(Photo courtesy of AP) “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Maryland on Jan. 27th”
Tristin Henson
Connector Contributor
Trump vowed, throughout his presidential campaign, that his biggest issue during his presidency would be immigration and carrying out mass deportations. Sticking to his word, the first law that Trump signed in office was the Laken Riley Act. This law requires that undocumented immigrants, “who are accused of theft, burglary, assaulting a law enforcement officer, and any crime that causes death or serious bodily injury” be locked up pending trial and sentencing in a Federal Bureau of Prisons detention facility or local county jails (Homeland Security, 2025). This means that any undocumented immigrant who is even accused of a crime can be locked up and deported. An important thing to note: undocumented immigrants aren’t just foreign-born people who entered the U.S. without inspection. They can also include people who do not possess a valid visa or immigrant documentation because they stayed longer than their visa allowed them or violated the terms that they were allowed to enter the U.S.
The law itself, the Laken Riley Act, was named after a Georgia nursing student who was killed by an undocumented immigrant, and the story itself received much attention from the news. Trump and many Republicans, as well as some Democrats, saw this as an example of why undocumented immigrants should not be allowed in the country. Despite the constant push to portray undocumented immigrants, and immigrants in general, as criminals, according to multiple studies, “immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born people…undocumented immigrants were 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a crime…[there is] no correlation between undocumented people and a rise in crime” (NPR, 2024). However, “White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that while arrests of criminals will be [prioritized], nobody in the country illegally is ‘off the table’” (BBC, 2025). According to NBC News, out of a total of 1,179 people on January 26th (ICE said that they only arrested 956 people), 566 were nonviolent offenders or people who had not committed any criminal offense besides crossing the border illegally.
Being undocumented is considered a civil offense and not a crime. Phoenix Lewis, the LGBTQ+ Peer Leader at the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) said that they have even heard of this “…happening to US Citizens as well as immigrants. Recently there was a grandmother, a mother, and a toddler who were all U.S. citizens that were, essentially, thrown in a holding cell before they got released, just because they were speaking Spanish…I feel like he is doing this to be a hateful person…and create this sort of like: White people or anyone who isn’t white needs to leave, because I know people who have been getting racially profiled by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents.” There is an article by TruthOut that confirms this story. This possibility of arresting undocumented immigrants who have not been accused of committing any crime, immigrants, and citizens has not stopped Trump from focusing on deportation and enacting more laws and policies that focus on catching and deporting undocumented immigrants.
Another policy that Trump has changed is one that prohibits arrests by U.S. immigration agents at or near schools, places of worship, hospitals, shelters, relief centers, and public demonstrations (CBS News, 2025). Phoenix, when asked about their general thoughts on all the places that ICE could now go into said “…I feel like this is also incredibly dangerous…churches are places where people go to worship, it’s not a place where people, like, should be ripped out of their seats and taken away in vans…especially schools [it’s] even worse that children could be taken…especially hospitals too? As a former CNA [Certified Nursing Assistant] that is crazy to me that people would be taken out of hospitals to be deported.” Because of the revoking of this law, there has been a widespread sense of fear among immigrants in general, and with good reason. ICE, with the help of the U.S. The Marshals Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, other federal agencies, and some police departments, have been staging mass raids throughout the country. ICE specifically has been told by leadership to try and meet a quota “between 1,200 to 1,500 arrests per day” (NBC News, 2025). The Trump administration’s daily average, so far, is 753 arrests per day (NBC News, 2025). Phoenix, when told this, said “…They’re not giving them enough time to see a judge, to go through the process, to get all their paperwork in check. And they’ve taken U.S. citizens too…”
Carolina Cabral, a tutor at some of the schools here in Lowell, said she has already seen major impacts from potential ICE threats. She said at the school she works at many students have been either joking around with each other or seriously asking each other if they have their documents. Carolina also expressed distress when asked what she and teachers would do if ICE showed up to her schools, “What do you even do if ICE shows up? We’ll play dumb.” She stated, when asked if they have seen any other impacts around Lowell, that many Portuguese clubs here in Lowell have recently become empty, with no one showing up due to the fear that ICE might come looking for people to arrest there. Trump has also recently signed a memorandum to start preparing Guantanamo Bay to hold as many as 30,000 people who he has called “the worst” of the undocumented immigrants. Phoenix had this to say on the matter: “I feel like there shouldn’t be a separate place where they’re housing undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, I feel like just having them in the normal prison system…would be beneficial…this is history repeating itself in not a good way…”. Along with all of this, there have been many photos and videos on Twitter/X from Homeland Security Investigations and Drug Enforcement Administration offices in many cities of debriefings happening, arrests, and raids. Some of the arrests have people’s faces blurred out and some do not.
Of course, all of this hits very close to home for Lowell, as Lowell has a very high immigrant population. According to the U.S. Census (2023), 33.5% +/- 3.3% of people in Lowell are foreign-born. Many of the immigrants here are from Asia, though there is also a high population from Africa, Europe, and Latin America. More specifically, Lowell has a very high population of Cambodians, Vietnamese, and Lao due to many wars that were happening in Southeast Asia in the 1950s-1980s. As mentioned before, because of these statistics, the impact Lowell has felt from these policies/laws being enacted has been great. Media-focused raids and arrests have happened in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Miami, Denver, San Deigo, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, just to name a few, some places close to Lowell.
No raids have happened in Lowell yet, however there has been talk of agents showing up to apartments, quick chats inside Market Basket about what is happening, and students and teachers are planning what to do if something does happen in their schools. UMass Lowell itself has also recently sent out a document to all of its employees from the Office of the General Counsel telling them what to do if they encounter or are requested to do something by law enforcement or a government representative. This document appears to be for all UMass schools including Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Medical, and Law. It tells employees to contact the Office of General Counsel (OGC) if they run into an agent, to “not [p]rovide any information about a University student or employee to any Agent unless OGC has specifically authorized” and to tell the Campus Public Safety or Police Department if an agent goes into a non-public campus space.
The atmosphere in Lowell is very tense at the moment, and many people are looking at the possibility of agents coming to their homes or raids happening here. New policies and executive orders have been coming in, with constantly changing information, news of ICE raids taking place all over the country with incorrect arrests happening each week, only adding to the confusion and fear that many immigrants are facing. This is a time of great stress for everyone, but as Phoenix put it “Reach out to people if you ever feel like you’re in danger…there are so many people here that are willing to hear you and be there for you especially here at UMass Lowell.”
