What it's like to live in fear of being deported
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
President Trump is promising to remove millions of people who are in the U.S. without legal status.
That promise is creating fear among migrants, even those here legally.
We head to immigrant communities in Wisconsin to talk about the effects of looming mass deportations.
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Transcript
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| 0:16.4 | This is On Point. I'm Deborah Becker in for Magnitokarabardi. |
| 0:22.5 | President Trump's promise of mass deportations is reverberating in communities throughout the country. Take some of the small towns around |
| 0:28.1 | Madison, Wisconsin, for example, where hundreds of migrants have settled over the past few years. |
| 0:33.6 | It's where Joaquin has worked as a cook at a local restaurant for about three years. |
| 0:39.4 | He sleeps above the restaurant and works most days to send money back to his family in Nicaragua. |
| 0:46.5 | Joaquin is seeking asylum in the U.S. citing what he says is government repression in his home country. |
| 0:52.6 | He hoped to have a better future here, until now. |
| 1:00.4 | From the moment the new president took charge |
| 1:02.7 | and he signed all those executive orders, |
| 1:05.6 | it's just things haven't been the same. |
| 1:07.3 | You've watched the news. |
| 1:08.5 | So much stuff has happened. |
| 1:10.3 | They're grabbing people at work. They're doing raids. I don watched the news. So much stuff has happened. They're grabbing people at work. |
| 1:12.0 | They're doing raids. I don't feel safe. Wakene is not his real name. We're using an alias because |
| 1:20.1 | of his legal status. There are no reports of large-scale immigration raids in Wisconsin, |
| 1:25.8 | but what's happened in other cities is creating |
| 1:29.2 | fear among migrants throughout the U.S. Recently, President Trump was asked by reporters how his |
| 1:35.6 | promises of, quote, the largest deportation operation in American history was going. |
| 1:41.0 | Here's what he said. |
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