- Good evening and welcome to "Horizonte," a show that takes a look at current issues through a Hispanic lens.

I'm your host, Catherine Anaya.

President Donald Trump ran on a platform of mass deportations.

As president, he has already taken action on 10 executive orders related to immigration enforcement and border security.

Joining me to talk more about the president's actions so far is Dr. Edward Vargas, an associate professor in Arizona State University's School of Transborder Studies.

And Delia Salvatierra, an immigration attorney from the Salvatierra Law Group.

Thank you, both, for joining me.

I appreciate it so much.

So I wanna preface our conversation by reminding everyone that we are talking today a couple of days after President Trump's inauguration.

So we're going to be talking about what's happened so far, knowing that this is a fluid situation.

So I wanna begin by just asking you both, and I'll start with you, Delia.

What is the sense in the community?

What is the temperature that you are sensing in the community right now with regard to what has happened so far with regard to these enforcements?

- I think there is a tremendous amount of confusion, which is exactly what these policies intend to do.

Folks are scared, folks are afraid, especially people who have been here for a very long time and stand to be swept up in deportation proceedings, to be separated from their American children, not knowing what the long-term outcome and goals of the new administration will have as an impact on their daily life.

- Is that what you're hearing as well, Dr. Vargas?

- Yes, well, first, thank you for having us.

And I do have a disclaimer that the opinions are of my own and not of Arizona State University or any of my funders, just have to start with that.

I would say, you know, you could look at different levels within community and I'm kind of seeing different things.

One is, of course, immigrants themselves and friends and family of immigrants, you sort of those folks and the fear and the misinformation that's happening in terms of increasing their fear.

There's folks, for example, in the medical space who are now the day one of inauguration nurses and physicians are being asked by their administration at their hospitals to start documenting people's citizenship status.

Asking them, "Are you undocumented?

Are people in your family undocumented?"

So it's creating some confusion and fear among healthcare providers.

There are teachers who are afraid.

Parents at my kids' daycare who own businesses who are relied on some of this IRA money, infrastructure money, and they have projects that are two years down the line and they don't know if these things are gonna be funded.

And so I think in all aspects of society, in our communities is impacted in some way or another.

- There is fear out there, and I wanna make sure that we are in a place where we can offer some education, information, and help people understand what's happening.

So, Delia, what would you say are the top priorities with regard to some of these executive orders that have already related to border security and immigration?

- The executive orders translate into ICE memoranda, and those memoranda enforce that the priorities for arresting undocumented people are the following.

National security threats, gang members, individuals, specific non-citizens who have committed crimes, individuals who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge and have not departed.

And finally, those who have been deported and have returned illegally and are in the country.

Those are the priorities simply because those, according to the new administration, pose the greatest threat to national security.

Two, they are the biggest bang for the buck that they're going to get on their limited resources, in detaining those types of individuals.

- I know there are a lot of questions out in the community with regard to what ICE agents can and cannot do.

One of the big questions is, can they go into schools and churches?

What is the sense of what they're able to do at this point?

- One of the memos that came out this week from ICE is that they have removed the sensitive destination for arresting individuals.

So that means that they can arrest an individual at a school, at a courthouse, at a hospital, a church.

However, I do want to caution that I don't wanna be an alarmist.

And I do think that after years of experience working as a immigration attorney in this town, I do think that the local office will exercise what the administration has called as common sense.

And I don't think that going into a church on, you know, Sunday afternoon in a Latino neighborhood is what ICE is going to do.

I think that this directive is giving all the authority that the department has to local offices to arrest someone of interest who meets those priorities that I just announced.

And also to forewarn churches and nonprofit organizations who've in the past, harbored undocumented individuals to prevent the department from arresting them.

I don't think that the department will enter without notice or reason or cause schools and churches.

I just don't see it.

I think it's more likely that they'll to a courthouse and try to arrest someone that they know has committed a crime and arrest them there.

And so another memo came out stating that ICE will do enforcement actions at courts, but minimize the disruption to the normal operations of the courthouse.

- Dr. Vargas, can you tell me what do we know from previous academic literature about the kind of challenges that this will lead to from a funding, operational, and economic point of view?

- Yeah, great question.

You know, some of us in the public health and the academic literature have been sort of following deportations and separations and the disruptions of families.

And I wanna start off in terms of the health because as a health researcher, everything starts with health.

If you're not healthy, you can't go to work.

It has implications for that.

So I would say first we know that deportations and fear of deportation, risk of deportation, the actual process.

And there's this kind of like, you believe that you're gonna be deported versus like the actual risk of being deported.

And those are both negatively related to your health, both physical and mental health.

So there's a health aspects.

There's the school implications as my colleague here just said, you know, now, with this new order, maybe they're gonna go into schools, possibly, we don't know.

But we do know that, and I published on this, where there is an increase in enforcement in communities, there is more absenteeism.

So more kids are not going to school during that time.

