Donald Trump's immigration crackdown has changed lives

Sky News

28-04-2025

On the campaign trail Donald Trump promised the biggest mass deportation operation in history, railing against illegal immigration and pledging a crackdown on numbers of people crossing the southern border.
Immigrant communities across America were braced for the impact of his second term but few could have predicted the speed and ferocity with which new policies have been enacted in Trump's first 100 days.
"I did not expect the administration to be as sophisticated and effective in intimidating millions of people," says Adriana Jasso, who works for a Quaker charity which supports immigrants.
American Friends Service Committee used to hand out bottles of water, food and other supplies to immigrants attempting to cross into the United States at the border in San Ysidro, California, the country's biggest port of entry.
Hundreds of people would be sandwiched between the huge metal fences, with Mexico on one side and the US on the other, waiting to be processed.
Many would be at the end of months-long journeys that were often fraught with danger and would be desperate to contact family and friends at their point of origin.
Dozens of hands would poke through gaps in the metal slats, holding out their phones, asking anyone to help charge them.
But just a few months into Donald Trump 's second term, a leftover white marquee tent is the only evidence of the charities that used to operate here and the immigrants they supported.
Adriana Jasso says her organisation has not seen anyone other than border patrol or construction workers there since mid-February.
Additional barbed wire has been added to the fence and a building project is under way to reinforce the metal slats.
A helicopter flies overhead, monitoring the perimeter, and a border patrol agent on a quad bike approaches our camera crew asking if we have permission to be at the border.
Numbers of immigrants trying to cross into the United States without authorisation had been declining towards the end of the Biden administration but have fallen sharply again since Trump took office.
Millions of people voted for Trump, motivated primarily by immigration, and the current situation at the southern border can be viewed as a PR victory for the White House.
But even on this signature issue of immigration, one of his biggest strengths, President Trump's approval ratings are declining.
Some view him as having gone too far in his efforts to boost deportation numbers. Voters are divided on his strategy of deporting Venezuelan men, who the White House claims are gang members, to a notorious El Salvador prison.
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The high-profile case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the White House admitted was deported to El Salvador in an "administrative error" but has not been returned, was a low point.
Immigration advocacy groups have also highlighted cases of children who are US citizens being deported with their mothers, who the administration says are in the country illegally.
President Trump wasted no time enacting his immigration policy. On inauguration day, he declared a national emergency at the southern border, effectively ending all asylum applications within 13 minutes of becoming president.
Sky News was filming inside a migrant shelter in Piedras Negras, a town on the Mexican side of the border from Texas, on Trump's first day.
We met Ericka Mendoza, a Guatemalan woman, who was in tears as she explained receiving an email cancelling a long-awaited appointment with immigration officials, which she hoped would lead to her being granted asylum.
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One hundred days later, Mendoza has just moved out of that migrant shelter because she could no longer afford the few dollars a day it costs to stay there. But she remains in Piedras Negras, in the hope the president will change his mind and reopen asylum applications.
She is working during the day at a butcher shop "washing rags, sweeping, keeping everything tidy," and at night in a parking garage. Her two sons, aged 10 and 12, are not currently in school and she worries about their education.
She says there are far fewer migrants in the town now and she believes some have tried to cross illegally over the Rio Grande river.
"A lot of people here, when they saw that the application was shut down, that no appointments were being given and those already scheduled were cancelled, they went with coyotes, smugglers," she says. "They charge between $7,000 dollars to $10,000."
Mendoza begins to cry as she contemplates the future.
She says she cannot return to Guatemala because she is a victim of domestic violence and her abuser has threatened her safety.
"I don't know what I'm going to do," she says. "Not being from this country, people sometimes deny you work. They close the doors. I don't see opportunities here. I try not to think about it because I don't even have anywhere to go. All my hopes collapsed in a moment."
With the flick of a pen, Donald Trump likely changed the course of Ericka Mendoza's life and so many others, both inside and outside the United States.