As Trump prepares to take office once again, local organizations are fighting to protect the undocumented community

Featured photo courtesy of Siembra NC

For the last two decades, Brajan Funes has called Winston-Salem home, but he was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras in 1996.

Two years later, in October 1998, Hurricane Mitch devastated Honduras forcing Funes’ family to seek a better life in the United States.

But their family came in pieces: First his father, then his mother.

Funes grew up in the care of his aunt in Honduras until he eventually reunited with his parents in the US at 4 years old. He said it felt like he was meeting them for the first time. He has two younger siblings, both born in the US, who have all the benefits of being citizens while Funes and his parents do not.

When Funes was 16, he spoke to a military recruiter, eager to join the ranks. 

Where do I sign? was all he could think about, he said.

That’s when his parents sat him down and had “the talk,” he said.

You’re not a US citizen, they told him.

You’re not going to be allowed to enlist.

You’re not going to be allowed to vote. 

Now an investment manager at Wells Fargo, Funes is acutely aware of the threat the next administration poses to him and his family. 

Funes is currently able to live in the US because he qualifies for Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. Immigrants from countries that have suffered environmental disasters, armed conflicts or other extreme circumstances may be designated for TPS. 

Despite his right to be here, people have told him that he doesn’t “belong here” and that he should “go home” to Honduras.

The thing is, Honduras isn’t home, Funes said. His mom, dad, brother and sister are the only family he’s got. And the community that he’s grown up with here, that’s his family.

But with Trump back in the White House, six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, and Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, families like Funes’s could be threatened.

During the campaign trail, Trump and his VP pick, JD Vance, both targeted immigrants — largely undocumented ones — pinning all of the country’s issues on their backs.

“We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status,” Vance said at an Arizona rally in October. 

Trump has also promised mass deportations. On Dec. 9, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan threatened to prosecute Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago, a sanctuary city, if he continues to “harbor and conceal” asylum seekers.

“Do not impede us,” Homan warned.

Trump and his allies have also targeted birthright citizenship, a longstanding right ensured by the 14th Amendment that grants citizenship to those born on American soil. 

“We’re kind of trying to do two things at once,” said Nikki Marín Baena, the co-director of Siembra NC, a grassroots activism organization born in 2017 as a response to the first Trump administration. “One is just to be with people in the moment that they’re in, and some people are afraid, and for reasons that make a lot of sense. And some people are like, what do we do now?”

For those who are undocumented like Funes, organizations like Siembra NC and Church World Service are working to fight back against the incoming Trump administration and keep their neighbors safe.

“Folks are scared, I think there’s a lot of trauma from the first administration and what happened,” said Madison Burke, a spokesperson for CWS. “I encourage people to really think about the long game. Not just the next couple of months, but ‘How can I plug in for the next couple years?’” 

Boots on the ground, doing the work

Since 2017, Siembra NC has expanded their work across the state to Alamance, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Orange, Wake, Randolph and Rockingham counties. Siembra’s work is especially crucial during a time where immigrant communities are targeted and maligned, particularly with the passage of HB 10, which went into effect Dec. 1 and forces sheriffs to detain immigrants accused of violent crimes so that they can be detained by ICE.

During a recent Siembra NC member meeting in Durham, organizers welcomed new people to the meeting, shared information and offered support. Organizer Maria Peralta brought a variety of homemade tamales.

Co-director Marín Baena told TCB that the organization’s early work started out as a 24-hour hotline for people to call if they thought an ICE vehicle was lurking outside.

“In the early days, the rumors would get so bad sometimes that people would stay home from work, keep their kids home from school, and so we really wanted people to, as much as possible, be able to live their normal lives,” she said.

Marín Baena’s parents came to the US in 1973 from Columbia and because they came in an earlier wave of immigrants, they were able to get green cards and become US citizens, she explained. She was born in New Jersey where her parents had jobs in a union textile factory.

“When I think about the next 10 or 20 years of me or an organization like Siembra, it’s not just to survive the Trump administration,” Marín Baena said. “It’s to organize more people into believing that — as workers who are creating profit for businesses — you deserve to live a good life, and you deserve to live a life without fear, and that you deserve to live a life where you have access to healthcare.”

For people like Nayely Franco, the organization has felt like a lifeline.

Originally from Mexico, Franco’s family also came to the United States in pieces: first her father, and then her two older siblings plus her mother, who had just given birth to Nayely.

The family lived with Franco’s uncle in Chapel Hill, which was a “really nice city,” Franco said, but they didn’t know other people like them.

“I knew that we were not citizens, but I just didn’t understand exactly what we were. But I also understood that I could get in trouble and separated from my family if I disclosed that I wasn’t a citizen,” she said. “I was always scared of cops, if I’m being honest.”

