Trump promises mass deportation. What can Council do? (art by Zeke Barbaro / Getty Images)
When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Chito Vela was practicing criminal and immigration law. As Trump’s first immigration crackdown began in early 2017, Vela stepped up to help undocumented people in every part of the nation who were facing deportation.
“What I remember more than anything from that time,” Vela, now Austin’s District 4 City Council member, said last week, “was working on the ‘what happens to your kids’ forms.” Family separations happened not just at the border with migrant families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for a chance at safety and prosperity – but within the interior United States when undocumented parents were snatched from their children during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids initiated by the Trump administration.
“We did whatever we could to try and calm our clients down,” Vela said, “but then we had to prepare them.” Soon, they would be separated from their children. What then? “We would tell people to make sure they have a tío, a tía, or some family friend available to help with the kiddos and then to get money together to take on the legal system.”
Now, Vela says, he fears his North Austin district – which contains some of the most populous immigrant communities in the city – will be facing an even greater threat. In 2024, Trump campaigned heavily on the concept of a “mass deportation” plan and appears ready to appoint his former ICE director to carry out the plan. Mass deportation would not only cause catastrophic harm to undocumented families as parents and children could be separated at a horrific scale, but such a plan could cause severe economic disruption as well (undocumented immigrants represent about 4.6% of the nation’s workforce).
What’s more, Vela said, he worries that a second Trump administration will be more prepared to realize their anti-immigrant policy goals. “What saved us during the first Trump term was a deep incompetence among the president’s advisers and cabinet,” Vela said. “I fear that they have learned those lessons and will be better prepared this time.”
During the first Trump term, City Council passed various “sanctuary city” measures that boasted of the city’s welcoming attitude toward immigrants and attempted to limit the Austin Police Department’s contribution to federal deportation programs. In August, Council adopted a similar resolution contingent on the outcome of litigation surrounding Senate Bill 4, the Texas law passed in 2023 that criminalizes crossing the Texas-Mexico border outside of ports of entry and that immigrant groups say is unconstitutional and discriminatory.
“What I remember more than anything from that time was working on the ‘what happens to your kids’ forms.” – City Council Member Chito Vela, an immigration attorney referring to 2017
But as local officials, Council members have virtually no control over actions taken by the federal government. If the immigration raids begin, there is little Council can do to stop ICE agents from carrying out deportation procedures. Which is why Council members are focusing their efforts on working with immigration support groups like Grassroots Leadership, Workers Defense Project, and Catholic Charities of Central Texas, which will be able to provide financial and legal support to people who get flagged for deportation.
“We have to expect worse from a second Trump administration,” District 2 CM Vanessa Fuentes told us – an outcome even more likely because the GOP will likely maintain a trifecta in the federal government for the next two years and because they spent Trump’s first term reshaping the federal judiciary to be dramatically more conservative. “But we’re not new to this fight,” Fuentes continued. “We know the GOP’s playbook and we just have to be prepared.”
City Council Member Chito Vela (Vela Photo by Jana Birchum (Edited by Zeke Barbaro / Getty Images))
Fuentes and Vela both said they are strategizing with their colleagues in local government and allies in the nonprofit world to chart the best path forward for defending Austin’s immigrant community. Possible tactics could include ramping up “Know Your Rights” workshops so undocumented immigrants facing deportation know how to best protect themselves and their families, and allocating more of the city budget to fund law firms that provide legal assistance to the undocumented community.
But Fuentes is concerned about the strength of support networks that have helped Austin’s undocumented community and other vulnerable groups who may be under increased threat from a resurgent, more right-wing GOP. “We’ve been through a lot with the pandemic, winter storms, and rising income inequality.” Fuentes said. “All of those issues have led to a fragmented and demoralized system of care.”
This is a concern for District 9 CM Zo Qadri as well. Qadri, Council’s only Asian American and Pacific Islander and Muslim member, remembers vividly when, in 2017, an arsonist burned the Victoria Islamic Center in Victoria, Texas, just hours after Trump announced his Muslim travel ban. Qadri grew up in Victoria and attended the mosque.
Qadri fears that religious minorities might once again feel the sense of persecution he felt after his hometown mosque was burned. More than any other group, Qadri said, he fears for children who might be subjected to that fear over the next four years.
“I’m worried about our kids,” Qadri told us. “Whether it’s a trans kid, a kid that might be undocumented, a kid that might be Muslim or Jewish, or a young girl. So many of our communities will be under threat from Trump, but it’s the kids in each one of those communities that I worry about the most.”
Qadri, like Vela and Fuentes, said he’s determined to fight back, though. “The glimmer of hope that I have coming out of the election is that Austin and Travis County will not stand for Trump’s bullshit,” Qadri said. “We’re going to fight – together. We just have to be ready.”
