People who are immigrants should definitely try to stay out of trouble. If you don’t have a criminal record, this isn’t the time to get arrested. Don’t talk about your immigration situation with strangers. That’s for you to know.
And your immigration attorney, if you are able to have one, get a consultation. Keep copies of applications and your immigration paperwork somewhere safe. Have at least one other person know about where they are. If you are detained, that information will be necessary for a lawyer to help you.
SMK: Is there anything around the idea of New York as a sanctuary city that’s helpful right now? Meaning New York refuses to cooperate with some federal roundups of immigrants, etc. Do you feel New York is safer than Florida, for example?
RO: I would say right now New York is safer than Florida, but again we don’t know. There are so many scenarios that are possible.
Right now in immigration services, we’re focusing on submitting applications that are likely to be adjudicated fast and also just submitting applications for people who are eligible for immigration benefits so that they have something pending. Even if things change, if they have an application pending, then at least there’s something in the record that a judge can look at. So it puts people in a better situation.
SMK: Are there any other ways people can help, or is there anything you need?
RO: To a certain extent, volunteers who speak other languages are always important for us because we have so many documents to translate. And even though most of our staff is bilingual and speak another language, we don’t have time to do document translation. It is very time-consuming. So if you are willing to interpret or translate documents and willing to help, that’s always something we need.
Read more of our immigration stories here.
