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 Bedford’s North End. Some of the 50 or so gathered made small talk with friends, mainly in Spanish and K’iche’, 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 — primarily immigrants from Central America, many of them undocumented — at the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores (CCT), or Worker’s 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 “Meet the Press,” Trump said he’d 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 Trump’s inauguration.
The first speaker of the evening was New Bedford Police Chief Paul Oliveira, who was peppered with questions in Spanish about how Trump’s 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?
“We have nothing to do with ICE,” Oliveira reassured the crowd through an interpreter. “Nothing changes between the police and how we interact with the community.”
After Oliveira, Jennifer Velarde, a New Bedford immigration attorney, stood in the front of the room and began listing ways to prepare for a dramatic shift in immigration policy: Don’t open the door to anyone you don’t know unless they have a warrant. You have a right to remain silent. Abstain from — and seek treatment for disorders related to — alcohol and other mind-altering substances to avoid legal problems.
Velarde also advised people to draw up documents granting custody of their children to a trusted person and to ensure their passports are ready to visit parents abroad.
“If you know there’s a chance you could be deported, now’s the time to talk about it with your family,” she said. All the advice she had to offer could be summed up in two words: brace yourselves.
“There is much about what will happen that we don’t know about,” Velarde said. “What I do know is much of what I know about immigration [law] is going to change, and it’s not going to be pretty.”
For two centuries, immigrants have sought refuge in New Bedford and have become the backbone of the city’s main economic driver — the fishing industry — which generates $11.1 billion annually in economic activity, according to a 2019 study commissioned by the Port of New Bedford. Their presence in this city — extending back to the heydays of the whaling and textile industries — continues to grow. More than one-fifth of New Bedford’s more than 100,000 residents were foreign-born as of the 2023 American Community Survey One-Year Estimate, almost 55 percent of them non-citizens.
Immigrant advocates have good reason to think New Bedford may figure prominently on a list of places that will be targeted under an aggressive deportation campaign by the new administration. Activists here founded CCT in the aftermath of the March 2007 Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid — the largest in US history at the time — on the Michael Bianco Inc. textile plant in New Bedford’s South End, which resulted from a tip from a worker. Agents detained 361 undocumented workers from Cabo Verde, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Portugal, and other countries. One activist with the group, an undocumented Guatemalan man who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fears of deportation, said CCT was born of struggle and will continue to fight for local workers and the immigrant community under the second Trump administration.
Mass deportations on the scale Trump is promising would, many experts say, mean families ripped apart, livelihoods lost, and a drain on the social safety net as undocumented immigrants pay billions into Social Security and Medicare through payroll taxes without being able to access payments or services from the programs themselves. It would not only upend New Bedford’s fishing houses but also affect state tax coffers and potentially force many residents to leave in search of jobs.
Having lived through the Bianco raid, New Bedford already has more first-hand experience than most communities with deportations at scale. In 2007, more than half of those deported were from Guatemala, and most were indigenous Maya from the district of El Quiché in the nation’s northwest. Families were split apart as social services, city agencies, and even schools attempted to navigate the chaos. The raid also made it impossible to ignore how large swaths of the US economy quietly rely on undocumented immigrants.
The lack of details about Trump’s plans leaves officials, activists, and civilians apprehensive and anxious about the scale, tactics, and impacts of such an operation. Nonetheless, activists in New Bedford say they are sure the city won’t escape the consequences.
“I’m confident [Trump] will follow through,” said a CCT activist who also works with Pescando Justicia (Fishing for Justice), an organization focused on labor conditions in fish houses in New Bedford and the surrounding areas. He asked to remain anonymous due to fears of deportation related to his undocumented status. “Our community is not ready for what’s coming.”
Though a small segment of the Massachusetts economy, fishing and seafood processing dominate New Bedford. City officials tout its status as the largest fishing port in the country when measured by the value of the catch. In 2023, the port’s landings were valued at more than $363 million, National Marine Fisheries Service data show. (The second-place port, Dutch Harbor in Alaska, had a catch value of $224.5 million.) Much of this is due to the price of the Atlantic sea scallop, which makes up 80 percent of the New Bedford catch.
