Getting interviews for this piece was not easy. People are uncomfortable speaking on this topic, afraid the government will personally attack them for their stances. For that reason, all interviewees have been granted anonymity and are referred to by single names.

On June 14, Nancy joined an estimated five million protesters nationwide who marched down the streets while chanting in unison and carrying signs opposing President Trump’s executive orders and the U.S. Army’s first-ever military parade. The “No Kings” protest coincided with the 250th anniversary of the Army and Trump’s 79th birthday.

“To see that so many different kinds of American people are fighting back was really inspiring, and it felt like a moment of hope in a very dark time for us,” she said.

Over the first five months of his second term as president, Trump issued a series of executive orders clamping down on immigration, and, with the help of Congress, passed the One Big Beautiful Bill. The bill expanded the number of immigrant detention systems, funded border enforcement and militarization, established more invasive background checks and obstructed immigrant access to federal aid programs.

In his “Securing Our Borders” executive order, Trump cited national security and public safety concerns, condemning the recent “large-scale invasion” of “illegal aliens” including “potential terrorists, foreign spies” and “other hostile actors.” 

“So many of the immigrants here are hardworking people who are trying to escape a much worse situation back home,” Nancy said. “They’re not dangerous felons or terrorists—they’re just trying to make a living for themselves.”

According to federal data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse as of Sept. 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement were holding almost 60,000 people in detention, 70% of which had no criminal convictions. White House officials stated hopes to increase daily arrests from about 600 in the first few months of Trump’s presidency to 3,000.

The effects of these policies are most apparent along America’s southern border. As of Sept. 7, detention centers in Texas held the highest number of people, about 13,000, which was almost double that of the second highest state, Louisiana. The Houston community in particular, one of the most diverse and immigrant-rich in the state, has increasingly felt the impacts of these changes.

“America preaches that we provide so many opportunities, but we’re actually just restricting them. It’s contradictory and hypocritical,” said Rory, a member of the Latinos Unidos Affinity Group. “Being a Latina and seeing people of my culture — it’s heartbreaking.”

To investigate and arrest people, ICE agents often use strategies called ruses to trick targets. One ruse involves agents, who usually lack judicial warrants, pretending to be local law enforcement to gain consent to enter a home, which prevents targets from exercising their rights. Such ruses are taught and even encouraged to agents at the ICE Training Academy.

Students and adults have faced trouble as they attempt to meet their relatives living outside the country due to new restrictions, both in entering and exiting the country.

Marianne worries that her mother, who lives abroad, might not get a visa to enter the country. “She’s elderly, so she’s concerned that she might get stopped for some reason while traveling alone, and she won’t know what to do,” Marianne said. “There’s an underlying uneasiness.”

As citizens rally and lawyers challenge Trump’s new legislation, policies continue to evolve. On Sept. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a federal judge’s order that temporarily prevented ICE agents in Los Angeles from stopping people without reasonable suspicion. The decision allows agents to detain suspects based solely on race, language or other external characteristics.

Marianne worries about the volatility and murky implications of the current immigration policy. As an immigrant herself who is married to a natural-born citizen, Marianne understands how others in her situation would be concerned about their children.

Proponents of Trump’s policies argue that strengthening the borders and ending undocumented immigration is a necessary step to ensure a more orderly society. Many supporters consider illegal immigration not only a source of terrorism and organized crime but also a strain on government and public resources. As claimed by Trump in “Securing Our Borders,” “a nation without borders is not a nation.”

Some legal immigrants denounce undocumented immigration as a shortcut to the process they undertook to lawfully enter the country. With Trump’s recent orders, however, immigration as a whole has become more difficult due to employment cuts in federal agencies and drastically higher costs for the proper documentation. The only people guaranteed a residency permit are the wealthy few who can pay for Trump’s Gold Card, which provides investors a path to citizenship if they fund five million dollars into US-based projects.

“It’s unfair because if you are highly educated and have the means, the immigration process is simple,” Marianne said. “But if you’re not, the process becomes very complicated, and people get taken advantage of.”

Historically, immigrants have served as a cornerstone for the growth of the country, from the introduction of tacos by Mexican migrants in the early 1900s to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad by Chinese immigrants in the mid-1800s to the creation of eBay in 1995 by French-born Iranian-American Pierre Omdiyar. The diversity of the U.S. has become a defining aspect of its identity.

“If you’re not Native American, your family, at one point, was an immigrant here.” Marianne said. “There was definitely a sense of needing immigrants to keep working for this country. Then to all of a sudden say that we’re not welcome anymore seems very shortsighted to me.”

Nancy says that the American people have a history of mistreating marginalized groups.

“There’s always been some sort of minority that was treated absolutely horribly, whether that be Eastern Europeans or East Asians or now Hispanics. It seems like the only people who America’s proud of are white.”

While undocumented immigration has no clear solution, Nancy, Marianne and Rory agree that the federal government and its citizens have a duty to treat all humans with dignity and respect.

“If we truly focus on the humanity of people,” Marianne said, “it becomes easier to find a common ground.”

This story was originally published in the October print issue of The Review, prior to the Oct. 18 “No Kings” protests.