At the edge of a room decorated with “Brown Power” flags and picado paperReyna hands out flyers to a crowd that fills a makeshift conference room in Gilroy and listens as a speaker warns of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and describes a dizzying series of measures to prepare them for the threat of deportation.

Reyna, who asked that her last name not be used because of her immigration status, is an undocumented immigrant and became a single mother of two young daughters born in the United States three years ago after the death of her husband. She now fears being separated from her children.

“I’m the only support they have. … Since their father died, I’m the only thing that ties them together,” Reyna said in Spanish.

The day after Trump’s re-election, after a campaign marked by promises of mass expulsions and harsh crackdowns on immigrationReyna focuses on educating herself and others. Across the Bay Area, many immigrant communities and immigrant rights groups are trying to combat fear with knowledge as they prepare to combat strict immigration policies and increased racism that, according to they will come with the next Trump administration.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen here,” Rosario Ortiz, a Morgan Hill resident who says she has several undocumented family members, said in Spanish. “Everyone is afraid. Everyone is worried.

The Bay Area is home to more than 2.3 million immigrants, according to a 2022 Mercury News analysis US Census Data. Most come from Latin America or Asia, including Mexico, China, the Philippines and Vietnam. While the Pew Research Center estimates that about 4 in 5 immigrants in California have legal statuswhich still leaves hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants throughout the Bay Area.

President-elect Trump promised his administration would carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history” and made the fight against immigration a central pillar of his campaign. His wide-ranging promises range from building massive detention camps to hold immigrants to sending in the military to help with deportations.

Reyna came to the United States illegally 15 years ago. Since Trump’s election, she has already designated a friend to look after her two daughters, aged 11 and 8, in the event of deportation.

As part of her work to connect immigrants to resources in the Gilroy community, she said she typically receives two or three calls a week from people looking for immigration lawyers. Since the elections, she has received as many every day. Other Bay Area organizations say they’re also getting more calls asking for immigration help.

Fears go beyond just undocumented immigrants. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have suggested reducing or even revoking some legal immigration pathways, leaving even those with legal status in limbo.

“I have my work permit… but I don’t know if that will be enough,” Colombian immigrant Sebastian Garcia said in Spanish. He said he was particularly concerned about the fate of his friends, whose legal situation is more precarious. “The truth is, I’m trying to see how we (as a community) can help each other…in January…well, I’m worried.”

Whether the worst fears of evictions will come true in the Bay Area remains up for debate. While the California Legislature has limited the extent to which local law enforcement can collaborate with immigration enforcement, federal agents can operate independently of local law enforcement to deport immigrants illegal.

Although deportations peaked under Obama, the last Trump administration took more than 1,000 immigration actions that led to the separation of thousands of families, says Caitlin Patler, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. , which studies how immigration policy changes people’s lives. immigrants to the United States.

“These actions have been extremely harmful to our communities,” said Patler, who emphasizes Trump’s cabinet appointments as proof of his tough approach. “I think we can expect to see all of this and worse under a second administration.

Many people in immigrant communities agree, including those who experienced family separation during Trump’s first term.

After years of legal maneuvering to delay deportation during the Obama presidency, Maria Guadalupe Mendoza-Sanchez was deported in 2017 with her husband at the time, separating her from three of her four children. “I know (Trump) is going to do what he said… (because) I’ve experienced it myself,” Mendoza-Sanchez said.

Mendoza-Sanchez, an oncology nurse at Highland Hospital in Oakland, was able return in 2018 thanks to a lottery for skilled worker visas.

When Trump was re-elected this year, Mendoza-Sanchez said her youngest daughter cried for hours remembering his expulsion.

Although she feels secure in her visa status and emphasizes that there is always room to fight back, she worries about her community and patients who will have to deal with the stress of the upcoming Trump presidency. “There’s a lot of pain and fear in the community, and it’s completely valid… it’s scary, it’s very, very scary,” she said.

Beyond fears of expulsion, others worry that the new administration will reinforce hateful actions and speech.

Under the first Trump administration, “we experienced harassment, racism,” said Ana Mendoza, who provides services to Gilroy’s immigrant communities and has undocumented family members. “It’s going to get crazy for all of us.”

Huy Tran, executive director of San Jose Immigrant Rights Group, SIRENsaid that after the election, the group received several hate calls, including one telling a staffer — a U.S. citizen — that he should fear being deported. Others said they were told to “go back where they came from.”

“The culture that (Trump) is creating is a culture of fear, of xenophobia, of intimidation…and it trickles down,” Tran said.

Tran said leaders and activists in the Bay Area and California have been preparing since May for coordinated efforts to protect immigrant communities, using tactics refined under the first Trump administration. “California is a very important bulwark against what’s going to happen,” Tran said. “The good thing… is we have experience. We are better prepared.

Already, communities across the bay are arming themselves with legal know-how: forming groups of volunteers to monitor ICE, connecting immigrants with lawyers and preparing contingency plans in case of ‘expulsion. The organizations are also preparing to pressure state and local governments to enact and safeguard laws and policies that protect immigrants in California.

“We are going to be determined,” said Christian Arana, vice president of civic power and policy for the Latino Community Foundation, a national organization based in San Francisco. “There is no choice but to fight.”

Back at the workshop, Reyna considers her own reasons for fighting while keeping an eye on her daughters at the edge of the room. “We are all human. We are all here to try to continue to move forward and survive for our children,” she said in Spanish. “That’s what’s important: unity, strength and the will to continue despite adversity.”

Photographer Ray Chavez contributed to this report.