From snowy cities to the border with Mexico

As it snowed lightly outside, worshipers gathered at Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicago to pray and plan for what will happen when Donald Trump takes office next week, when the president-elect has promised to begin the largest expulsion of undocumented immigrants in history. of the United States.

“(January) 20th will be here before we know it,” the Rev. Tanya Lozano-Washington told the congregation, after handing out steaming cups of Mexican hot chocolate and coffee to warm up the crowd of about 60 people.

Located in Pilsen, a majority Latino neighborhood, the church has long been a center for pro-immigration activists in the city’s large Hispanic community. But Sunday services are now only in English, since in-person services in Spanish have been canceled.

The decision to move them online was made out of fear that these meetings could be targeted by anti-immigration activists or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The incoming president has said he will deport millions of illegal immigrants, threatened workplace raids and reports suggest he could End a long-standing policy that has banned churches for ICE arrests.

According to one parishioner, David Cruseno, born in the United States, “the threat is very real. It is very alive.”

Cruseno said his mother entered the country illegally from Mexico but has been working and paying taxes in the United States for 30 years.

“With the new administration coming in, it’s almost like a persecution,” he told the BBC. “I feel like we are being singled out and attacked in a way that is unfair, even though we cooperate (with) this country endlessly.”

But across the country, more than 1,400 miles to the south, in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, another largely immigrant community has a very different view of the impending takeover, a sign of how Latino communities have become sharply divided. around illegal immigration and Donald Trump. Trump’s approach to the US-Mexico border.

“Immigration is essential… but in the right way,” said resident David Porras, a rancher, farmer and botanist.

“But with Trump, we’ll do it right.”

The region is separated from Mexico only by the river’s dark, shallow, and narrow waters and patches of dense vegetation and mesquite; Locals say the daily realities of living on the border have increasingly opened their eyes to what many see. such as the dangers of illegal immigration.

“I’ve had (immigrant) families come knocking on my back door, asking for water, shelter,” said Amanda Garcia, a resident of Starr County, where nearly 97% of residents identify as Latino, making it becomes the most Latino county. in the US outside of Puerto Rico.

“We once had an incident where a young woman was alone with two men and you could tell she was tired and was being abused.”

In dozens of interviews in two of the counties that make up the Rio Grande Valley – Starr and neighboring Hidalgo – residents described a litany of other border-related incidents, ranging from waking up to immigrants on their property to witnessing stash house raids. of cartels used for drugs, or dangerous high-speed chases between authorities and smugglers.

Many in the overwhelmingly Latino part of Texas are immigrants themselves, or children or grandchildren of immigrants. Starr County, once a reliably Democratic stronghold in otherwise “red” Texas, swung in Trump’s favor in the 2024 election, the first time Republicans won the county in more than 130 years.

Nationally, Trump won about 45% of the Latino vote, a whopping 14 percentage point increase compared to the 2020 election.

The victory in Starr County, locals say, was largely due to Trump’s stance on the border.

“We live in a country of order and laws,” said Demesio Guerrero, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Mexico who lives in the city of Hidalgo, across the international bridge from the cartel-plagued Mexican city of Reynosa.

“We have to be able to (say) who comes in and who goes out,” Guerrero added, speaking in Spanish a few meters from a tall brown metal barrier that represents the end of the United States. “Otherwise this country is lost.”

Like other Trump supporters in the Rio Grande Valley, Guerrero said – repeatedly – that he is “not against immigration.”

“But they should do it the right way,” he said. “As others have done.”

Trump “is not anti-immigrant or racist at all,” agreed Marisa Garcia, a resident of Rio Grande City in Starr County.

“We are just tired of them (undocumented immigrants) coming and thinking they can do whatever they want on our property or land, and take advantage of the system,” he added. “It’s not racist to say that things need to change and that we too need to benefit from it.”

Support for deportations is so strong that the Texas state government offered Donald Trump 1,400 acres (567 hectares) of land outside the city of Rio Grande to build detention centers for undocumented immigrants, a controversial move he described as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas. as “mass caging” that will “fuel civil rights violations.”

While the land, located between a quiet farm-to-market road and the Rio Grande, is currently quiet, city officials believe it could ultimately be a boon for the area.

“If you look at it from a development point of view, it’s fantastic for the city’s economy,” Rio Grande city manager Gilberto Millán told the BBC.

“It has some negative connotations, obviously, being a detention area,” he said. “You can look at it that way, but obviously you need a place to house these people.”

The number of migrants arriving through Mexico has been on a marked downward trend: last month’s crossings were the lowest since January 2020.

But the issue is still very much alive in the streets of cities like Chicago, far from the southern border.

It is one of several Democratic-run cities that have enacted so-called “sanctuary city” laws that limit local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

In response, since 2022, Republican governors in southern states like Texas and Florida have sent thousands of migrants north on buses and planes.

Tom Homan, Trump’s pick to lead border policy, told a gathering of Republicans in Chicago last month that the Midwestern city would be “ground zero” for mass deportations.

“On January 21, you’re going to find a lot of ICE agents in your city looking for criminals and gang members,” Homan said. “Count on it. It will happen.”

Many local politicians, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the state’s governor, JB Pritzker, have continued to support sanctuary city laws, referred to here as the “Welcoming City” ordinance.

But politics is not universally loved. In November, Trump made gains in many Latino neighborhoods.

Recently, two Democratic Hispanic lawmakers attempted to change the ordinance and allow some cooperation by Chicago police with federal authorities. His measure was blocked on Wednesday by Johnson and his progressive allies.

For now, Lincoln United Methodist faithful are making plans and watching closely as Trump’s plans unfold.

“I’m scared, but I can’t imagine what undocumented people feel,” said D Camacho, a 21-year-old legal Mexican immigrant who was among the congregation at church on Sunday.

Mexican consular officials in Chicago and elsewhere in the United States have also said they are working on a mobile app that will allow Mexican immigrants to warn their family members and consular officials if they are being detained and could be deported.

Mexican officials have described the system as a “panic button.”

Lincoln United organizers are also reaching out to legal experts, advising locals on how to take care of their finances or arrange child care in the event of deportation and helping to create identification cards with details of an immigrant’s family members and other information in English.

And several second-generation immigrants here said they were working to improve their Spanish so they can convey legal information or translate for immigrants being interviewed by authorities.

“If they take someone with five children, who will take care of the children? Will they go to social services? Will the family be divided?” said the Rev. Emma Lozano, mother of the Rev. Tanya Lozano-Washington and a longtime community activist and church elder.

“Those are the kinds of questions people have,” he said. “‘How can we defend our families? What’s the plan?'”