The Trump administration’s recent plan to deport immigrants to Libya – a nation embroiled in conflict and notorious for human rights abuses – has drawn sharp criticism from legal experts and human rights advocates. Ángela Fernández, executive director of the Safe Passage Project, voiced her concerns during a City Newsroom interview, stating, “These are death sentences.”
Since President Donald Trump’s second term began, restrictive and anti-immigrant policies have escalated, with an increased role for federal agents in enforcing deportations.
Most recently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has enlisted the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to conduct ‘wellness checks’ on migrant children, arriving at their homes to locate unaccompanied minors and their sponsors with the aim of pursuing criminal prosecutions.
Fernández, whose organization provides free legal representation to immigrant and refugee children facing deportation, said her clients in all five boroughs and Long Island have been targeted by these DHS checks, which Fernández called “psychologically devastating.”
“They are coming in, knocking on the door with their guns, saying we’re just here to do a wellness check,” she said. “They’re not social workers. And that is something completely new that never existed before.”
While DHS says the visits are to “ensure that [the children] are safe and not being exploited,” an internal document from the department’s Center for Countering Human Trafficking revealed each visit is meant to gather information about criminal records, employment and banking history, school enrollment, and other sensitive details.
“It’s incredibly intimidating. It’s traumatizing for children and for adults to have the weight of the state knocking at your door that has the ability to deport you to a camp in El Salvador,” Fernández said.
In response to the administration’s crackdown, the Safe Passage Project has launched one-on-one ‘Know Your Rights’ workshops for their clients.
“They know to not open the door unless they have a warrant,” Fernández said.
These efforts come after the Trump Administration pushes to reopen Alcatraz, a prison on an Island off San Francisco shuttered in 1963, to assist in mass deportations—one of at least five decommissioned prisons the administration is attempting to revive.
Moving migrants to remote detention centers like Alcatraz, or even New York City’s own jail on Rikers Island, makes legal support more difficult. Fernández said the likelihood of a successful immigration case “decreases tremendously” if clients are hard to reach.
The impact is compounded by recent federal cuts. In March, the Trump administration slashed over $300 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, impacting organizations that assist unaccompanied migrant children, including the Safe Passage Project.
Fernández said that numerous organizations in the field have been forced to lay off attorneys, leaving many children to defend themselves in court, diminishing their chances of prevailing to less than 20%, compared to 80% if they have legal representation.
Still, Fernández said immigration lawyers won’t stop showing up.
“Attorneys have an ethical obligation to represent,” she said. “Just because the money is being cut doesn’t mean we can drop the client. We have to continue representing them.”
Fernández argued that while immigration benefits the United States, public discourse around it has shifted. “There is this concept and idea that everyone’s dying to come to America, to the United States,” she said. “The reality is that the decision to come is because of need, whether it be an economic need, a political need, a safety need.”
“Ultimately, in the end, people don’t want to leave their homes,” she said.
Rana is a reporter from Arizona covering climate change and immigration for City Newsroom. She previously lived in San Francisco and started her journalism career covering issues intersecting food, politics, and culture.
Shailee Shah has always been an immigrant — and as a result, in constant pursuit of the feeling of home. It’s only befitting then, that she relishes in covering the housing beat for City Newsroom.
Sharla Steinman is a bilingual journalist covering education in New York. She is originally from Los Angeles and a UCLA alum. She’s penned bylines in The New York Times and Uncloseted Media. You can reach out to her on X @Sharla_Steinman.
