'We Don't Know What's Gonna Happen': Northeast Ohio Immigration Advocates Brace for Trump 2.0

Adrian Corona and Beatriz Dunai, employees of Sus Abogados Latinos in Painesville, Ohio. Immigration attorneys and advocates are bracing for what could be another four years of intensive legal battles for their clients. Credit: Photo by Mark Oprea

Many immigration advocates have a tough time picking out which Trump-era policy shook their foundation the most.

There were the suite of executive orders that banned travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries—the Muslim Ban, as it’s known, which grew to 13 countries come 2020. There was the planned 455 miles of U.S. border wall. The attempt to send DACA kids back to Mexico in 2018. A “zero tolerance” policy on border crossers led to, now infamously, thousands of children being separated from their mothers and fathers following deportations.

This time around, as a rebuilt and re-energized Trump administration zeroes in on remaking the White House yet again come January 20 with promises of mass deportations and other hardline immigration policies, the same attorneys and advocates that were thrown curve balls pre-pandemic are equally as zealous about their work.

To put it simply: they’re more prepared this time around.

“I mean, 2017 was a bit different,” Joe Cimperman, the president of Global Cleveland, told Scene. “We weren’t ready. And I feel like now we are. I feel now [Trump’s policy] is going to be deeper and faster.”

“But that’s part of the problem,” he added. “Nobody knows exactly what, when and where’s it’s going to hit.”

In the year-and-a-half Trump campaigned before clinching a second presidential term, the GOP leader has been undeniably vocal about his immigration wishlist. It’s a policy suite that, whether hollow or possible, comes across as quite severe: re-instating the Muslim ban; ending DACA; canceling the visas of foreign students who participated in pro-Palestine protests.

And, with incoming border czar Tom Holan and Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller by his side, carrying out a nation-wide dragnet of the United States’ 20 million document and undocumented immigrants, one that may be all but unstoppable considering the complete Republican takeover of U.S. government.

In a speech last September, Trump hinted at building camps to hold those awaiting cases or flights out of the U.S.

“Following the Eisenhower model,” he said, referring to the 1954 policy nicknamed Operation Wetback, “we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

A policy backed up by Miller himself. “Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Miller told the New York Times last year.

“The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening,” he added.

Such a taunt has seemed to have kicked immigration advocates into an unprecedented gear, as many of them prepare tight legal playbooks while fielding calls from hundreds of clients fretting what might happen when the clock strikes noon on January 20. (Trump on Monday said he would declare a national emergency to begin his mass deportation plan.)

Although several local advocates disagreed with Biden-era policies, which allowed cities like New York and Chicago to manage millions of South American migrants, they simultaneously feared what might happen to the U.S. economy if tens of millions were somehow let go.

Even in Northeast Ohio, where about 22,000 undocumented immigrants—from Mexico to India to Canada and Saudi Arabia—pay some $36 million in income taxes while working low-paying jobs in manufacturing and health care and, with the rest of the U.S. immigrant base, pay billions into Social Security and Medicare.

“I understand deporting felons. I understand deporting criminals,” said Patrick Espinosa, who runs an immigration law firm, Sus Abogados Latinos (“Your Latino Lawyers”), out of Painesville, Ohio. “But at the same point, we’re going to spend billions of dollars on people that are actually adding to our society? Why don’t we give that money to our own citizens?”

Since the morning of November 6, Espinosa and his half dozen associates have fielded hundreds of calls from clients, previous and first-timers, that are anxious they might lose their jobs, might be separated from their spouse, might wake up January 21 in a country they know little about.

“Everybody’s sending us TikToks,” Beatriz Dunai, director of operations, told Scene at a roundtable in Sus Abogados’ office. “‘What do you think about this, TikTok? I saw this in the news! Please tell me what’s going to happen to my case! They said they’re going to deport everybody!’”

“I mean, that’s the part we don’t know,” Adrian Corona, an incoming attorney for Espinosa, said sitting next to her. “And that’s where we’re kind of at a crossroads here. We don’t know what our practice is going to look like moving forward.”

“We tell [them] the correct information,” Dunai added. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Don’t panic. There’s nothing on your name right now.”

Like potentially tens of thousands of attorneys throughout the country, Espinosa’s firm is mired in nebulous preparation, like studying for an exam that promises an almost limitless number of questions. Could Trump invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to send suspected gang members away without a day in court? Could he abruptly cancel thousands of Special Immigrant Visas of Afghan refugees who came here in 2021?

Until late January, the best playbook to source is Project 2025’s Mandate For Leadership, the conservative policy document that has been connected to Trump on dozens of levels, as the New York Times found. (Eighteen of Project 2025’s writers and editors served in Trump’s first administration.)

According to its section on the Department of Homeland Security, that means the loud tone of Trump’s America First agenda. It calls for the halting of discretionary guest worker visas—like seasonal ones for Mexican farmers—to “stop facilitating the availability of cheap foreign labor in order to support American workers.” It calls for an end to the visa lottery, chain migration, most designations of Temporary Protected Status, and the end of T and U visas, which have, for the past 24 years, allowed victims of crime or human trafficking asylum in the U.S.

“Victimization should not be a basis for an immigration benefit,” the document reads.

Nancy Guittierez, a manager of a Mexican restaurant in Painesville, said she’s worried about her staff, the bulk of which are immigrants from Mexico. Credit: Mark Oprea

It also gives a kind of preview to how Trump could carry out the behemoth mass deportation sweep he’s been talking about for the past year. Project 2025, in part, recommends doubling the number of deportation officers in Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from 7,711 to 20,000, and doubling the number of bed space at deportation centers (like the Geauga County Safety Center in Chardon, Ohio) to 100,000 beds for those waiting out cases.

And probably the most alarming: Project 2025 recommends the incoming leadership to permit ICE officers to arrest “immigration violators anywhere in the United States” without a warrant “where appropriate”—in playgrounds, schools, hospitals and churches.

All of which, in Espinosa’s mind, seems counterproductive. Studies have shown that undocumented immigrants commit half the number of crimes that U.S.-born natives do. Paired with the fact that 19 percent of the U.S. workforce—31 million people—are on some kind of immigrant visa.

“To me, it’s just kind of ridiculous,” Espinosa said.

Up the street from Sus Abogados Latinos on Mentor Avenue is the Picante Mexican Grill on North State Road, which is a hub for Mexican restaurants, cafes and grocery stores. Nancy Guittierez, Picante’s general manager, is there, working alongside cooks and kitchen staff, part of a community where many are on work visas or undocumented altogether.

“A lot of them, they just don’t know,” Guittierez told Scene at the register. “They hear many things.”

Juan, an 18-year-old cook from Chiapas, Mexico, moved to Painesville nine months ago, in February, to send home money to his fiancé and his three sisters.

“Well, the election scared me,” he said. “Because I have family in Mexico. And I give them money. And I want to support them.”

“I want a house, too. I’ve been thinking about a house.”