December 26, 2024 โ On a chilly November evening, the first after a string of 70-degree days, people made their way to a former storefront on Acushnet Avenue in New Bedfordโs North End. Some of the 50 or so gathered made small talk with friends, mainly in Spanish and Kโicheโ, a language spoken by over a million people in rural Mayan communities of Guatemala.
Voters had elected Donald Trump to the presidency a second time just two weeks before, and this fact sat heavily in the air among those in attendance โ primarily immigrants from Central America, many of them undocumented โ at the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores (CCT), or Workerโs Community Center.
During the campaign, Trump promised voters mass deportations, pledging at points to declare a national emergency and involve the military in rounding up immigrants. He has publicly mused about changing the Constitution to end birthright citizenship. In an appearance on โMeet the Press,โ Trump said heโd consider deporting US citizen children of deportees to avoid separating families, and his pick for border czar, Tom Homan, said the largest deportation operation in history would start on January 21, the day after Trumpโs inauguration.
The first speaker of the evening was New Bedford Police Chief Paul Oliveira, who was peppered with questions in Spanish about how Trumpโs deportation plans might affect the work of the local police. If we suffer a hate crime, can we still report it? If Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issues a detainer, do police act on it?