Fear isn’t just an emotion, it’s a tool, and one that has been weaponized to bolster the anti-immigrant agenda of Donald Trump and his nativist supporters. For undocumented immigrants not ensnared by his mass deportation force, his intent is to at least make their lives as miserable as possible, to where they are no longer reporting when they’ve been the victim of a crime because they’re too afraid law enforcement will question their legal status. In Texas, notes an in-depth report from the Houston Chronicle, “police say crimes reported by Latinos have fallen by more than 40 percent in the first three months of 2017 compared to the previous year”:
Across the Houston area, those who show up at crime prevention forums – day laborers and college students, business owners and construction workers, landscapers and mechanics, Central American immigrants and Vietnamese refugees, documented and undocumented – all pepper police officers with similar questions:
Is it worth the risk to report a robbery? Will I be stopped driving to work? Will you ask about my immigration status?
The Houston Chronicle talked to Officer Al Yañez, who has spent years building trust among undocumented Texans. But following Trump’s victory—and the passage of the state’s racist, Trump-backed “show me your papers” law—he’s seen that trust squashed. One immigrant man the officer talked to in front of a Home Depot described how he’d been assaulted by a thief, but never reported the crime. He was too afraid. "We're here to serve the community,” Officer Yañez began saying, but was halted by the man. "Y los racistas?" he asked. “And the racists?”
Aside from California, the sheer size of Texas’s undocumented population—nearly 1.8 million, including 200,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients—means it stands to feel the brunt of anti-immigrant policies and attitudes emerging from Congress, the statehouse, and racist local law enforcement officers determined to take federal immigration actions into their own hands.
This fear was most recently evident during the Hurricane Harvey disaster, when some undocumented Texans holed up in their homes rather than risk exposing themselves to immigration officers who were assisting in recovery efforts:
Rescue teams, comprised of volunteers and local and federal authorities, scoured Houston streets that Hurricane Harvey morphed into flowing rivers. They approached houses and apartment complexes where water was rising up to the knee, chest or higher.
Many undocumented families were too afraid to call for help.
"As soon they saw some of the rescuers wearing border patrol uniforms, they didn't want to come out," said Cesar Espinosa, executive director of the immigration advocacy group FIEL.
And while major provisions of SB 4, the racist “show me your papers” law, were blocked by a judge, damage has been done:
At his desk in the Eastside Division substation, Officer Jesus Robles spoke bluntly about SB4.
This law is "something evil," he said. It targets the vulnerable: the fruit vendor on the corner, the children too afraid to go to school, the fellow parishioners at his church. It will tear families apart and lead to racial profiling.
It will make his job harder, said Robles, a chaplain who wears a silver crucifix on his uniform pocket and a purple macrame rosary wrapped around his wrist.
"We are the first line of defense here," he said. "So by making us the persecutors, you've lost that first line of defense. You've lost the integrity of the relationship with the department."
And despite the fact that we have a “business man” in the White House, his policies are hurting local businesses, local economies, and damaging the most vulnerable among us:
At the corner carnicerias, where regular customers no longer come around. In neighborhood clinics, where waiting rooms sit empty. In schools, where teachers comfort parents who are nervous about enrolling their children, and children worry about returning home to find their parents gone.
“There is evidence that immigrants—whether they are citizens, legal residents, or unauthorized—experience fear of deportation and feelings of vulnerability at similar rates,” research has noted. “Young children in the immigrant community can experience psychological distress after just seeing or hearing about their peers being separated from their families and friends.”
“More than 30 immigrant-owned businesses surveyed by the Chronicle say revenues have cratered by as much as 70 percent since January,” the paper’s investigation said. “Across the region, health officials have seen declines in clinic visits. At Magnolia's Centro De Corazon, half of their undocumented pregnant patients didn't return for checkups last month.”