PHOENIX — Jocelyn Ruiz remembers when her fifth-grade teacher warned the class about large-scale patrols that would target immigrants in Arizona’s largest metropolitan area. She asked her mom about it — and unearthed a family secret.
Ruiz’s mother had entered the United States illegally, leaving Mexico a decade earlier in search of a better life.
Ruiz, who was born in California and raised in the Phoenix area, was overcome by worry at the time that her mother could be deported at any moment, despite having no criminal history. Ruiz, her two younger siblings and her parents quietly persevered, never discussing their mixed immigration status. They lived “as Americans,” she said.
More than 22 million people live in a U.S. household where at least one occupant is in the country without authorization, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2022 Census data. That represents nearly 5% of households across the U.S. and 5.5% in Arizona, a battleground state where the Latino vote could be key.
If Donald Trump is elected and follows through with a campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history, it could not only upend the lives of the 11 million people who according to the U.S. Census Bureau are living in the United States without authorization — it could devastate the U.S. citizens in their families.
The issue of immigration has been a cornerstone of Trump’s platform since he promised to “build a great wall” in 2015 as he announced his first Republican campaign for president. And despite polling that shows the economy as a top concern for voters, Trump remains fixated on the issue, criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border as an existential threat to American society as Election Day nears.
Trump’s plans for a crackdown have motivated some mixed-status families to speak out. America’s success depends on the contributions of immigrants, they argue, and the people doing this work deserve a pathway to legal residency or citizenship.
Others choose to be silent, hoping to evade attention.
And there are some who support Trump, even though they themselves could become targets for deportation.
The political divide over immigration runs deep: 88% of Trump supporters favor mass deportation, according to a recent Pew survey, compared with 27% of the voters who support Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.
Trump was asked about the impact so many deportations would have on mixed-status families when he visited the Arizona-Mexico border in August.
“Provisions will be made, but we have to get the criminals out,” Trump responded to NBC News. He didn’t say what the provisions might include, and his campaign did not share more information when The Associated Press asked for specifics.
Living in a mixed-status family is inherently precarious, as immigration policies and political rhetoric have ripple effects for U.S. citizens and legal residents, said Heide Castañeda, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida.
“For most Americans, it’s not a familiar thing to navigate your daily life thinking about somebody in your family possibly being taken,” said Castañeda, author of “Borders of Belonging: Struggle and Solidarity in Mixed-Status Immigrant Families.” “But for mixed-status families, of course, that’s always on their minds.”
Politicians, she said, “think that they’re targeting a particular group, but these groups live in families and communities and households and neighborhoods.”
In Nevada, California, New Jersey and Texas, nearly one in 10 households includes people living in the U.S. without legal permission, according to Pew. Many have lived in the country for decades and have U.S. citizens depending on them.
Michael Kagan, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said recent arrivals aren’t representative of the population in Nevada.
“The vast majority have been here more than 10 years,” Kagan said, warning that their U.S. citizen relatives could inadvertently be swept up.
Erika Andriola, 37, a longtime advocate for immigrants in Arizona, witnessed her mother and brother being detained by immigration agents in 2013. She waged a successful campaign that led to their release, but she now suffers from PTSD and separation anxiety as a result of that day.
“It was just this like constant nightmares. I would wake up crying,” Andriola said. She and her brother are now legal residents, but their 66-year-old mother has been challenging her deportation in court since 2017.
It’s an experience Andriola doesn’t wish upon anyone — and she says the emotional and economic tolls can affect entire communities.
Betzaida Robinson’s brother was deported to Mexico several years ago despite never having lived there. An integral member of the family in Phoenix, he had helped pay bills and raise her two children.
Robinson said Trump and his supporters must not be thinking about what it’s like to have a loved one taken away.
“How about if you were in that position, what would you do and how would you feel?” she said.
Still, there are people living in the country illegally who do support Trump, said Castañeda, the university professor. Even Andriola says she has family members who do.
“They’re not necessarily thinking about what can happen to people like my mom,” Andriola said, “but they’re thinking about their own lives and what they think is best for them.”
Victoria Castro-Corral is a self-described optimist from a mixed-status family in Phoenix who advises students at Chandler-Gilbert Community College. She said she has faith that a mass deportation plan will never happen — and credits her Mexican parents, who crossed the border illegally decades ago, for teaching her how to remain positive.
“We’re here to stay,” she said.
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Gabriel Sandoval is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.