The city’s maritime heritage is key to its identity, with deep roots reaching at least to the 19th century, when it was a world leader in whaling and processed whale products. A history of whaling ships stopping in the Azores and Cabo Verde islands to rest, recrew and resupply planted those communities’ roots in the city. Both groups have become an integral part of New Bedford’s identity. Those immigrants were vital to the city’s maritime industries then and remain so now, whether in the US legally or not, said Helena DaSilva Hughes, president of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center (IAC) — a local social services nonprofit.
“You can’t talk about how New Bedford is the number one [fishing] port in the country for 20 years without talking about who’s doing the work. [The fish houses] are the economic engine of New Bedford,” Hughes said, and without immigrant labor “they would cease to function.”
About 10,000 undocumented people reside in New Bedford, according to the most recent estimate provided by the IAC, a conservative one in Hughes’s eyes. She added that her organization is arranging clinics to help families prepare for the worst.
“It’s not just going to be undocumented immigrants who are deported; legal permanent residents are not citizens yet, and they can be deported as well,” she said.
“There are a lot of people who are perceived as undocumented but really are not,” said Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts (CEDC), another local social services nonprofit that works extensively with immigrant populations. “They are under precarious circumstances because a lot of the programs they are here under need to be periodically renewed.”
Programs such as deferred action for enforcement purposes, childhood arrivals, and Temporary Protected Status have enabled many to stay in the country and work legally in the US, as have asylum policies. Their continuation under a new Trump administration remains an open question.
Yet that uncertainty is, to an extent, the point, said Williams, even if deportations do not happen in as flashy a manner as the Bianco raid. “The purpose is to terrorize communities and instill fear,” she added.
Immigration happens more at an individual level, she added, as each case has its own context and nuance that makes legal processes difficult to navigate. Overwhelm the system, and not only do processes slow, but the resources to help maneuver through the system disappear altogether.
“That was the tragedy of the Bianco raid,” she said. “It was a big sweep, and people didn’t get access to legal counsel. But who has the bandwidth to stand beside every single case?”
The Central American presence in New Bedford began in the 1980s due to the confluence of two significant events. The first was the Guatemalan Genocide, a part of that nation’s almost 36-year civil war, when the US-backed military regime killed or “disappeared” around 200,000 mostly indigenous Maya. The violence launched a wave of Guatemalan migrants north, many without documentation.
The second was a series of strikes by fishermen and fish house workers in the 1980s over earnings, pensions, and hiring practices. The Seafarers International Union of North America strike in December 1985 was broken when non-union workers were brought in to keep the boats in operation. Shortly thereafter, the union dissolved and became one of the many destroyed amid the anti-union sentiment ushered in by the Reagan administration, creating vacancies for new arrivals willing to work at lower rates.
As a result of the unions’ dissolution, many hiring restrictions were lifted on boats and in New Bedford’s more than 45 fish houses and processors. Undocumented workers, initially led by Guatemalan K’iche’ and hired through temporary placement agencies, began to stream into New Bedford via Providence, with friends and family often following.
That’s how the Pescando Justicia activist — who labored in multiple fish houses for 17 years — found work.
“[Fish houses] would regularly give work to undocumented people,” he said in Spanish, adding that he was only aware of two among 50 coworkers at his last job with proper documentation. “They definitely know it, too.”
His former employer — Atlantic Red Crab Co. — has been under investigation by the US Department of Labor for “possible violations of child labor, overtime pay, and anti-retaliation laws,” The Public’s Radio, Rhode Island’s NPR station, reported in September 2023. A year before that, Pescando Justicia began circulating a Code of Conduct for fish house operators and local officials to sign, asking them to respect the rights of all workers regardless of their citizenship status. Around this time, the activist said the company began cutting hours.
“They’d hire us because they knew we wouldn’t complain because of worries about our status,” he said. “When we started [organizing], that’s when they came after us.”
Atlantic Red Crab Co. officials did not respond to a request for comment. But in an interview with The Public’s Radio, owner Jon Williams said a 16-year-old found to be working at his plant came through a staffing agency.
