A woman named “E” was in a clothing store in Tampa, Florida, with her daughter when she realized it was time to leave.
It was her daughter’s 15th birthday, and she wanted to buy her an outfit. She says she felt the salespeople giving them dirty looks. “Really ugly looks,” she says. “They could call immigration,” she remembers telling her daughter. “You’re an American citizen, but you’re also Hispanic. We need to get out of here.”
They left the store, she says, with the feeling that it was also time to leave the state. The question this family faces is: where to?
Under the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, many are choosing to hide where they are, while others are self-deporting. But there are also reports of people moving, from cities with strict immigration enforcement to places with fewer police raids, where they feel safer.
E. asked that we use only the initial of her first name, because she and her husband are undocumented immigrants. She says she would like to return to Guatemala as soon as possible. Her daughter, who recently started high school, wants to stay in Florida. The same goes for her husband, who feels that, after about 20 years living in the US, this is his home.
But under the leadership of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida has embarked on one of the country’s strictest immigration policies, promising to lead President Trump’s campaign. Her husband’s workplace—a construction site—was the target of a recent police raid. He was out that day. And the family knows several people who were deported, including their church pastor.
For now, the family has decided to leave Florida and move to a small town in Michigan. A neighboring friend, also an immigrant, just moved there. “She called me recently,” says E., “and told me: ‘Why don’t you come here? Things are quiet around here. You don’t hear about police raids.’” “And I can get you a job.”
It’s hard to track the movement of undocumented immigrants across the United States. There are no exact numbers. Demographer Matt Brooks from Florida State University studies these population flows and says we’ve observed clear trends since at least the 1980s. “There is definitely a pattern, and overall, these patterns make a lot of sense.”
Brooks says immigration to the US is usually a multi-step process: migrants tend to arrive first in big cities, but over time they make a second move, increasingly to the South or Midwest, seeking jobs in agriculture or industry. And, according to him, sometimes there’s a third move: away from immigration enforcement, toward cities that seem safer.
Brooks cites Mississippi as an example. In 2019, there was a major immigration operation at several food processing plants near Jackson. “We know that immigrants have been leaving Mississippi since then,” he says. After that operation, he highlights “the flow of immigrants out of the state.” Mississippi receives more than double the migratory flow.
The Trump administration hasn’t even completed one year, but the immigration crackdown is already having widespread effects. The Department of Homeland Security says that 1.6 million immigrants left the country voluntarily, which the government calls self-deportation. There is also evidence of something else: internal migration, with families fleeing enforcement zones in search of safer places.
For a Salvadoran in Omaha, Nebraska, who asked to be identified only by the initial of his first name, R., moving to another state was a panic-driven, last-minute decision.
During the summer, a major police operation at a slaughterhouse caused a big stir in Nebraska’s immigrant communities. The next morning, R. says he sat in the factory parking lot, debating whether to go to work or leave the state for good. “I feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place,” he told NPR. He asked that his full name be omitted because he fears for his safety while seeking refuge. R. is seeking asylum in the US to flee El Salvador’s authoritarian government. He says being deported could be a death sentence.
A few days later, R. left. He drove almost non-stop from Nebraska to North Carolina—21 hours at the wheel, fueled only by coffee and energy drinks. The destination: a small town that, according to a friend, was safe, where immigration operations were rare or nonexistent.
When he arrived, he went straight to work at his new roofing job.
That was five months ago. NPR spoke with him recently.
“It’s been quiet around here,” he says. He wouldn’t say he’s happy, but there are fewer Hispanics, “so the town isn’t a big target for immigration enforcement.”
At least for now. He hopes it stays that way.
Fonte: npr.org por Jasmine Garsd