Deportation threat leaves immigrants and allies on edge

CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG LIBRARY

Charlotte Mecklenburg Library hosted a naturalization ceremony for the first time April 6 at South County Regional Library. Fourteen new United States citizens immigrated from several countries including Canada, Ukraine, Belarus, Jamaica and England.

Jayma Anne Montgomery knows the difficulty of becoming a naturalized citizen.

Montgomery, a physician who practices at Charlotte area hospitals, moved to the U.S. as a child in 1989 when Hurricane Gilmore ravaged her native Jamaica. America represented a fresh start and bipartisan immigration reform signed into law by President Ronald Reagan updated the path to citizenship for her family.

“There was a period of time where families out to second degree relatives could appeal for emergency family reunification, so that’s how I was able to get here very quickly as a child,” said Montgomery, who served in the Army veteran and is author of “AlieNation: The Imitated Life,” a memoir of racial and cultural challenges she faced as an immigrant. “But there’s been many years off and on where depending on who’s in office, things are more or less favorable in terms of trying to get any kind of green card or traveling privileges here beyond tourist.”

Montgomery fears President-elect Donald Trump’s stated goal of mass deportation when he assumes office next year will make immigration difficult if not impossible for people from Africa and the Caribbean – regions that Trump has disparaged in the past as “shithole countries.”

“Immigration is always like on the chopping block as far as how favorable it’s going to be” to the U.S. economy, Montgomery said. “Asia, India – maybe not all of Asia but certainly Japan and China – and certain other countries where America really has a lot to gain financially by admitting a lot of their immigrants, that’s never going to be on the chopping block. In fact, that’s kind of what you see [when] families are able to bring over not only family, but neighbors to come work for them. And it’s done America a lot of good.”

COURTESY JAYMA ANNE MONTGOMERY

Jayma Anne Montgomery, a Charlotte physician and author who immigrated to the United States as a child in 1989, fears President-elect Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations will become a reality upon his taking the oath of office in 2025.

An estimated 11 million people – 3.3% of the U.S. population – are in the country illegally.

The cost of deporting even 1 million undocumented people annually would cost an estimated $88 billion, or $967.9 billion over 10 years, according to a report from the American Immigration Council.
A cost analysis by the council determined kicking every illegal immigrant out of the country tag would include $89.3 billion to arrest them, $167.8 billion in mass detentions, $34 billion on legal processing and $24 billion on removals.

Incarcerating every undocumented person would swell the number of people detained on U.S. soil to more than five times the 1.9 million people locked up in the nation’s local jails, state and federal prisons combined.
Congressional appropriation would be necessary for the program.

A mass deportation initiative would have a major impact on the national economy. According to the AIC, it would crater gross domestic product by 4.2% to 6.8% in addition to reduce tax revenue, where undocumented immigrant households paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes. They also paid $22.6 billion in Social Security taxes and $5.7 billion to Medicare.

“Mass deportations would cause significant labor shocks across multiple key industries, with especially acute impacts on construction, agriculture, and the hospitality sector,” AIC researchers wrote in a report. “We estimate that nearly 14 percent of people employed in the construction industry are undocumented. Removing that labor would disrupt all forms of construction across the nation, from homes to businesses to basic infrastructure. As industries suffer, hundreds of thousands of U.S.-born workers could lose their jobs.”

As of 2022, there were 794,684 immigrants in North Carolina, according to the American Immigration Council. Approximately 145,500 immigrants live in Mecklenburg County, or 14% of its population – tied with Durham County for the highest in North Carolina – according to the George Mason University Institution for Immigration Research. Wake County, at 13%, is third.

Black immigrants are also most likely to be targeted for deportation, according to the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Although Black people make up only 7% of non-citizens in the U.S., they make up 20% of people facing deportation on criminal grounds despite a lack of evidence they break the law at greater rates than citizens or immigrants from other racial groups.

Immigrants are also major contributors to Charlotte’s economic health. Research from New American Economy shows that immigrant households in Charlotte earned nearly $4.9 billion and contributed over $1.2 billion in taxes in 2017. At 15.1% of Mecklenburg County’s population, they make up 16.4% of Mecklenburg County’s business owners and play a major role in local industries.  

Foreign-born people make up a quarter of all workers in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, fields; 44.7% in construction and 26% of manufacturing employees. Immigrants either preserved or created 7,473 manufacturing jobs that would have either disappeared or moved outside the county by 2017.

Regardless of whether the Trump administration can remove every undocumented person and keep others out, Montgomery believes the hunger for deportation based on geography and race won’t dissipate, even in the face of circumstances like war or political persecution or natural disaster.

“I think that the xenophobia in general is just going to continue to increase, and there's not any level of interest at all in the dozens of official and unofficial civil wars that are going on in many Caribbean countries like Haiti and dozens of unstable African countries,” she said. “We just aren’t really aware of what’s going on and how many people really need asylum and things like that.”

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