“It isn’t like I hired this person, but the staffing agency sent that person to my building,” he said in the interview. “And yes, that person worked in my building. I can’t deny that. But sometimes I have 150 people working in my building, and they all wear hairnets and face masks. So it’s pretty hard to tell an 18-year-old from a 16-year-old.”
The most recent census data show that 1,500 Guatemalans now live in New Bedford, though that figure is likely low because many undocumented residents don’t respond to the census for fear of being deported. Many familiar with the community say 6,000 is a more accurate estimate. (By 2022, their presence was strong enough for New Bedford Public Schools to enter into an agreement with the Department of Justice to improve interpretation services in K’iche’, an indigenous language.) The flow of migrants from Guatemala never stopped as decades of war shattered society and institutions. Immigrants from El Salvador and Honduras — nations dealing with similarly tumultuous histories and politics — soon followed.
“The processing sector couldn’t survive [mass deportations]. It’s low wage, hard work.”
– Daniel Georgianna, a fisheries resource economist
Many of those immigrants work on fishing boats and in processing houses, but the actual numbers are difficult to calculate, said Daniel Georgianna, a fisheries resource economist and chancellor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
“They don’t count undocumented people,” he said. “They just don’t.”
Whatever the exact number, Georgianna said undocumented workers are essential to the operation of New Bedford’s fish houses. “The processing sector couldn’t survive [mass deportations],” he added. “It’s low wage, hard work.”
Representatives from the Port of New Bedford, the National Marine Fisheries Institute, a business group, and multiple seafood processing plants did not respond to requests for comment.
Jobs in the fish houses are often monotonous and physically demanding, requiring long hours on one’s feet in low-temperature environments with hands submerged in water for long periods, swiftly fileting marine products with sharp tools.
“If you ever saw a fish cutter at work, you just wouldn’t believe it,” Georgianna said. “They filet a fish in 20 seconds and get a better yield than a machine.”
Should mass deportations begin on the new administration’s first day, as Trump frequently says they will, Georgianna conceded wages might increase to attract citizen labor. But with the rise of technology, he suspects most companies would simply freeze the products and ship them overseas for processing before returning to American markets, much like what happened with the textile and garment industries. Once there, transportation costs and the potential impact of tariffs proposed by the president-elect would impact prices in stores and restaurants. He said that is where most Massachusetts residents would feel the effect.
“It would cause a large shift, not only immediately but longer term,” he said. “Quality would decline, and prices would go up because immigrants do food production. Period.”
State Rep. Christopher Hendricks, a New Bedford Democrat whose district includes the North End and much of the city’s port, concurred.
“It could potentially be devastating for New Bedford,” Hendricks said of Trump’s mass deportation threat. “Especially the fishing fleet in New Bedford. When fish comes off the boat, it gets processed, chances are, by an immigrant from Central America.”
“I don’t know anybody who’s not from that community who’s gotten a job in fish processing in the last 20 years,” he continued. “I hope those companies are vocal about their workforce and their true needs and how it’s going to be disruptive.”
Despite the widespread knowledge of immigrant labor’s role in their industry, support for Trump is high among fishermen here. Many were drawn by hopes that he’d lift fishing restrictions and take their concerns about the effects of offshore wind farms on marine habitats seriously.
Tyler Miranda, a captain of four scalloping boats docked in New Bedford who voted for Trump in November, said the local impacts of such deportations would be short-term and evolve over time.
“I don’t think [fish houses] will shut down,” he said. “He can’t just come through and take everybody; that’s just unrealistic.”
Miranda added that he thinks border crossings need to be brought under control, and not deporting people incentivizes more migrants to come to the United States.
“It is not that they’ve committed any crimes or anything while they’re here, but they are here illegally,” he said. “Our workforce shouldn’t be made up of illegal immigrants.”
Trump has not released specifics about deportation plans beyond saying he would declare a national emergency and use the military to round people up. (In a December interview with NBC News, Trump said he would like to work with Democrats to figure out a legislative solution to help undocumented immigrants who came to America as children stay in the country legally.) Miranda acknowledges the contributions of immigrants — with or without documentation — to the industry. Nonetheless, he said they should face consequences for entering the country illegally.
