The months following Donald Trump’s reelection have marked a drastic and painful shift in U.S immigration policy.
Immigrants who come here for a better life for themselves and for their family are being forced to leave: often grabbed, thrown and only mistreated simply because of their citizenship status.
When Trump was elected in January of 2017 he started his first wave of deportations and also started his focus on immigration .In his first year he deported 288,093 individuals which were non-citizens . Before Trump came into office Obama also started his first wave of deportations in his first term. Trump explicitly overturned the Obama-era tiered priorities. In 2025 when he came back into office, he signed orders to immediately increase border control and also started his first wave of mass deportations.
Trump’s administration has deported nearly 140,000. He also limited immigration. He closely worked with immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to expand deportations; they have deported nearly 200,000 people on their own since Trump came back into office. Not only is there focus undocumented people, they are not even checking citizenship status and simply deporting them because of their race. ICE has shown up in people’s houses, work places even while they’re walking in a random area.
AHS students are afraid of what’s going to happen to their community.
“Seeing our community being scared and frightened to even leave their house has been an insane change to our environment and hurts to see that those people are treated so unfairly,” Freshmen Nameera Ahmed said. “Seeing people be separated from their families and everything they have worked so hard for is truly devastating. It makes me question humanity,” she added.
Trump’s American slogan is “Make America Great Again.” He uses this slogan to strengthen why deporting immigrants will make America great. According to Trump this will reduce crimes, save American jobs and increase national security from what he calls “criminal aliens.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under Trump was to send messages to self-deport, identify those who they want to remove and to maintain national security and public safety.
Regardless of mass deportations, this is far more complex. There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Deporting such a huge amount of people especially locating, searching and detaining is challenging. Many courts blocked Trump’s more extreme policies to end deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) which is a program which protects undocumented children from deportation.
The tragedy remains of the separation of families not knowing when they will see each other again: “It hurts me to scroll on TikTok and see families asking for help from [viewers]. Maybe there is a [better] way for the families to get support. It’s genuinely terrifying hearing those [screams] of people asking for support to see their family member again,” sophomore Leyou Tadesse said.
To lessen the fear there are organizations, programs, protests and many more which are ready to support immigrants in this difficult time. Young people are rising up to support the immigrants who are living with fear. People are posting on social media, starting donation drives and even creating local rallies to make sure their voices are heard. This act to help the community proves that hope still exists even in difficult times.
“Seeing my community get treated this way breaks my heart while even schools are quiet about what is going on” Said Sophomore Camila Guevara Miranda.“Just because they came here differently doesn’t make them any different. It genuinely sucks to see what’s happening and especially the people who can make an impact are quiet,” She added.
While we are living with this moral-crisis everyday, we are forced to see hard working friends and family, even community members being deported regardless. Not even because they have done something wrong just because of where they were born and if they have documents. Yet they still pay taxes, raise their children and even do stuff for their community and want a better future. Yet they are treated like criminals.
This isn’t just about politics, this is about people who want a better life for everything they have ever worked for. They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. As students, parents, even teachers we all have a voice that’s meant to be heard. A voice that should not be silenced and needs to speak up for human rights and not to witness this bizarre way to treat immigrants.
It’s a deeply personal topic where again families get torn apart in the middle of the night. Children are grown up with fear instead of any freedom, scared that they might be next. We must remind everyone to not be silent and use the voice that they are given.
