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Mass deportations.
More U.S. troops at the country’s southern border.
The possible deployment of the National Guard, even in non-border states like Indiana.
With President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, all the aforementioned immigration policy enforcement changes could be on the table come January.
The incoming Republican president provided a good look at how he would approach immigration during his first term.
Now, Trump has publicly called for even sterner measures, something Indiana immigration attorneys and advocates acknowledge has raised significant concerns for clients in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.
Gurinder Kaur, CEO of Indianapolis’ Immigrant Welcome Center, said there was a lot of misinformation about immigrants that had been fueling anti-immigration rhetoric in Indiana and across the country.
But Trump and his supporters, including many in key Indiana government positions, say steps need to be taken to relieve the burden that they believe illegal immigrants place on the nation’s schools, health care system and law enforcement.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported in October there have been more than 10.8 million “illegal entries” nationwide since fiscal year 2021, which began in October 2020, shortly before President Joe Biden’s election.
Kaur, a naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated to Indiana from India, said the welcome center’s staff members can make assumptions about what immigration policy will be like but won’t know for sure until the president-elect officially takes office in 2025.
“Our answer is we don’t know yet,” Kaur said, when asked how the center’s staff responds to clients’ concerns or questions.
Kaur became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1999, seven years after she arrived from New Delhi, India on a work visa.
She acknowledged that immigration policies in the 1990s were quite different than what they are now.
Rachel Van Tyle, director of legal services at Exodus Refugee Immigration in Indianapolis, said her office has already begun receiving calls from clients wondering how it could impact them.
“They’re all very concerned about what this means,” Van Tyle said.
How Trump handled immigration in his first term
Van Tyle noted that Exodus’s client base includes a pretty large population of Haitian refugees.
Temporary Protected Status, which allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe, covers people from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon.
Van Tyle said she thought family reunification processing would be one of the bigger immigration-related areas impacted by the incoming president, given the family separation policy implemented by Trump during his first administration.
Another Muslim ban is also possible, she said, as well as the removal of Temporary Protected Status for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and potentially Ukrainians.
In 2017, Trump signed an executive order banning people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.
“I think we have to take him at his word with these things and get ready,” Van Tyle said.
At Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic, director of immigrant services Angelin Fisher and staff attorney Ashley Brunko expect an immediate impact on TPS and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals clients.
Fisher said clinic staff have had to engage in a “hard conversation” with one Haitian client who entered the U.S. on humanitarian parole and is waiting for TPS approval about the possible impacts of immigration policy changes.
Brunko said Indianapolis has seen a large influx of Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants in the last two years.
For someone entering the country, with all of the struggles of finding housing and employment, to be allowed in and then to potentially have their lawful immigration status taken away is extremely frustrating, Brunko said.
“I don’t think it can be understated how much uncertainty that puts people in,” Brunko said.
Sarah Burrow, director at Lewis & Kappes and president of the Indiana chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said during Trump’s first term there were hundreds of administrative changes that dramatically impacted immigration policy, whether it involved family separation, the Muslim travel ban, or challenges to DACA.
Immigration case backlog continues to grow nationally and in Indiana
Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse has reported there are more than 3.7 million pending cases in U.S. Immigration Courts, a record backlog for a strained system.
Van Tyle said she expects the immigration case backlog to get worse once Trump enters office, based on the policies he’s promoted.
“If they put more people in removal, that will create an even bigger backlog,” Van Tyle said.
Project 2025, a controversial 900-plus page document written by the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 other conservative groups, gives a detailed blueprint on immigration enforcement goals during a second Trump term.
Trump said in a July Truth Social post to “know nothing about Project 2025,” but several people with ties to his administration during his first term were involved in drafting the transition plan.
That includes Tom Homan, who Trump named as “border czar” in his incoming administration. Homan was the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from 2017 to 2018.
During his first administration, Trump scrapped Obama-era policies limiting deportations to people who posed a public safety threat, convicted criminals and those who have crossed the border recently, effectively making anyone without legal status open to apprehension, according to the Associated Press.
During that time, Homan spearheaded a 40% surge in deportation arrests and established policies to make immigration arrests at courthouses and detain pregnant women.
He was also a key figure responsible for immigration when the Trump administration launched its zero-tolerance policy, which separated migrant parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border.
At the National Conservatism Conference in Washington earlier this year, Homan was quoted as saying: “You’ve got my word. Trump comes back in January, I’ll be in his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”
Van Tyle said Project 2025 also calls for more U.S. immigration courts and hiring of attorneys, something she thinks will keep the proposed new Indianapolis immigration court on track for opening in 2025.
Another area of concern for immigration attorneys is prosecutorial discretion, which ICE describes as the longstanding authority of an agency charged with enforcing the law to decide where to focus its resources and whether or how to enforce the law against an individual.
Brunko called prosecutorial discretion a bedrock of local and state agencies in terms of prioritizing offenses and something that definitely applies to the country’s immigration courts.
In light of the existing case backlog, Brunko said there needs to be a realistic approach in terms of adjudicating immigration cases and enforcing policy.
Through October, there were more than 72,000 pending immigration cases in Indiana based on the immigrant’s address.
Katie Rosenberger, an attorney with Indianapolis-based Villarrubia & Rosenberger, P.C., said prosecutorial discretion and the tools available to immigration judges were limited during Trump’s first term.