“Unfortunately, there will be some economic ramifications because we’re in this position,” he said. “Most of them are good, hard-working people. But there’s a process for coming to this country.”
Recent history may have lessons as to what those ramifications may be. Georgianna pointed to the textile and apparel industries that once employed thousands. In the 1920s, there were 70 textile and fabric mills in New Bedford before those began to close and move south to states like Alabama and Virginia where wages were lower. Apparel and stitching mills began employing many immigrants, especially women — a trend that continued into the 1990s.
When the US signed the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which became effective in 1994, companies moved millions of jobs to Mexico. According to the Executive Office of Labor and Development, there were 14 textile and fabric mills in New Bedford in 2001. Today, only three remain. The apparel mills, more prominent in the city by the 1990s, dropped from 28 to 13 over the same time period.
“I came in [19]77, and there were still a lot of stitching shops in the city,” Georgianna said. “They’re pretty much gone now.”
That meant paychecks disappeared, and spending and tax revenues were severely diminished — a trend made worse by more people leaving the area to find work. According to one city analysis, New Bedford’s population dropped by 6 percent in the 1990s. It also led to a 6 percent drop in median household income, from $29,441 in 1989 to $27,569 in 1999.
Significant as the effects of the garment and textile industry collapse were, sudden mass deportations could have a far bigger impact given the truncated timescale. The adverse effects would be felt swiftly and widely, activists say.
“Southeastern Mass. in general is vulnerable because we haven’t enjoyed the boom that happened in the Boston area and we depend on sectors like fishing, manufacturing, construction,” Williams, of the Southeastern Massachusetts CEDC, said.
Massachusetts has taken center stage in the immigration debate on multiple occasions in recent years. In September 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida airlifted 50, mostly Venezuelan, asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard. The ensuing media storm generated widespread public sympathy for their plight. However, many red state governors followed suit, and a steady stream of migrants, most notably 14,000 Haitians, many seeking asylum and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) protections, arrived in the two years since. Stories swamped the local media about the new migrants sleeping in Logan Airport and overwhelming the Massachusetts shelter system, prompting Gov. Maura Healey to declare a state of emergency last year. Consequently, sympathy among sectors of the general public ebbed and gave way to hostility toward the new arrivals.
It was against this backdrop that Trump promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history” on day one of his second term and to deport people “as fast as possible.” What that looks like in practice remains to be seen. The logistics of deporting millions of people — some estimates put the number of undocumented residents as high as 11 million nationwide — would be costly and have ripple effects across the economy. Massachusetts is home to an estimated 130,300 undocumented immigrants, with a total spending power of $3.7 billion. They tend to work in cleaning, construction, food service, and manufacturing jobs.
Nonetheless, several prominent politicians statewide — including Healey — have said they will not allow the use of state or municipal resources to assist ICE with enforcement actions.
“I think it’s absolutely appropriate that there be enforcement and deportation of individuals who commit crime, including violent crime. That’s very, very important,” Healey told NBC Boston shortly after Trump’s victory. “We recognize it would be devastating if there were mass raids, here and across the country, that took out people who’ve been working in this country for a long time, who have families and kids here.” Healey’s office declined requests for an interview from CommonWealth Beacon.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has also gone on record to say that the city will be relying on the Boston Trust Act, an ordinance that prohibits Boston police from asking people their immigration status and making arrests on administrative ICE warrants, to resist pressure from the Trump administration to assist in deportations.
“The Boston Trust Act puts strict prohibitions on local law enforcement from being pulled into becoming the enforcement arm for the whims of whatever the sort of approach of the federal immigration law might be,” Wu said in November on “Boston Public Radio.” “Our charge here is to take care of the residents of Boston and to use the resources that we have from all the sources that are available to get things done on the issues that matter.”
Neither Massachusetts nor New Bedford has sanctuary legislation on the books prohibiting police cooperation with ICE. But a 2017 Supreme Judicial Court ruling declared that police officers in the Commonwealth lack the authority to arrest or hold an individual solely based on an ICE detainer.
When asked for comment from New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, city spokesman Jonathan Darling said municipal authorities are waiting to see how the situation evolves.
