Nigerian illegal immigrants in the US have revealed that they have restricted their movements to public places to avoid being arrested and deported.
This came as they expressed optimism that they would be protected against deportation by the many lawsuits filed against President Donald Trump over his immigration policies.
Some of the illegal immigrants stated that they had refrained from going to work, church, and public places since Trump was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States as a sacrifice to continue staying in the country.
No fewer than 3,690 Nigerians in the US are facing deportation, according to a document compiled by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations.
The document, titled ‘Non-citizens on the ICE Non-Detained Docket with Final Orders of Removal by Country of Citizenship,’ shows that Mexico and El Salvador rank top on the list of nations facing the highest number of deportations, with 252,044 and 203,822, respectively.
As disclosed in the document, 1,445,549 non-citizens were on ICE’s non-detained docket with final removal orders as of November 24, 2024.
On his inauguration day, Trump issued a slew of executive orders aimed at toughening immigration regulations, including the abolition of birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants.
The US Justice Department also threatened to prosecute municipal and state governments that failed to follow Trump’s immigration orders, which included a promise to deport millions of unauthorised immigrants.
Following the directive, 538 illegal aliens were deported from the United States on January 23rd.
However, Chronicle NG gathered that the affected Nigerians had devised means to avoid being deported, expressing fear that their forced return to Nigeria might spell doom for them.
Separate interviews with illegal immigrants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being recognised, revealed that their tough living conditions in the United States were preferable to returning to Nigeria, citing tales of hardship and insecurity as their primary worries.
One of the impacted Nigerians, who lives in Tampa, Florida, stated that he stopped going to work to avoid being caught by ICE agents.
He said, “Ever since Trump came to power and acted on his threat of deportation, some of us have stopped going to work because ICE officers can raid workplaces to arrest illegal immigrants at any time.”
Apart from that, the distressed Nigerian said he had also stopped going to church and other public places, disclosing that the only safe place for him was his house.
“I work in a factory with many other Nigerians and Africans. Some other Africans who are also illegal immigrants have stopped going to work. The fear of Trump is the beginning of wisdom now.
“I don’t go to church anymore because it is possible to be arrested there. For now, the only safe place is your house—stay indoors.
However, he prayed that the deportation exercise would be relaxed after some months.
“We survived Obama’s deportation actions; we will survive this one as well. We hope that the various lawsuits against the immigration policies will slow things down and eventually restrain Trump from carrying them out.”
Speaking on why he had yet to regularise his documents, he said all efforts to validate his stay in the US had been futile.
According to him, all the systems he tried to obtain valid residency papers didn’t work for him, complaining that he had lost close to $30,000 in the process.
He said, “I left Nigeria for the US in 2013, and I have been trying to get my papers since then. I was scammed through marriage and other means. In this regularisation process, I have lost close to $30,000. At a point, I wanted to file for asylum, but I was advised against it because I had spent over three years without valid papers. I decided to take under-the-table jobs instead.”
Another Nigerian illegal immigrant in Columbus, Ohio, said he stopped working for the first week after Trump’s inauguration out of fear of being deported.
According to him, while Nigerians are not the primary targets of the mass deportation campaign, any foreign individual illegally present in the United States can be detained and deported by ICE at any moment.
He explained that the first group of illegal immigrants to be deported were those with criminal records, but that the process of deporting individuals without criminal records had already begun.
“I cannot assume that Nigerians are not their target now and become exposed to them. No. The best self-defence is to stay out of trouble, and the best way to avoid being deported is to stay out of sight of ICE officers.
“The truth is, Trump’s war on illegal immigrants has restricted our movements. People are mindful of where they go now. The situation is like a rat monitoring the presence of a cat before stepping out. Personally, I stopped going to work the first week Trump was inaugurated, and I have not been going to work regularly since. May we not be unfortunate.
“Going back to Nigeria is not an option—not when millions of Nigerians are trying to japa because of hardship and insecurity. My difficult living conditions here are still better than what is considered ‘comfortable’ in Nigeria. However, we hope that this threat will subside in the next few months,” he said.
