Trump’s mass deportation threat worries Leelanau’s tight-knit Latino community

Photo by Gary L. Howe

By Jacob Wheeler

Sun editor

They pick our cherries in the summer and our apples in the fall. They care for our vineyards and clean our rental houses. They raise children here, enroll them in public schools and celebrate quinceañeras in local parks. Many have lived in Leelanau County for decades.

Out of 22,000 residents—according to the latest Census—as many as 1,000 of our neighbors identify as Hispanic or Latino. Many have an undocumented parent or family member living here in northern Michigan, now as rooted here as the pine trees, though they crossed illegally into the United States years ago.

The local Latino community is acutely aware that the subject of immigration is tossed around like a political football during this presidential election season. They hear Republican candidate Donald Trump’s threats to carry out the “largest deportation in American history” and his maligning of non-white immigrant communities—and it frustrates and concerns them. Some worry about being racially profiled; some have grown more cautious about sharing their legal status with fellow community members; some worry about an environment of anxiety surrounding their kids, most of whom were born here and have U.S. citizenship.

During Trump’s first term in The White House, 2017-2020, he largely failed in his attempt to deport more than a small portion of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country—as his campaign ran into legal, fiscal and political realities. Deportations under Trump never topped 350,000. His administration did, however, carry out a highly controversial policy of separating migrant children from their families at the southern border (many of those children still haven’t been reunited with their relatives). He also ordered sweeping worksite raids and enacted a ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries.

It’s worth noting that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, carried out a single-year record 432,000 deportations in 2013, earning him the dubious nickname, the “deporter in chief.”

Trump and his advisors—in particular Stephen Miller, his immigration policy “Rasputin”—have offered hints at how they would ramp up deportations of undocumented immigrants and avoid the roadblocks that bedeviled them last time. That could involve mobilizing ICE agents, the FBI, federal prosecutors, the National Guard, and even local law enforcement. In recent rallies, Trump has slandered Venezuelan migrants living in Colorado and Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio—whom he falsely accused of eating their house pets during his presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has also expressed a desire to end birthright citizenship, a right which is codified in the U.S. Constitution and unlikely to be amended.

The Republican National Committee reportedly backed in full Trump’s ambitious views on immigration and deportation in its official 2024 platform—adopted in July at the party’s convention in Milwaukee.

According to a story in Mother Jones this fall titled “How Trump’s ‘Mass Deportation’ Plan Would Ruin America,” a future Trump administration—in the event of a presidential victory in November—would “invoke an infamous 18th-century wartime law, deploy the National Guard, and build massive detention camps—and intend on reshaping the federal bureaucracy to ensure it happens, drafting executive orders and filling the administration with loyalists who will quickly implement the policies. ‘No one’s off the table,’ said Tom Homan, the former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Trump. ‘If you’re in the country illegally, you are a target.’ If Trump and his allies have it their way, armed troops and out-of-state law enforcement would likely blitz into communities—knocking on doors, searching workplaces and homes, and arbitrarily interrogating and arresting suspected undocumented immigrants. The dragnet would almost certainly ensnare US citizens, too.”

Local law enforcement, including here in Leelanau County, would almost certainly comply with orders from the federal government. On Sept. 6, the Leelanau County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook that—contrary to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies alleging that the sheriff’s office wouldn’t cooperate with the feds—“the Leelanau County Sheriff’s Office has historically and still remains in cooperation and in contact with ICE for all persons who are being held in the Leelanau County Correctional Facility. Any and all requests for ICE “voluntary notification for release of suspected priority alien” presented to the Sheriff’s Office by ICE are honored as long as they fall within the confines of Michigan State legal requirements. This includes honoring Federal ICE form I-247N.”

With election polls showing a dead heat between Trump and Harris one month prior to Nov. 5, and faced with the prospect of a commander in chief hellbent on scapegoating immigrants and communities of color for the nation’s problems, Latinos in Leelanau County and elsewhere are bonding together and preparing for hard times if they come. During the first Trump presidency, local Hispanic neighborhoods set up informal mutual aid groups and communicated quickly with each other if they saw ICE agents apprehending someone.

“We are trying to prepare in case he becomes president,” said Marcelino, who works for a local winery. “In case la migra (ICE) arrives, everyone calls everyone else.”

Tomas Moreno, a Texas native and Leland High School graduate whose parents immigrated legally from Mexico—and who manages 54 vineyard acres north of Lake Leelanau for Bel Lago and French Valley wineries—said that “a lot of people are scared. It’s a nervous topic for families who have undocumented members.”

Adding to the uncertainty is whether a Trump administration would target those who arrived recently in the United States or go after all undocumented immigrants “across the board.” What would happen to the children of undocumented parents who were picked up? And how would deportations targeting farmworkers affect the local agricultural economy—where growers and many employers struggle to find enough workers.

“In Michigan and in general, immigrants and migrant workers are the driving force for the agriculture industry, for picking cherries and apples,” said Jesus Ledezma, a Leelanau native and recent University of Michigan graduate. “There would be a large gap in the supply of workers. No one is willing to fill these roles who isn’t a migrant or immigrant worker.”

The paranoia caused by a Trump presidency would ripple through the Hispanic farmworker community, regardless of a particular family’s immigration status.

“Even the documented people who are here with visas or are U.S. citizens are still worried,” said Moreno. ‘Are we going to get pulled over because we’re Hispanic? Are they gonna profile me?’”

Jessica, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate who currently attends Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, shared that her father heard on Spanish-language media that “Trump would round up all the immigrants and brand them.” Jessica wondered if her family was picked up and deported, “would I have to take care of my 15-year-old brother—I don’t even have a job right now—or would he be put in the system?”

One undocumented immigrant who has lived in Leelanau for more than a decade said “this topic creates an environment of anxiety for our kids. One of my younger children asked the first time Trump was running for office. ‘Now what will happen? Will they remove us from here?’”

Children hear the political anti-immigrant rhetoric not just at home but on television, on social media, and in school.

“If Trump wins, life would become much more oppressive for our community.”