“The City will monitor potential changes in federal policy on immigration and other areas and will continue to advocate for the interests of New Bedford residents and businesses,” he said in an email.
“Are we going to break up families like [what] happened in the Bianco case? Little kids, US citizens, who expected to see their mother or father after school and that didn’t happen. That’s devastating and I think there are better ways of dealing with the issue.”
– State Rep. Antonio Cabral
In the reigning confusion and panic following the Bianco raid, families were separated, and many began their journeys through immigration court. State Rep. Antonio Cabral, a Democrat whose district contains New Bedford’s South End and portions of the port, said he remembers the moment vividly.
“Are we going to break up families like [what] happened in the Bianco case?” he said. “Little kids, US citizens, who expected to see their mother or father after school and that didn’t happen. That’s devastating and I think there are better ways of dealing with the issue.”
He did not feel comfortable speaking about possible actions to navigate such a situation in the coming years until it is clear how Trump’s mass deportation plan plays out.
“At this point, we don’t even know what mass deportation means,” Cabral said.
Corinn Williams said state and local leaders should be exploring how best to support communities now, though she knows it’s difficult when so much is uncertain. Still, she hopes they take these concerns seriously since the mere threat of mass deportation is enough to hamper local activities.
“There are certain vulnerabilities we have as a community, and many have told us they don’t want to even ride the bus or take their kids to school,” she said. “People are going to retrench, and it’s creating the kind of terror that stops people from circulating in the community and the economy.”
Police Chief Oliveira told Commonwealth Beacon that the city’s police will continue to serve all members of the community, regardless of their immigration status.
“I’m going to continue coming and continue to be an advocate for what they do here in our city,” he said. “They’re a vital piece of our city. I’m proud of that, and I know they’re proud of that.”
“They’re a big part of our workforce here in New Bedford,” he continued. “[Mass deportation] would definitely take a toll on our city, and that’s why I don’t even like speculating on it.”
The Pescando Justicia activist noted that low wages and the struggle for survival mean that many in the community are unaware of the political situation and the chaos he foresees.
“They’re only thinking of work and getting their daily bread,” he said. “They don’t stop to think beyond that.”
He added that the Bianco raid taught the community a lot and gave many firsthand experiences with family separation. Even though he worries about the potential scale of the coming immigration enforcement, the threat is something he’s grown accustomed to.
“It’s not the first time we’ve faced massive deportations,” he said, noting that millions were deported under the Obama administration. We’ve lived through them before. It’s just that no one talked about it then.”
He said he and his wife, who is also undocumented, have two US citizen children, aged 15 and 17. The family has made contingency plans and spoken about the possibility of their removal.
“My family is psychologically prepared as well,” he said. “These are things that our community still needs to do.”
Williams said it looks like the message is starting to hit home and that people are bracing for the worst even amid the daily struggles for survival.
“The day after the election a woman called from St. Luke’s Hospital,” she recalled. “She just had a daughter and wanted to know how to get her passport so she could come with her parents to Guatemala.”
The best activists say they can do now is to take Trump at his word and prepare their communities for the worst.
That’s work that Adrian Ventura, CCT’s founder and director, takes on every day. “Look at all we have accomplished,” Ventura said to a gathering of 350 mostly K’iche’ and Spanish speakers in mid-December, trying to strike a hopeful tone. “We’re not going to stop fighting just because Trump won.”
CCT had once again convened a meeting to help immigrants — many in attendance had obtained deferred action permits, but many more remained undocumented — navigate the incoming administration. Oliveira again pledged local police support for the community and immigration attorneys went through the list of actions people could take now to protect themselves.
But then the talk turned to the Code of Conduct pledge Pescando Justicia began circulating two years ago, asking the fish houses to agree to advise workers of their schedules with 12 hours’ notice, give regular breaks, and refrain from using deportation as a threat. CCT organizers along with Justice at Work, a Boston-based non-profit that helps workers in low-wage jobs, were hoping to get the crowd motivated to stand up for their rights and advocate for better working conditions, despite the changing federal landscape.
“Who’s going to sign the petition?” asked Ventura, who obtained US citizenship earlier this year.
Everyone’s hand went up.
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