Asian American organizations say they are scrambling, but not completely surprised, over President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations. Undocumented immigrants from China who are deemed to be of military age will be among the first groups targeted for deportation by the incoming Trump administration, sources close to the campaign previously told NBC News, citing the potential risk to national security.
While many community organizations have been making plans for months in anticipation of Trump’s immigration promises, the potential to be targeted has left many groups prepping immigration materials across Asian languages and coordinating with other community nonprofits to help serve the potential spike in families impacted by deportations. Asian Americans have long had the fastest-growing undocumented population, tripling over a 15-year period, from 2000 to 2015, and the number of Chinese nationals crossing into the U.S. has skyrocketed in recent years. Between fiscal years 2022 and 2024, the number of undocumented Chinese nationals crossing both the northern and southern borders has tripled from just more than 27,000 to more than 78,000.
Bethany Li, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said that the targeting of the Chinese community has long been foreshadowed. She cited laws in several states that restrict Chinese people from buying homes and other real estate, as well as the Trump-era security program the China Initiative, which was accused of racial profiling toward Asian scholars.
“We know that both the state and federal government have deemed China as a national security threat,” she said. “We saw this in World War II with Japanese Americans incarcerated. We saw this post-9/11 with Muslim and South Asian men being detained and some deported.” A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Sources close to the Trump campaign said the focus on Chinese nationals was part of a larger transition team plan to potentially end two Biden administration immigration programs and make those who have entered the country but not yet received asylum eligible for deportation. Trump has repeatedly suggested that “military-age” men from China have been preparing to form an army against the United States.
“They’re coming in from China — 31, 32,000 over the last few months — and they’re all military age and they mostly are men,” Trump said in April during a campaign rally. “And it sounds like to me, are they trying to build a little army in our country? Is that what they’re trying to do?”
Jo-Ann Yoo, executive director of the nonprofit Asian American Federation, a New York-based umbrella organization that works with 70 member agencies, said that for the past few months, her group has convened meetings and engaged in scenario planning in an effort to get ahead of Trump’s immigration promises.
In the next few weeks, she said, her group will be reaching out to attorneys with language skills and others who can support families of mixed immigration status, in addition to connecting with member agencies so they are aware of potential sweeps by U.S. immigration officials. They are also planning to create in-language materials about potential deportations, Yoo said.
“We’ve got to get people out there so that people understand what their rights are,” Yoo said. “We’ve got to make our nonprofit organizations visible so that people who don’t normally go to these resources say, ‘Oh, something’s happening in my family. I’ve got to go ask for help.’ It’s a whole lot of education that has to happen, and it has to happen in-language.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not comment on the development, but referred NBC News to Trump’s transition team.
Li similarly said that the organization will be training other community groups in spreading awareness on how to request immigration records through the Freedom of Information Act. Accessing their immigration documents can help immigrants review their own history and also better help them and their attorneys apply for benefits or fight removal cases.
Though Trump has promised mass deportations across all undocumented immigrant groups, experts say that the focus on those of “military age” points to a growing anti-China sentiment. Li said that Chinese migrants tend to flee to the U.S. because of the struggling economy in their home country or dissatisfaction with the political situation.
“It’s another way of casting our community as an enemy,” Li said of Trump’s immigration platform. “It might not even make any logical sense from a national security perspective, but our communities on the ground here in the U.S. will feel the impact.”
While many community groups are now working on a shortened timeline, Li said that the details don’t necessarily come as a shock. Anti-China sentiment has ramped up across “multiple administrations,” she said. And Biden’s deportation policies were already relatively aggressive.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, the Biden administration is on pace to deport as many people as Trump did. So far under Biden, there have been 1.1 million removals since the beginning of fiscal year 2021 through February 2024. During Trump’s first term, there were 1.5 million deportations.
Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement to NBC News in April that China cooperates with efforts to repatriate undocumented immigrants.
“China has had good cooperation with some countries on the issue of repatriating illegal immigrants, and is willing to continue to strengthen cooperation with relevant countries on this issue,” Liu said.
With questions looming over the implementation of Trump’s campaign promises, Yoo said that it’s important for vulnerable communities to stand in solidarity.
“There is no time for rest. We are seeing real danger,” Yoo said. “We’re going to push and we’re going to have to be brave.”
