People demonstrate and call out words of encouragement to detainees held inside the Metropolitan Detention Center after marching to decry Trump administration immigration and refugee policies on June 30, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
Ahead of January’s presidential inauguration, Arkansas nonprofits that serve immigrants and refugees are focused on education, legal action and committing to their regular work in anticipation of immigration policy changes.
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump said he plans to reinstate policies from his first term, which could include a travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim countries, suspending refugee travel and reinstating a public health policy that barred migrants from claiming asylum during the pandemic. Trump has also pledged to enact mass deportations and end parole programs that allow immigrants to work and live in the U.S. legally.
“We’re ready for January 20th raids,” said Mireya Reith, founding executive director of immigrant advocacy group Arkansas United.
Arkansas Immigrant Defense, a nonprofit law firm that serves survivors of human trafficking and violence who happen to be immigrants, created a guide on how to prepare for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. The guide was developed in partnership with organizations in Mississippi where ICE raids at poultry plants on the first day of school in 2019 left many children without parents, a situation that can leave kids vulnerable to trafficking, Executive Director Léo Tucker said.
Arkansas United is likewise trying to share information with immigrants around the state by revisiting tactics deployed during the pandemic, specifically organizing virtual events, as a way to reach more people. Arkansas is a legal service desert for immigrants, Reith said, so her nonprofit is trying to fill that gap by working with attorneys in other states to host virtual clinics.
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“Right now we just have to get our defenses,” she said. “Family defense is the number one thing. Getting those know-your-rights materials out there, getting as many people to do those family preparedness plans, power of attorneys is going to be critical.”
Education is a crucial piece of preparation, but Reith said delivering that information to every corner of the state, especially in hard-to-reach communities, is a challenge.
“The newcomer population that’s probably the most vulnerable in this moment is everywhere because they are who are in the poultry factories, they’re the migrant workers and they’re also the ones that are still very isolated,” she said.
Critics of current immigration policy tend to focus on migrants who are in the U.S. illegally. Most migrants don’t want to break the law, Reith said, but they don’t have enough avenues to pursue legal migration, especially when they leave their home country to escape violence.
“When folks are making decisions around fleeing, it really is about survival and not in any disrespect to laws,” she said. “That’s why so many of our immigrants when they’re here, they get [Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers], they become taxpayers, they do everything possible to contribute to their communities. And the reality is we have a need as the economy. We have needed immigrant workers to supplement our workforce, and employers are part of that immigration chain.”
In Arkansas, where 5% of residents are foreign-born, immigrants account for about 15% of the construction workforce and paid $1.3 billion in taxes, according to 2022 data from the American Immigration Council.
Arkansas Immigrant Defense is focusing its efforts on obtaining work permits for clients, which provides self-sufficiency, Tucker said. Additionally, Arkansas children under age 19 with a work permit can also access health care via AR Kids First, they said.
“A work permit is so important for a survivor because then they’re not going to be dependent upon some exploitative breadwinner or some trafficker breadwinner because they can stand on their own two feet,” Tucker said.
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The last four years have been the best for immigrants, particularly women and children survivors, Tucker said, because President Joe Biden made it easier for survivors of trafficking and violence to obtain work permits though things like U nonimmigrant status (U visa), which helps immigrants obtain lawful status if they’ve suffered abuse as victims of certain crimes or if they assist in the investigation of criminal activity.
“Obama was really anti-immigrant, Trump was way more anti-immigrant than Obama, and Biden made it such that child survivors who were applying for something called Special Immigrant Juvenile status…he made it such that anyone who’s applying for this form of relief for abandoned, abused and neglected and trafficked children, these children get a work permit so much faster now,” Tucker said.
Trafficking survivors make up about 80% of the firm’s caseload, but Arkansas Immigrant Defense will also be filing renewals for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients in the coming weeks. Created through an executive order by President Barack Obama in 2012, the program allows certain immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to live and work in the country legally. The Trump administration moved to end the program, and its fate currently lies in the courts.
Lead paralegal Mayra Esquivel said it was “a really hard thing to accept” that immigrants will again be facing challenges they encountered during the first Trump administration, but Arkansas Immigrant Defense is committed to continue helping clients however it can.
“We just don’t know [who will be affected],” Esquivel said. “All we can do is just mentally prepare and take it one step at a time, and also continue to inform ourselves as much as possible on these new policies.”
That commitment to serving clients is shared by Canopy Northwest Arkansas Executive Director Joanna Krause, who said the refugee resettlement nonprofit will continue what she calls “the long welcome,” providing services that help families integrate into the community over five years, at which point refugees become eligible to apply for citizenship.
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Canopy NWA welcomed its first client in 2016, just before Trump assumed the presidency and changed the country’s refugee resettlement policy. Having dealt with challenges in Trump’s first term, Krause said Canopy NWA’s been preparing for the incoming administration for some time.
Since the Refugee Act in 1980, the U.S. has admitted more than 3.2 million refugees, according to the U.S. State Department. Of the roughly 100,000 refugees who came to the U.S. in fiscal year 2024, nearly 350 resettled in Arkansas, according to the Refugee Processing Center.
Trump slashed the annual cap on refugees to a record low of 18,000 during his first term, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
“Refugee resettlement is a humanitarian program, and it had not been viewed in such a partisan way until the Trump administration” Krause said.
Refugees’ biggest fear during Trump’s second administration is that they’ll be separated from family members who are unable to travel before he takes office because it’s common for families moving to the U.S. to travel at different times, she said.
“I know they’ll be reunited eventually. Even if there is a pause, I’m very confident refugee resettlement will resume, but it could mean many more months or even potential years of time passing, and that’s just so hard,” Krause said.
Refugees have a pathway to citizenship, but there are many different types of temporary legal immigration statuses that could be at risk, such as humanitarian parole, which has been granted to immigrants from countries like Ukraine and Afghanistan, she said.
Canopy NWA’s resources are directed toward refugee resettlement, but Krause said they can provide some services and programs to other immigrants that fall under the Office of Refugee Resettlement umbrella, such as those entering the country under humanitarian parole.
“That’s a challenge that Canopy will face, and other organizations who serve different types of immigrants… we have to make sure that we’re staying current on policy changes because we’re expecting a lot of changes to happen,” she said. “And that takes a lot of time and energy for us as a team to make sure that we’re really well-informed so that we can serve all of the people who we can and get the message and the word out about when these rapid changes might come down.”
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