Fear in US border city as Trump launches immigration overhaul

by Moisés ÁVILA

Venezuelan Josnexcy Martinez, who is staying at a shelter in a Texas border city, said she's afraid of getting swept up in a raid targeting migrants even though she entered the country legally.

President Donald Trump began his second term with a flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling immigration into the United States.

He has signed orders declaring a "national emergency" at the southern border and announced the deployment of more troops to the area while vowing to deport "criminal aliens," moves that have spread fear across many communities.

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Martinez, 28, is staying at a shelter in the city of El Paso with her five-year-old after entering the United States using the CBP One app.

The platform allowed migrants in Mexico to make an appointment with US officials at designated border crossings, where they could apply for temporary residency.

Trump canceled the service on the first day of his new term.

Even though Martinez is entitled to stay in the United States until her asylum case is heard by a judge, she said Trump's actions have left her perpetually on edge.

"My fear is that I will be arrested in a raid, by a police officer or someone from immigration and that they will ask me for my papers," she said.

Martinez, who gently drew a sheet over her son in the bunk bed where he sleeps, also held up the ID given to her by US officials when she crossed, explaining that she always has it on her.

Karina Breceda, who runs the shelter where Martinez is staying, voiced concern that because of Trump's policies, "we're... going to start targeting people based on what we think a person that's undocumented looks like, based on the color of their skin, or their clothes."

- 'Just insane' -

In El Paso -- a city of 678,000 people where roughly 80 percent of the population is of Latin American origin -- Trump's actions have bred anger among some.

Mirna Cabral, 37, is a beneficiary of the DACA program launched during former president Barack Obama's administration that gave some undocumented migrants who arrived as minors temporary work permits, which must be renewed.

She entered the United States illegally as a child and made a life in Texas. She married an American, who has since died, and had two children.

Cabral was outraged by Trump's executive order that aims to restrict birthright citizenship, an action already facing legal challenges on grounds that it breaches provisions in the Constitution.

"That is just insane," she said of Trump's order.

"It's going against our Constitution because it doesn't matter if you have a legal status or you don't."

Everyone born in the United States, she said, has "the same rights."

Julieta Torres, 65, was born in Mexico but has lived in El Paso for decades.

Canceling birthright citizenship was unfair to children, she argued.

"If they were born here, they are from this country, even if they are the children of undocumented parents," she said.

Hector Chavez, who works in El Paso, said migrants aspiring to be American in search of a better life should rethink their plans.

The 61-year-old Mexican national legally crosses to work in the United States, but chooses to live in Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican side of the border, where life is more affordable.

Immigrants should "stay on the other side," he said. "The American dream is over."