Of just today, Tom Horne, superintendent said that he doesn't support this idea of going into schools.

And I think that just shows that, well, excuse my language.

Well, butts in seats means dollars, right?

So it has implications for he academic success.

It has implications of whether or not US citizens are receiving WIC, Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP benefits, so on and so forth.

Again, the children are eligible because they are US citizens.

And so in all facets of life, we have found, and my colleagues have found that disruptions and enforcement not only for immigrants, and I think this is really important, but for people who are related to them.

So just knowing somebody who's been deported, knowing somebody who's undocumented, it can have implications for us citizen health as well.

So I think what's important here is that it's not ICE against Latinos.

It's not ICE against immigrants.

It's ICE against all of us 'cause this is our community.

And I think that's really important to point out is that in all aspects of life, this is gonna have implications.

- Yeah, we're all touched on many different levels.

I wanna talk specifically about one of these orders, which a lot of people are talking about right now.

And that is the president's order to end the birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.

That's an order that we should mention a federal judge has blocked after being challenged by several states, including Arizona.

The judge issued a restraining order preventing the administration from enforcing that order.

But what happens in the meantime as these legal challenges play out, Delia?

- The judge not only blocked it, but said that the EO on birthright citizenship was blatantly unconstitutional.

- [Catherine] Yes.

- So in the meantime, nothing will happen.

No state attorney general or department head of a vital records will be able to withhold a birth certificate for someone born in the state to undocumented parents.

And I don't think that they can even ask the status of the parents.

So I think it remains status quo as long as the EO remains blocked.

While the President Trump's administration appeals that decision, hopefully all the way up to the Supreme Court.

I do wanna remind your viewers that this issue has been already decided.

This issue of who is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States has already been addressed by the Supreme Court since the 1950s.

And so I think this is not a conservative or liberal ideology decision.

This is really a constitutional decision.

And I think as all other legal scholars have predicted that President Trump will likely fail at the Supreme Court on this issue and will ultimately have to go to Congress if he wants the Constitution to be changed.

- And in your professional opinion, what is your belief of what will happen then?

- It depends who's in Congress.

And it will also depend on the pushback that Americans have, will give the new administration on what it tolerates with respect to mass deportations and its effect on our daily life.

- As you- - Yes.

- All fabrics of our life.

- Immigration is in every aspect of our life.

And so we will see.

I think that I can earnestly say that he will lose, even at the Supreme Court as a legal challenge.

I don't know where Congress will be when the time comes.

- And you've touched on the economic ramifications of that as well, Dr. Vargas.

- Yeah, I mean, look, 85 to 90% of those who work in construction are foreign born.

I think one of the concerns what this birthright citizenship ban may do is it has implications for other policies that may be enacted within states.

You know, in the policy world, there's this idea of a policy policy paradox.

That sometimes you lose, but you actually win.

In other words by exposing some of the language that may be unclear for people, it allows state and policy makers to create and draft policies that are in that wiggle room.

That, you know, if people, people don't realize that also, during the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, that he stacked the courts, he stacked judges across the country.

And it could be that in some states, like for example in the State of Indiana, they have a policy where they're going to, hopefully it gets shut down, but would ban people from going to public schools.

Doing away with the Plyler vs. Doe Supreme Court decision.

Doesn't matter what your citizenship status is, that you can attend a public school.

So I think their fear and the uncertainty is that it could expose maybe language that isn't as clear to allow people to create policies that I would say very interesting and entrepreneurial in some ways because we haven't had to deal with these kinds of issues in the past.

Again, the birthright citizenship question is an old policy strapped during slavery.

Which citizenship took on a different meaning at that time, which is still true, very much true today in terms of a symbolic interpretation of what does it mean to be a true citizen.

- Well thank you for that.

We only have about a minute left and I wanna just, you know, end our conversation.

We could go on and on, I know, but giving me a sense, Delia, of what your clients are asking, what are you advising them with and without documentation and what assistance is out there, legal and otherwise.

For folks who are worried right now.

- I think the parents of US citizens are the most concerned, right?

They want to create a plan for their families and for their children not to go into foster care or to be taken by the state as awards of the state if they are detained or through prolonged detention and immigration.

So they're executing powers of attorney to give friends and family powers over their children, over school, bank accounts.

They're preparing for an opportunity for their children to have an extended opportunity to remain in the United States, even if they can't.

So those resources, I think people got very comfortable under the prior administration and they didn't plan for this.

And so on my website, I do have a packet that's both in English and Spanish, and it provides advisors for what to do in times of an arrest by a local officer or a localized agent.

As well as how to create a family plan for yourself and your US citizen children in the event that you are detained and separated from them.

- Thank you, both so much for joining me and giving some perspective on what's been happening.

Again, it's a fluid situation, so we might be having you back.

Thank you again.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Good to see you.

That's our show for tonight.

For "Horizonte" and Arizona PBS, I'm Catherine Anaya.

Thanks for joining us.

Have a great night.

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