Winston-Salem immigration attorney shares observations, expectations for the future

For immigrants across the United States, the days following Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration have been filled with uncertainty.

The president has issued executive orders attempting to repeal policies related to immigration and birthright citizenship only to have some of them blocked days later. 

Winston-Salem-based immigration attorney, Helen Parsonage sat down with WFDD’s Santiago Ochoa to discuss how she and her clients are navigating this political fog and approaching the next four years.

Interview Highlights

On ICE home visits and knowing your rights:

"If it's five o'clock in the morning and there's a loud [knock], and it tends to be five or six o'clock in the morning for obvious reasons, right? People, they get caught on the back foot because it's early in the morning. My advice is, roll over, go back to sleep. It's as simple as that, because ICE has no authority to come into somebody's home without their permission.

So if you don't go down, open the door and invite them in, there's absolutely nothing they can do about it. If you go to the door, they're going to try and persuade you that the piece of paper they're waving is a warrant. It might say warrant, but it's not the kind of warrant that lets them in your house. It's not a judicial warrant. It's an administrative warrant.

An administrative warrant is not really a warrant. I think that the word is sort of a fiction. It's like when ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers walk around with the word police on their jackets, right? It's a fiction that gets them into people's homes, and it gets people to talk to them when they might otherwise not. So my advice is, roll over, go back to sleep."

On growing concern from the immigrant community:

"I've definitely been getting more calls from people who are concerned about how the new administration might affect their case. Now, some of these are, you know, are an American citizen, a U.S. citizen, who's married somebody from another country. They're going through the Green Card process.

I've basically been saying, I don't anticipate any impact, except maybe it'll take a little bit longer. ... I've spoken to younger U.S. citizens who are afraid for their parents, who may be undocumented. I have spoken to people who are afraid that TPS [Temporary Protected Status] or DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] is going to be taken away. Wouldn't it be nice if I had answers for them and could just reassure them that everything will be alright? Of course, I can't do that."

On changes to ICE arrest policies:

"One of the things that I'm fairly certain about is, if we go back to Trump 1.0, ICE operated under the assumption that if they would have a targeted pickup, they were going for somebody who'd got an old deportation order or maybe a serious criminal record. They had an individual they were interested in. When they found that individual, they would do what they called collateral pickups.

So anybody who was with them, anybody who was in the house, if they went to the house and that person wasn't there, they would just start asking the folks who were there and the folks in the house next door. So there were a lot of collateral pickups.

Under President Biden, the collateral pickups stopped. There were targeted pickups, but if they were after person X, they would just take person X, and I fully anticipate that collateral pickups are gonna become normal now again."

*Editor's note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Santiago Ochoa covers healthcare for WFDD in partnership with Report For America. Follow him on X and Instagram: @santi8a98