As former president Donald Trump rails against a supposed “migrant invasion” and vows the “largest deportation effort in American history” if he returns to the White House, the message is shaking migrants who have already made it to New York City. That includes residents at the sprawling complex in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, that serves as one of the city’s largest migrant shelters.
Large WhatsApp chat groups for recent arrivals have been alight in recent days with concerned speculation about what their lives in this country might look like in a Trump presidency. And shelter several residents who spoke with THE CITY on a recent afternoon said they, like many New Yorkers, are anxiously awaiting the results of the Nov. 5 presidential race.
“We understand he’ll be a menace for migrants, for people who’ve just arrived,” said 30-year-old Ali, a recent arrival from Sengal who declined to provide his last name fearing potential immigration consequences. “We’re a little scared. We’re a little worried,” he said in French outside the shelter.
Merce Camacho, a 40-year-old from Ecuador who said she was forced to flee her country after being attacked by a man with a machete because she’s a lesbian, echoed Ali’s sentiments.
“We are here basically in a state of uncertainty about what is going to happen in this country,” she said in Spanish.
Several shelter residents who spoke with THE CITY said they’d heard about Trump’s promises of a mass deportation campaign, and his repeated derogatory claims about the types of people who have crossed the southern border into the United States.
“He says we all come from jails and insane asylums, the worst of the world. He’s speaking ugly about people, when most of us are here to do good things,” said 23-year-old Venezuelan migrant Miguel Banes in Spanish.
Banes, who became the breadwinner of his family after his mother’s suicide several years ago, traveled to the U.S. earlier this year to try to support his two younger siblings. While waiting for his working papers, he’s taken to picking up day labor gigs outside Home Depot. “What we want to do in this county is just to work.”
As thousands of Trump supporters gathered at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, speaker after speaker took aim at migrants, with Trump’s policy advisor Stephen Miller declaring “America is for America and Americans only,” repeating a phrase once closely associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
When Trump himself finally took the stage on Sunday, his remarks in what amounted to his campaign’s closing argument targeted migrants again and again.
“They’ve even taken over Times Square,” Trump said, promising to “ban all sanctuary cities.” He vowed: “The day I take the oath of office, the migrant invasion of our country ends and the restoration of our country begins.”
More than 220,000 people have passed through the city’s migrant shelter system amid a surge in people crossing the southern border than began in 2022, with around 60,000 people still living in a constellation of emergency facilities.
But some Hall Street shelter residents pointed to the hypocrisy of a president trying to eject an entire class of people who are fundamental to the nation’s economy.
“He wants deportation — OK, if he wins, let him do what he wants to do,” said Henry Rodriguez, 32, in Spanish, who said he’s awaiting his working papers and is working as a mover in the meantime. “But how does America move? America practically moves because of Latinos,” he said, pointing to New York City’s construction industry, where an estimated 63% are immigrants and 41% are undocumented.
Camacho, the Ecuadorian woman who’d fled her homeland, said she had been working in construction until falling down a flight of stairs and breaking her foot. Her boss refused to call 911 not wanting to draw attention to the work site where she was working without papers. She called an ambulance anyway, and lost her job.
“How does the United States live? On the immigrant. Who is here working hard? The immigrant. Who does the dirty work? The immigrant.” said Camacho, who has filed her application to seek asylum and is hoping to secure work authorization in the coming months.
“We’re the ones who do the dirty work and the hard work for little money, because we are immigrants, because we don’t have papers,” she said. “What’s best for this country?”
