Cultivating Agency: Preparation, Silence, and Resistance to Trumpian Anti-Immigrant Tactics

            After the results of the 2024 presidential election, violent anti-immigrant rhetoric and media depictions of “militarized mass deportations” increased. Response to the threats of mass deportation were varied. Human rights organizations and grass-roots immigration advocates were not derailed by the 2024 presidential election outcome. Organizations such as the Detention Watch Network avidly held Know Your Rights campaigns and Family Preparedness Plans to meet the moment. While organizations and advocates responded with preparation, some Christian churches responded with silence and others responded with practical resistance tactics. This paper will summarize key observations about local, regional, and national responses to the threat of mass deportations championed by Trumpian politics. Based on an emic ethnography, this paper engages three predominant responses to the Mass Deportation Rhetoric: preparation, silence, and resistance.