By Kristina Cooke and Ted Hesson
Blanca Figueroa and Severiano Martinez knew from the beginning of their eight-year marriage that she was at risk of deportation for entering the United States illegally.
Now — with President-elect Donald Trump expected to issue a raft of executive orders aimed at speeding up the deportation process on the day he takes office on Jan. 20 — that risk has become an overwhelming source of anxiety and debate in their central Florida home.
Figueroa, who is from Guatemala, and Martinez, who is a U.S. citizen, live with their 7-year-old son, who was born in the U.S., and a teenage son from a previous relationship who has a green card. Figueroa says she is the family’s main breadwinner and Martinez’s caregiver after he was injured at his job at the horse ranch.
“He’s very worried that he won’t be able to run the house and the boys if I’m deported,” she told Reuters.
About a third of the 1.4 million people expected to be prime targets for deportation — those like Figueroa with “final orders of removal” — live in enforcement areas of Florida and Texas, according to data obtained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Reuters.
Two states have passed their own laws to crack down on illegal immigrants in the country. At least another third of the migrants living under the final orders are in California and other “sanctuary” states that limit cooperation with federal immigration police.
Reuters spoke to half a dozen immigrants living in Florida and Texas with removal orders, as well as immigration advocates and church leaders, who described growing anxiety and a scramble to meet with lawyers and make contingency plans for children and others dependents in case they are deported. They described how they were afraid that the police would pick them up indiscriminately or for driving without a license.
John Budensiek, the sheriff in Martin County, Florida — an hour’s drive north of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club — said many of the felons who pass through his jails could be “low-hanging fruit.”
Budensiek, a Republican, said the sheriff’s office “had a very difficult time” getting ICE officials to pick up immigration violators from their jails during President Joe Biden’s presidency.
“I believe the Trump administration is going to be pretty aggressive in getting them,” he said.
An ICE spokesman said the agency considers individual circumstances when deciding whether to detain someone.
Figueroa, 36, crossed the US-Mexico border illegally in 2016 and was ordered deported after missing an immigration court hearing in November. She met Martinez (64) later that year, while they were working on the same ranch. “He was, and still is, my angel here,” she said.
Despite marrying an American citizen, Figueroa was unable to legalize her status. She missed a deadline to appeal the deportation order, and a judge denied her request to reopen the case, court records show.
None of the options Figueroa and Martinez discussed in the event of her deportation — he remains in Florida with the children; to move as a family to Mexico—seems remotely doable for them because they depend on Figueroa’s income and Martinez’s health insurance.
A longtime Republican voter, Martinez stayed home last year because of the immigration rhetoric. “They try to blame all the people who come to America, but the country was built on immigrants,” he said. Nevertheless, he hopes that the hype surrounding mass deportations will remain just that. We have to have faith, Figueroa said.
‘BIGEST FEAR’
Tom Homan, who will be border czar in Donald Trump’s new administration, said immigrants with final deportation orders have already had a chance to argue their case in front of a judge.
“At the end of that due process, when they are ordered to remove, those orders have to be carried out or what the hell are we doing?” told Reuters in October: “If those final orders mean nothing, close the immigration court.”
Immigration advocates counter that many of the people under final deportation orders are long-term residents, law abiding, contributing economically and have U.S. citizen children or spouses.
“The majority of undocumented people in this country have been here for more than a decade,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat whose district includes half of Orlando and surrounding areas. “These are our neighbors. These are people who work.”
Frost said he plans to meet with Orlando-area mayors, police, judges and school principals to urge them to limit their cooperation with deportation efforts.
“We’re not going to let them do these things in the shadows,” Frost said.
Trump’s plan to prioritize deporting people with a final order of removal is a dramatic shift from Biden’s focus on serious criminals and threats to national security.
The Biden administration has directed ICE officials to consider certain factors before making an arrest, including whether a person has been a long-term resident or primary caregiver.
“These are factors that would be relevant to a law enforcement official in making a public safety decision,” said Tom Jawetz, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official who helped draft Biden’s guidelines.
Trump’s new guidelines would prioritize criminals but allow anyone without legal status to be arrested, giving ICE officers more discretion, Reuters reported in November.
Such a change could put people like Adriana, a Cuban woman with a two-year-old American citizen son, at greater risk of deportation. She spoke on condition that her last name not be used for fear of being targeted for deportation.
Adriana was granted an expedited deportation order when she crossed the US-Mexico border in 2021, although her husband was given the opportunity to file his claim for political asylum in immigration court. His next hearing is in 2027.
Because she could not be immediately deported to Cuba, she must report regularly to immigration officials in South Florida, where she now lives. “I don’t know what will happen, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat,” she said. “What if I’m separated from my baby?”
DEPORTATION TO OTHER COUNTRIES
For Jorge Lopez-Giron, 47, a gay man from Honduras who has lived in the US without legal status since 2000, the expected hardline change under the Trump administration means he could be at even greater risk of deportation for misdemeanors in a country with violent convictions.
Lopez-Giron, who works as a ride-sharing and food delivery driver in Austin, spent three months in ICE custody after being convicted in 2009 after a bar fight with his then-boyfriend, he said. He was not eligible for asylum because he had spent years in the US without applying.
The Austin-based advocacy group American Gateways helped pause his removal order based on his fear of discrimination against LGBTQ people in Honduras. The warrant could be reinstated if he commits another crime, if conditions in Honduras change or if a third country agrees to take him over, said Edna Yang, a lawyer with the group.
Lopez-Giron feels a measure of security because his housing process is on hold, but he also knows that people with criminal records will be a focus of the Trump administration.
“I’m scared,” Lopez-Giron said. “What if a policeman arrests me because of the color of my skin or because I don’t speak English well?”
Other migrants — from countries like Cuba and Venezuela that have cool relations with the U.S. and accept few deportees — were low priorities for deportation under Biden.
Homan, Trump’s pick for border czar, told Reuters he would work to increase deportations to those countries or recruit other countries to accept them.
Alain, a Cuban who crossed the US-Mexico border illegally in 2021, now lives in Houston with his wife Erika, also undocumented Honduran, and their four children. Their two youngest are US citizens.
Alain, 32, first left his family farm in Cuba’s Matanzas province in 2019 after police harassed and detained him because of his work and his opposition to the communist government, he said.
He applied for asylum from Mexico during the first Trump administration and was denied. Then he crossed the border illegally. At the time, Cuba was not accepting deportation flights from the US. Alain was released on a supervision order and ordered to report to ICE once a year.
He worked with American Gateways to challenge his deportation order and recently purchased a large truck and trailer to start his own trucking business.
Deportation flights to Cuba resumed in 2023, and the Biden administration also deported some Cubans caught illegally crossing to Mexico.
Alain worries how Erika would support their children if he were to be deported.
“I had plans to buy a house next year, but I’m afraid,” he said. “It’s a risk to buy a house because if I’m deported, I’ll lose everything.”