That fear never really went away. 

In elementary school, she paused while filling out paperwork where she had to choose her citizenship status.

“That’s when it kind of somewhat hit me that, like, Okay, I’m different,” she said.

Because the topic of their status was taboo, she couldn’t talk to her parents or siblings about it, she explains. 

“Because I was scared most of the time, I have a really bad issue with trauma blockage as a defense mechanism to cope with the fear and anxiety around being undocumented,” Franco explained.

One of the most anxiety-inducing instances was in middle school, when Franco was one of the students selected to go to France to study abroad. It was a great opportunity and news that would have filled most kids with elation. But Franco had a sinking feeling that she wouldn’t be able to go.

“I told my family about it and they were like, ‘Oh yeah, obviously you can’t leave out of the country because you won’t be let back in,’’” she recalled.

Despite the difficulties of her childhood, Franco’s “biggest dream” had always been to go to college. Her “last hope” was a nonprofit organization called Latinx Ed, which offered her a scholarship for undocumented students to study in certain states. She ended up getting into a college in Connecticut, but she worried about going; there had been a lot of ICE raids in North Carolina. 

“I just didn’t want to be separated from my family,” Franco said. But her mom told her, “Make these sacrifices for your future.”

Four years later, she graduated with a bachelors in sociology and criminology and a minor in anthropology.

During that time, Franco’s family got approved for a U visa, a temporary residency permit offered to victims of certain violent crimes and their families. And while she has that “safety net,” Franco said she still gets nervous around cops or when she’s filling out paperwork.

“What if they deport me for some reason?” Franco worries.

But unlike in 2016 when Trump first took office, Marín Baena said there are some more protections in place this time around. And that’s mostly due to the networks that have been built since then.

“Many of us walked into 2016 feeling completely alone, not knowing what we were going to do or where we were going to turn, and now we’re in a really different situation because we have each other,” said Marín Baena.

A network of resistance

In addition to Siembra, other nonprofits like Church World Service, an international global nonprofit, have also been offering support by raising funds for undocumented families facing financial crises, ICE detention and deportation. Since 2019, the North Carolina Immigrant Solidarity Fund has distributed more than $1.1 million in direct financial assistance to undocumented families. NC-ISF regional partners include El Pueblo in Raleigh, Carolina Migrant Network in Charlotte, AMEXCAN in Greenville, CULA and CiMA in Asheville and Siembra NC in Greensboro. 

Burke with CWS said that the organization serves people hailing from Turkey to South Africa. Their Greensboro office has been around for 15 years and does refugee resettlement work, immigration legal services and community engagement programming. They also provide legal consultation and know-your-rights training to unaccompanied minors.

Burke understands that there’s fear again with another Trump term. But they’re working to empower people with information and connect them to resources like power of attorney clinics, as well as helping people think through potential care of children, especially for mixed status families where one or more people are undocumented.

They don’t have a crystal ball, Burke said, but they can prepare for what they experienced during the first administration as well as the campaign promises Trump has made.

Burke encourages people to support local organizations such as Siembra NC and the Triad Immigrant Solidarity Fund, or volunteering their time in other ways, such as if they’re an attorney or paralegal.

“I also think, just really educating yourself on the challenges faced by immigrants in this country, the history of immigration in the US, really trying to push back against some of these hurtful myths, even just in day-to-day conversations,” Burke said. “I really do think that stories and individual relationships, like that’s how we move the needle in a lot of ways.”

As someone who may be affected, Franco agreed.

“I think it’s important to have support, not just from our own community, but from different communities,” Franco said. “At the end of the day, all of us are scared and I think coming together really will make a difference in keeping each other safe, and also positive. We need to take care of ourselves, because if we burn out we’re only going to be able to do so much.”

Build relationships with immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, Burke said. Let people know that they are “welcome, that we’re glad they’re here, that they’re important parts of our community, providing that emotional support and social safety net.”

“Those community connections are way more powerful than we realize,” Burke added.

While Franco still can’t vote due to her status, it motivates her to do political work in her community, she said. During the summer she worked with Siembra in Durham to get out the vote.

“Obviously the results aren’t the ones we wanted, but I know I can say at least I tried,” she said. And for Franco, facing the Trump administration feels different now that she’s an adult. 

“It is scary, but I just feel optimistic now that I am older,” she said. “I can stand up, I am powerful, I am strong and I am independent. I got this. With his first term I was completely vulnerable. I was like, ‘I have to hide, I can’t be seen, I can’t speak to anyone about this.’ So I definitely do see myself in a completely different position now with this second term.”

And as the months go by, Franco looks forward to meeting more people to fight against this “little dictatorship,” she said, laughing. 

“Numbers really are power, so the more the merrier.”

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