Campaign promises threatening “mass deportation,” use of the military and law enforcement to go after political opponents (“the enemy within”) and rollbacks of policies for the common good dominated Donald Trump on the stump in the closing weeks of 2024’s campaign.
And so the Trump victory on November 5 is raising fears and worries of 2016 again. Maybe even more so
It’s too early to know whether all the bluster, vulgarity and hate directed at certain groups and communities will lead to an authoritarianism that would rip the country apart. Project 2025, the blueprint for another Trump term, stands a good chance of giving a lot of anti-incumbent Trump voters buyers’ remorse in a hurry over ideas to raise the retirement age, eliminate the weather service and slash the social safety net. While the plan includes harsh, anti-refugee border measures, it doesn’t explicitly include Trump’s new promise of “mass deportation” on “Day One.”
When the results came in last Tuesday I recalled the worry of two young people who shared their fears and anxieties with me in 2016.
At 2 a.m. the morning after Election Day, I received an urgent text from a Central Connecticut State University undergraduate from West Hartford who was visiting her mother in Mexico. She wanted to know if her status as a “Dreamer” would be in jeopardy because of Trump’s upset win and the first version of the Republican’s deportation pledge eight years ago.
No one could know the impact of Trump 1.0 just after polls closed in that election, but I immediately texted back a reassurance that things would be alright: “Don’t worry. His bark will be worse than his bite,” I wrote, trying to ward off the anguish that prompted her text in the middle of the night.
I was fortunate to meet her in 2013-14 when she became an intern in my office at Capital Community College Foundation working toward her associate’s degree. A top-performing student, she went on to CCSU, worked as an insurance analyst, earned an MBA and became an accountant in the insurance industry. I could share other stories of community college students I met who have built careers, are raising families and contributing to their communities even though their path to citizenship is still denied.
Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA), adopted during the Obama Administration, gave my college intern a path to school and employment. It “provides work authorization and protection from deportation to certain Dreamers. It does not provide a pathway to citizenship or permanent lawful status.” It is still under attack in the courts and may be at risk next year.
Late in the 2016 campaign, a Holmes Elementary School fifth grade student, very aware of the Trump “Muslim Ban” threat that was so much a part of that campaign, asked me “If Trump wins will I have to leave the country?” I was visiting the Masjid Al Taqwa mosque on Arch Street on a Sunday evening after a worship service, voter registration discussion and meal when the student asked the question. It didn’t matter that the fifth grader probably lived in New Britain all his life and that his parents — part of a growing Muslim American community in New Britain — vote and pay taxes. “No,” I said without hesitation to reassure the student. “Even if Trump wins you won’t have to leave the country.”
I am saddened to share those encounters from 2016 again, but citizen action and counter measures at every level will be needed against an incoming national government pushing fear and exclusion wrapped in an empty economic populism.
In 2016, mayors, city councils, police chiefs, civic and religious leaders, in their words and official actions, pushed back against the campaign xenophobia. After November 5, Democratic governors are prepping, according to press reports, to make the Republican administration think twice about policies that sanction intolerance and bigotry and impose more hardship on the most vulnerable members of our communities. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has already said “her state’s law enforcement will not assist the Trump administration if it goes through with mass deportation plans.”
In New Britain the answer is the same message in 2024 as it was in 2016 to any individual or family being unfairly excluded or threatened or denied their rights: No.
You don’t have to leave the country because of your religion or where you are from no matter who the president is. Your city is the “city for all people” and your neighbors won’t let that happen.
John McNamara is an Alderman from New Britain’s Ward 4 and the Common Council Majority Leader.