Christine Neumann-Ortiz remembers Donald Trump’s first term as president as a time of mass resistance to deportations. She says it did not start in the courts or the streets, but the schools where immigration rhetoric impacted students.
“One of the most immediate things we experienced is that there were many kids in the school that were being bullied,” Neumann-Ortiz says. “It wasn’t just immigrant students, [but] Black students, LGBTQ students too.”
Neumann-Ortiz is the executive director of Voces de la Frontera Action, a nonprofit focused on immigrant workers rights. She describes the deportation process as traumatic, not just for the person who is deported.
“It traumatizes children, it leaves people in poverty, and it traumatizes the larger community around them,” she said.
But with undocumented immigrants not having access to driver’s licenses in Wisconsin, fear of deportation can be constant, regardless of who is president. Federal immigration policy allows local law enforcement to act as deportation agents, and eight counties in Wisconsin work with the federal government in this way.
This has remained federal policy during the Biden administration. The Biden administration did bring back “enforcement priorities,” meaning that serious criminal offenses would be prioritized for deportation over, for example, driving without a license.
In 2017, the Trump administration broadened enforcement priorities in the first week to a level the American Immigration Council said “would place all unauthorized individuals at risk of deportation, including families, long-time residents, and ‘Dreamers’ (those who were brought to this country as children).”
Still, Neumann-Ortiz says the Wisconsin state legislature could alleviate this risk by allowing undocumented immigrants to receive a driver’s license.
“The stakes are really high for people without a driver’s license, because they live in fear that a second offense for driving without a license can lead to a criminal charge and put you up on the radar screen for immigration,” Neumann-Ortiz says. "[This can] lead to deportation, separation from your family, even though you’ve lived here for decades and have a good record.”
Listen to Lake Effect’s special episode on immigration in Wisconsin, covering the history of Latino immigration to the state, how immigration court works, and how immigrant rights can be affirmed in Wisconsin.
