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Georgia immigrants brace for Trump presidency

Immigration attorney: "There's a lot of stress."

TUCKER, Ga. — Tuesday’s election is raising concerns in parts of Georgia's immigrant community. Donald Trump will take office again in January, promising mass deportations within 90 days.

The International Rescue Committee in DeKalb County has helped settle refugees and asylum seekers through eight presidencies -- including the first term of Donald Trump.

"The last time this administration was in power, these were also the people who were helping us during the pandemic as essential workforce," the IRC's executive director Justin Howell recalled Thursday.

He said his agency isn't raising any alarms yet about Trump's second term.

Credit: AP
Donald Trump is pictured, left, with JD Vance, right, at an election night watch party, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

"We’ve got millions upon millions of people who shouldn’t even be here who are being put in front of the line of American citizens," JD Vance told a crowd in Cobb County on Monday, the night before he was elected vice president.

Vance told a roaring crowd that undocumented immigrants could expect the government to enforce their departure within 90 days of Trump’s January inauguration.

"I can tell you there’s a lot of stress. A lot of uncertainty. A lot of people are very worried," said Gwinnett County immigration attorney Antonio Molina, who worries that Trump’s new administration will be more efficient in its campaign against what he called “illegals” the second time around.

"With that in mind, he could literally just get troops, have them pick up people, and just drive them over the border and drop them off," Molina said.  "And by the time the legal process is worked out, we don’t know what could happen."

"Molina says there would be court challenges to mass deportations – but he worries that a more conservative US Supreme Court would likely look askance at constitutional challenges.

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