On his first day in office, President Donald Trump sought to rapidly reshape U.S. refugee asylum policy, birthrght citizenship status, and enforcement of immigration policies by executive order.
The effect of these sweeping actions reflect a significant departure from existing domestic policy, and likely will radically change the face of immigration to the United States for years to come, the nonpartisan American Immigration Council observed.
More immediately, however, immigrant communities across the country, including those in Camden City, are scrambling to absorb the fullness of these changes.
On Saturday, grassroots organizers hosted a know-your-rights training at the LUCY (Lifting Up Camden Youth) Outreach community center in East Camden, the better to inform residents about the shifting priorities in the federal government.
“All bets are off right now with the new administration, and there are no rules,” LUCY Executive Director Kristin Prinn said.
“It is a scary time, especially for community members who’ve been living in this country their entire adult lives, who have contributed. To have the risk of losing their home is terrifying.”
Some 250 people attended Saturday’s event, many of whom likely identify as undocumented, Prinn said.
They were offered education on their legal rights and how to exercise them in a variety of circumstances, from being pulled over, to answering the doors of their homes, or being confronted at work and school; “how to respond, who to talk to,” Prinn said. Local law firms also offered onsite consultations.
“As a U.S. citizen, I have a safety and protection that a lot of our youth and families don’t have,” she said.
“With that comes a responsibility and an obligation to use our voice for what’s right; to make sure that our policies and procedures are just and fair; to lead with love,” she said.
“There’s not a lot of that happening right now. It’s disappointing and embarrassing.”
LUCY functions as a youth development center for children aged 7 to 19, with a focus on social, educational, and mental health concerns and after-school, evening, weekend, and summer programming.
“We open our doors when everyone else is closing for the day,” Prinn said.
Her perspective was shaped by three years spent working young people whose lives were affected by gang violence and substance abuse in Chaparral, New Mexico, an unincorporated community that sits “right on the triangle of Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico.
“I learned so much by watching and listening, and building these relationships and friendships with this community that embraced me as an outsider, which we don’t always do very well,” Prinn said.
“I felt such special relationships with thousands of families in those three years,” she said; “so many families that were separated, so many raids, instances where children had lost their parents and grandparents.”
Through that work, Prinn said she came to understand intimately the needs and challenges of lives divided by political separation, and has tried to communicate that information to others who do not.
“I think that there’s a big group that doesn’t want to see or understand or hear that so many of our parents and guardians and young adults have come to this country for safety reasons; for opportunities from employment to giving their children and future generations a better life, a better chance.
“We have adults who remain undocumented who’ve been here since they were 2, 4, 7, and this is the only country they know,” she said. “They’re students, valedictorians, community leaders.”
‘When you fear, then you lose’
The nine square-miles that comprise Camden City are home to people from some 50 different nations, including every country from Latin and South America. Many of the small businesses and restaurants in the city are Mexican-owned, Prinn said.
That includes the Mexican restaurant La Ingrata, whose owners Karla Torres and Ernesto Ventura were the driving force behind Saturday’s event.
La Ingrata is noted not only for the quality of its food but for its contributions to the community, having been named the Camden Community Partnership’s 2023 Small Business of the Year, according to TAPInto Camden, and making The Philadelphia Inquirer’s list of 76 essential restaurants in the region in 2024.
“I am happy to be that person for my community,” Torres said.
“I also believe that the success of every community is when you give back to your community somehow.
“I saw the need, and I just called my friends, and this is what we put together.”
In addition to being a small business owner and a native of Mexico City, Torres said her role as a mother and Camden City resident obligated her to step into an uncertain environment to help her neighbors navigate their way forward.
“My goal is to communicate, to promote my culture, [and] to show people that we’re here to work,” she said.
“We’re not here to damage anything. We’re here to be better, to do better for our families, and we’re here working long hours.
“I pay my taxes, not just personal, but also the business,” Torres said. “I comply.
“I try to be a good citizen, even if I’m not [an] American, to give an example to my little daughter to not be afraid for what she is, and for other business owners to not be afraid of what to do.
“When you fear, then you lose,” she said. “If you have knowledge, the fear disappears because you know that you have a backup. It’s important for me as a business to put my seed into giving back somehow.”
Ventura said he’s lived with the fear that is reverberating throughout his community for most of his life. As a five-year-old boy arriving in the United States from Puebla, Mexico, he grew up looking over his shoulder, waiting for something to go wrong.
“Even though that’s not my situation anymore, I feel for these people who fear being wakened up in the middle of the night and just being taken away,” Ventura said.
“You have a lot of mixed-status families… kids born here, but parents don’t have a status, or they’re working something out,” he said. “The biggest fear is the separation of those families.”
The antidote to that anxiety is information.
