ATLANTA — Georgia’s immigrant community is preparing for the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump has promised mass deportations of illegal immigrants. He’s worried about criminals and drugs coming into the country.
On Sunday afternoon, the Latin American Association held a town hall at their Brookhaven location bracing for the possibility.
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“We know that there’s a lot of confusion, and in some cases they’re scared and we wanted to make sure the community is getting the facts,” Santiago Marquez, the CEO of the Latin American Association told Channel 2′s Eryn Rogers.
So far this year, data from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency says their agents arrested more than 4,500 undocumented people in metro Atlanta.
But people in the Hispanic community are preparing for that number to go up once Trump takes office next month.
Trump and other Republicans believe the massive amount of people coming across the southern border poses an illegal threat to national security, something the people who attended the event say isn’t the case for every immigrant, many of whom worry about potential deportation.
“The biggest fear is family separation, but then there’s also the fear of losing everything that they’ve been working for,” Marquez said.
Channel 2 Action News was there in July when the Republicans unveiled some of their immigration proposals.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp spoke with us at the RNC months after the murder of UGA nursing student, Laken Riley, at the hands of an illegal immigrant convicted by an Athens jury just last month.
“Send a message to the country, but also remember Laken Riley and why that happened because of difference in border policy,” Governor Kemp said.
In the meantime, Immigration attorneys are urging people to know their rights and to be aware of common misconceptions.
“That green card, lawful permanent residents will be deported, or if you’re in asylum proceedings right now, they can just grab you and deport you,” said Immigration attorney Peter Tadeo.
Tadeo says families need to have a plan, consult a reputable attorney, and start getting documents together now.
Maybe they have US citizen children, so the birth certificates of their children, evidence that they’ve been in the United States for a certain amount of time, evidence of property, if they own a house, own cars, own land,” Tadeo said.
For immigration resources, you can visit https://thelaa.org/.
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