“Our concerns, as immigration attorneys, is that a lot of those tools and options will be taken away,” Rosenberger said.
Rosenberger said the general concern about any immigration policy changes that are being publicly discussed is the risk of due process violations and immigrants not having their day in court.
State leaders embrace Trump immigration approach
A federal judge in Texas struck down the Biden administration’s proposed ”Keeping Families Together” policy that aimed to ease a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens.
Indiana had joined the lawsuit.
Attorney General Todd Rokita applauded the ruling, posting on X, “Big win! Yesterday, a district court in Texas vacated the unlawful parole-in-place rule promulgated by the Biden admin. Through an amicus brief, we were proud to argue against this rule, which would’ve allowed illegal aliens covered by it to apply for permanent residence without having to exit the country. This decision will have a nationwide effect and is a step in the right direction to stopping the immigration crisis we face.”
In its brief joining the lawsuit, Indiana and six other states argued that unlawful immigration creates significant burdens and asked the court to issue an injunction halting the program.
“Defendants’ latest move is to rewrite immigration law to allow over a million illegal aliens to remain in the United States and live as temporary legal residents until they can apply for permanent residency. Defendants do all that amid an ongoing immigration crisis that imposes significant costs on the States, including hundreds of millions of dollars in new expenses relating to law enforcement, education, and healthcare programs. And Defendants decided not to even hear the States out on this issue—foregoing notice-and-comment rulemaking under the (Administrative Procedure Act) APA,” a portion of the brief read.
A spokesperson with the attorney general’s office, when asked if Rokita supported Trump’s immigration policies and planned to continue his own statewide immigration-related investigations in 2025 and throughout his term, directed Indiana Lawyer to press conference footage of Rokita, post-election, discussing his plans to combat illegal immigration in his second term.
Rokita touted Indiana as the first non-border U.S. state to file a lawsuit against the federal government related to illegal immigration.
He said the state wouldn’t back down on the issue.
“If the federal government doesn’t change their tune, we’re going to continue fighting,” Rokita said.
Rokita’s comments come on the heels of his office opening immigration-related investigations in November into several nonprofits, government agencies and businesses, with the office alleging that an influx of migrants has created housing and possible labor trafficking issues in Evansville, Seymour and Logansport.
Entities receiving civil investigative demands from the attorney general were: Evansville-based Berry Global Group Inc., which is Indiana’s sixth largest public company in terms of revenue; the Cass County Health Department in Logansport; Logansport Community School Corp.; Tent Partnership for Refugees, a New York City-based nonprofit founded by the CEO of Chobani Yogurt that pairs migrants with available jobs; God is Good, a Christian ministry in Evansville that assists immigrants and refugees; and the Jackson County Industrial Development Corp. in Seymour.
Jim Plump, the Jackson County development corporation’s executive director, told Indiana Lawyer the agency would not be commenting on the Rokita inquiry but would be submitting a response to the CID within the next week.
Rokita said the investigative demands, which function as subpoenas that must be answered by law, are trying to determine if businesses are working with nonprofits to act “like magnets” for illegal immigrants and bringing them across the southern border and into Indiana to work in low-paying jobs.
The attorney general said he looked forward to working with Trump to stop illegal immigration and, if necessary, to send anyone in the state illegally back to their home countries.
Indiana Gov.-elect Mike Braun, in a Fox59 debate with Democratic challenger Jennifer McCormick prior to the election, acknowledged that the country was built upon immigration.
But Braun stressed that meant legal immigration, not “open borders,” as he criticized the Biden Administration and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris for allowing illegal immigrants to come across a porous southern border.
“Now all states are border states and we’re putting up with the complications of it,” Braun said at the debate.
During his gubernatorial campaign, Braun ran an ad that highlighted a trip he took to the Texas/Mexico border with the Indiana Sheriff’s Association.
The ad highlighted Braun’s support for, if elected governor, to “deport criminal illegals,” “destroy the cartels,” and hold China accountable in regards to fentanyl coming across the border.
What attorneys are telling their clients
With so much uncertainty regarding what immigration policy will look like once a new presidential administration begins in January, Indiana immigration attorneys and advocates are measured in what they can tell concerned clients.
Van Tyle said she reminds herself, as an attorney, that the U.S. still has an obligation under international law to uphold its promises and welcome refugees.
“This is a part of who we are,” Van Tyle said.
Kaur said the Immigrant Welcome Center works closely with agencies like Exodus and Catholic Charities in assisting Central Indiana immigrants.
For a lot of TPS immigrants, the nonprofit center provides resources and referrals to other agencies when they arrive.
The Immigrant Welcome Center provided immigration-related services to approximately 7,000 individuals in 2023 and had already surpassed that number this year in October, Kaur said.
“Immigrants add to our communities. They bring so much more than is being shared,” Kaur said.
Fisher said her clinic’s staff tries to meet immigrants that have questions with as much compassion as they can, while also being honest about what the future might hold.
Her office is fielding a large volume of calls from clients as well, Burrow said. Like other immigration attorneys, Burrow said she is taking a wait-and-see approach to how things unfold in January.
Burrow said she hopes immigrants get their day in court and due process, whatever policies are implemented in a new administration.
The Indiana immigration lawyer chapter she leads has 169 members.
“There’s 169 attorneys in our state that will be fighting the fight,” Burrow said. “We were worn down the first (Trump) term, but we were not broken.”•
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