On Saturday, representatives from organizations throughout Camden City and the surrounding region, as well as those from the consulates of Guatemala and Mexico, presented on civil rights, ways to access community and legal resources, and local support initiatives.
“It’s my community, my people that need it the most,” Ventura said.
“We’re here to educate them; to let them know that they have rights and they have options. There’s resources here.
“What we’ve learned from history is the same thing we’re preaching here: know your rights, know the power you have,” Ventura said.
“We’ve been through this, we know it, now we’re more connected than ever before. Some of the newer generations are so sheltered from it.”
‘Fear of living in a cage’
Like Ventura, Andres Sandoval grew up attending LUCY events as a teenager in Camden City.
Sandoval said those experiences opened his mind to the importance of giving back to his community, both as a representative of its successes, and as an example of living the changes he wants to create there.
“The way I see it is people gotta stop being close-minded,” he said. “[It’s about] breaking generational chains. They lock you in the past generation, where they teach you hatred… and keep you in that same mentality.
“They grew up blindfolded and want to express their hatred, and the best way they know is growing up in the same cycle they grew up in,” Sandoval said.
“I don’t label everybody like that. I’m a humanitarian. I care for everybody.”
When his family emigrated from Mexico in 2002, they sought to escape corruption under the Vicente Fox administration, Sandoval said.
Coming to the United States, he was subjected to racial profiling, and had his scrapes with authority.
“I made some bad decisions in my life while I was growing up, so I know how the system is when you’re colored in this country,” Sandoval said.
“Depending on what’s your case or how they may see you, it’s sad.
“Picture yourself being back in the day when British settlers were moving west, picking yourself up and moving to a different country, not knowing the language, not knowing how to survive,” he said.
“Living in the shadows because you live in fear that you or your parents would be caught up,” Sandoval said; “fear of living in a cage, not seeing your cousins, your family.
“Be considerate,” he said. “Remember your roots; remember where you came from.
“Everybody comes from some type of nation where they had to migrate and chase a better life.”
In addition to contributing to the local, state, and national economy through sales, use, and income taxes, immigrants comprise about 30 percent of the New Jersey workforce, generating $194 billion in economic output, according to the nonpartisan thinktank New Jersey Policy Perspective.
Sandoval said he’d like to see more Americans to hear immigrant success stories about their work ethic and economic contributions instead of picking and choosing which elements of foreign culture they choose to embrace or reject.
“They like to celebrate Cinco De Mayo, Day of the Dead; it’s a love/hate thing,” he said.
“You don’t ever see a Mexican asking for a handout; we go out there and make our work.”
‘It takes a community to build a child’
Gabily Gonzalez left her native Guatemala to come to America when she was seven.
Her father, who had worked as an engineer for Firestone, gave up a good-paying job in the country of her birth to keep his family out of danger.
“Because the gangs noticed that my dad was doing well for himself, they started to threaten him that they would kill him, or his family, if he didn’t pay what’s called ‘the taxes,’” Gonzalez said.
“He was afraid for our safety.”
Gonzalez traded his skilled technical expertise for work as a cook, and raised his daughter in a garage in South Central Los Angeles.
She spent years separated from the grandmother whom she said “played a huge part” in her upbringing.
“It was a culture shock,” Gonzalez said. “I’ve had a good village that helped me, but a lot of people got lost.”
Today, Gonzalez works with Parents Invincible, a community group that advocates for quality education in Camden City. She speaks of her involvement in the group as a mechanism for supporting the next generation of children to find their footing.
“It takes a community to build a child,” Gonzalez said. “I think it has taken the whole community to raise me and empower me with everything that I know.
“Because of how I grew up, I have been blessed to gain the trust of the community where they know that they can always come and talk to me.”
In response to the threatened mass deportations of immigrants, Gonzalez has spent her time gathering and publishing information to help families mitigate their fears and make clear-headed decisions about how to respond.
“Regardless of our beliefs, we are all going to be affected by mass deportation because we are now scaring people out of going to work,” she said.
“We saw it with COVID, what happens,” Gonzalez said. “We are now afraid to send our children to school.
“Regardless of what anyone believes in, we’re all economically, educationally linked,” she said.
“If your child is going to school next to that child, you don’t know if they’re going to fall behind as well.
“We’ve come a long way to fall back from what our ancestors have fought for.”
Materially, Gonzalez’s work centers on bridging cultural gaps, but ultimately, it’s about building empathy in partnership with people who have common goals for their children and families.
“We’re all humans,” she said.
“When we get hurt, we all bleed the same color.
“I think that it’s a beautiful thing that we’re diverse, we’re learning from one another,” Gonzalez said.
“With everything that’s going around the world, there’s more reasons for us to come together than to be working alone, or to be separated.”
