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Out of the shadows: New York immigrants fear raids as city retains ID card records

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Out of the shadows: New York immigrants fear raids as city retains ID card records

 

"NEW YORK, Dec 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - On the morning of Nov. 9, 2016, Bianey Garcia walked to her office in Queens, New York, numb from shock and reeling from the night before.

"I felt like my dreams, my everything, had gone,"she said.

Waking to the news of Donald Trump's election victory, Garcia, a 27-year-old transgender woman originally from Mexico, paced "like the walking dead" to her desk at Make the Road, New York's largest immigrant organisation.

More than a million of the country's estimated 11.1 million undocumented immigrants live in the city and its suburbs, many having worked there for decades and built families on the way.

That morning, they woke to a new reality: a Trump presidency that pledged to rapidly deport 2 to 3 million people living in the country without visas.

In her offices below the elevated tracks of the No. 7 train - the so-called "Immigrant Express" across Queens, where nearly half of residents are foreign born - Garcia saw chaos..."

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