It was 2016 and at a New Year’s Eve party at a farm in Evansville, Minn., Nancy Estrada was telling anyone who would listen how worried she was about her family.
Tolkkinen: We will all pay the price for Trump’s immigration policy. And we should.
Her undocumented immigrant husband was deported during Trump’s first term.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
January 3, 2025 at 1:06PM
Her husband, Julio Estrada Escobar, the father of their two children, was an undocumented immigrant. Donald Trump was about to take office for the first time with a promise to deport people like Julio, and she was terrified that their family would be broken apart. Over the years, she told me, they had fruitlessly spent thousands of dollars on immigration attorneys, trying to rectify the situation.
Her fears were well-founded. Within the year, Julio was sitting in a Chaska jail cell after being pulled over in Otter Tail County for a tinted taillight. (Taillights are supposed to be red.) It wasn’t long before he was deported to Guatemala, one of multiple central American countries destabilized by U.S. policies in the 20th century.
In 15 days, Trump will once again take office, and once again alarm is building among families with uncertain immigrant status. He is promising mass deportations, and you have to take him seriously. Border security and immigration issues drove many to the polls in November.
After Julio was deported, coverage by the Alexandria (Minn.) Echo Press stirred competing reactions among readers. Some expressed compassion for him and his family, while others assumed he had never tried to fix his immigration status.
“I am appalled that many of you by your comments seem to have no compassion or empathy and certainly lack any understanding of what this man and his family have experienced or of what this is like for them now,” one man wrote on Facebook.
Another commented, “Here for a decade and never even tried to get a visa? When people engage in criminal behavior like ignoring immigration laws they lose the right to complain about being arrested and deported.”
That just shows how little people understand the lengthy and complicated rules that cover the immigration system.
“People talk about why don’t they get into line; well, there might not be a line for them to get into,” said Julia Decker, policy director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.
Decker has defended immigrants in court and is galled to see that her clients are dressed in orange jumpsuits, handcuffed and shackled at the ankles as if they are criminals. Immigration court isn’t criminal court, she said. It’s not even an independent judiciary, being part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch. The immigration judge is employed by the U.S. Department of Justice.
When I spoke to Decker at the beginning of December, her organization hadn’t yet seen an influx of calls from immigrants, but she suspects that the closer it gets to inauguration day, the more calls they will receive.
The closer that day comes, it’s not only undocumented immigrants who are nervous, but also those who employ them. Agriculture, construction, maintenance and landscaping industries could all feel the pinch. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, roughly half of crop farm workers are undocumented, and farms have been sounding the alarm that the cost of food could balloon even more than it has in recent years.
Personally, I don’t think any industry should be exempted from Trump’s deportation plan. It’s time our nation understands the contribution these undocumented workers make to our well-being, and as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Let us feel the full weight of our decision to send Trump back to the White House. Let us pay more for new roofs, more for home remodels, more for our California strawberries and salads. We have not appreciated the labor that has kept costs low for us. And honestly, we have turned on those workers, so let us pay the price.
Wishing for mass deportations is an extremely American thing. It’s consistent with our nation’s history. Our nation was partly built on actions taken without regard for the safety, well-being, or wishes of the people south of our border. Our federal government toppled elected leaders like Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán in 1954 in order to protect U.S. corporations, and it supported death squads that murdered 200,000 Guatemalans during its lengthy civil war.
Today, Guatemala is marred by gangs, drug trafficking and violence, according to the U.S. State Department. More than half the population lives in poverty, and child malnutrition is rampant, according to the World Bank. Part of that legacy is on the hands of every American. But sure, let’s just send ‘em back to the hellholes we helped create.
Do I sound angry? Maybe I am, a little. Because I think of all the good people whose lives are going to be messed up. Families will be torn apart, maybe for good. Can you imagine that? Think of your mom or dad, and then think of never being able to live with them again. That’s what happened to Nancy and Julio’s kids. They’re American citizens. And their dad, who worked hard on a Minnesota dairy farm to support them, well, he’s stuck 2,700 miles away.
There’s nothing we can do about it. The people wanted what they wanted. And now we may all pay the price.
Randy Schubring, a former community relations executive at Mayo Clinic, was elected to the council’s top job in November.
