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Accessibility statementSkip to main content Democracy Dies in Darkness SubscribeSign in Advertisement Democracy Dies in Darkness NationalClimateEducationHealthInnovationsInvestigationsNational SecurityObituariesScience NationalClimateEducationHealthInnovationsInvestigationsNational SecurityObituariesScience Immigration IN OHIO, AN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY PREPARES FOR TRUMP’S CRACKDOWN The small city of Painesville saw dozens of children separated from their parents during Trump’s first term. Some fear what’s coming will be worse. December 15, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. ESTToday at 6:00 a.m. EST 12 min 1487 Veronica Isabel Dahlberg, executive director of HOLA Ohio, greets children at the organization's holiday party. (Annie O'Neill for The Washington Post) By Joanna Slater PAINESVILLE, Ohio — Veronica Isabel Dahlberg looked out at dozens of familiar faces gathered in a new community center on a recent Monday evening, all of them anxious for answers she didn’t have. What would happen to the immigrants and farmworkers in this swath of northeastern Ohio? You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint. Dahlberg, who has worked with the community for nearly three decades, couldn’t say whether President-elect Donald Trump would follow through on his pledge to carry out mass deportations. But she reminded the audience what his first term looked like here. The ramped-up deportations, not of “bad guys” or criminals, but mothers and fathers pulled over for routine traffic stops. The people so frightened of being detained they sought sanctuary in local churches. The raids on a flower nursery and meat processing plant in the region. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement What was coming would be at least as bad and possibly much worse, Dahlberg thought. She had read about Trump’s promises to build detention camps and use the military to expand deportations. She wondered who she could count on to help. As the head of HOLA Ohio, a local nonprofit, she had built relationships with elected officials, employers, police officers and school administrators. “I don’t believe that they would just stand by and let our community get destroyed,” she said. She paused. “But I could be wrong.” Across the country, immigration advocates are racing to prepare for a crackdown on unauthorized immigrants that could be unlike anything the nation has witnessed in decades. Trump has promised to deport the country’s undocumented residents, a population estimated to number 11 million people as of 2022, according to the most recent data available. Such an operation would face considerable hurdles: during Trump’s first term, deportations peaked at 347,240 in the 2019 fiscal year. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement The consequences of Trump’s new push will unfold not just in areas close to the southern border or in major metropolises, but in places like Painesville, a small city of 20,000 near the shore of Lake Erie whose population has been transformed in recent decades by immigration, primarily from Mexico. An estimated 130,000 undocumented immigrants live in Ohio. Most of those in Painesville have been in the country for more than a decade, mirroring the national trend, and nearly all of them live in “mixed-status” families — families that also include U.S.-born children, naturalized citizens or legal immigrants. For such families, deportations nearly always separate parents from their children. Dahlberg saw it happen dozens of times in Trump’s first term. Last month, during her presentation at the community center, she reviewed the details of those cases. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement When she finished, there was a moment of stunned silence. A few people were in tears. Whatever lay ahead, Dahlberg vowed, they would stick together: holding rallies and news conferences, marching outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, writing petitions. “We will do that for each and every person,” Dahlberg said. “Even if it makes no difference.” “ONE CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN” On a recent afternoon, Dahlberg sat at her desk inside HOLA’s brand-new community center, a $2.1 million building that opened in 2022, transforming a derelict property in downtown Painesville into a space offering walk-in services, after-school tutoring, English classes and cultural events focused on the area’s Latino residents. Story continues below advertisement Painesville is about 30 miles east of Cleveland, part of a region whose fertile soil has been home to commercial nurseries growing plants and flowers since the 19th century. The industry drew waves of immigrants, including Dutch, Hungarians, Danes and Italians. Advertisement About three decades ago, laborers began arriving from Guanajuato, a state in central Mexico; some of them legally, some of them not. In 1990, Latinos were less than 3 percent of Painesville’s population. Now they make up more than a quarter of it. Dahlberg, 62, was born in Ohio to immigrant parents. Her mother was from Mexico and her father was a Hungarian refugee. Her first job was as a reporter at a local newspaper, where her coverage of migrant laborers wasn’t welcome, she said. Story continues below advertisement “People want to read about the beef queen or the grape jamboree,” she remembers an editor telling her. “Not about Mexican farmworkers.” Dahlberg founded HOLA in 1999 as a grassroots initiative and is transparent about its principles. She isn’t opposed to the deportation of criminals. She thinks Customs and Border Protection personnel do important work and are a “total asset to our country.” But she is against massive workplace raids and other types of immigration enforcement that target families whose only offense is being in the country illegally and who have worked and paid taxes for years. During Trump’s first term, Dahlberg said she saw the use of those tactics intensify. Within months of him taking office in 2017, Dahlberg had identified more than 30 U.S.-born children in Painesville alone who lost a parent to deportation. The figure was in the hundreds, Dalhberg estimated, if she included workers detained in the raids in the region the following year. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement Some of those cases still haunt her. One man had been in the country for 20 years. When he found out immigration agents were searching for him, he was so terrified that he returned to Mexico. Three months later, he was at a cafe when a shooting broke out and he was killed in the crossfire. Another woman went into hiding to avoid deportation and her young daughter later had a mental breakdown from the stress. Under Trump, undocumented immigrants with no criminal record or recent deportation order and who had U.S.-born children were removed from the country after routine traffic stops. To avoid being deported, some migrants sought refuge in churches, locations that federal immigration agents almost never enter for enforcement purposes as a matter of policy. Dahlberg thinks of a man from Guatemala who lives about an hour away. “He’s like the perfect immigrant,” Dahlberg said, a pillar of his community who arrived in the United States in 2001. His four children, ranging in age from 8 to 16, were born and raised in Ohio. His asylum claim was denied, and during Trump’s first term, the man spent time living in a church to avoid being deported. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement Under the Biden administration, ICE exercised its discretion and allowed the man to remain in the country on the condition that he check in annually. Share this articleShare Dahlberg called Elizabeth Ford, a local immigration lawyer and longtime ally, to ask for the date of the man’s next check-in with federal officials. January 22, Ford replied. Two days after the presidential inauguration. “Oh my gosh,” Dahlberg said. “By that point they’re probably already going to be aggressive.” “Probably,” Ford replied. “I don’t even want to guess. It’s terrible. I have no idea if it — if it’s already going to be moving.” Dahlberg makes a note to herself to call the priest of the church where the man is an active member to begin preparing. Story continues below advertisement The man asked not to be named due to his situation. His nephew, David Lopez, a 17-year-old senior in high school, is one of many relatives worried about what happens next. Advertisement Lopez was born in Georgia, the youngest of four siblings. Lopez’s father was deported and his mother died a few years later. His uncle took him in. Now he is scared that his four cousins will also be separated from their father, like Lopez was. “I know how it must feel to them and to a lot of families,” Lopez said. “No kid should really go without their parents.” “OUR JOB IS TO WELCOME THE STRANGER” For Dahlberg, the 2024 election campaign unfolded as if on a split screen. On the one hand, there was the stream of anti-immigrant vitriol from Trump and his allies. Trump called migrants entering the country “animals,” “stone cold killers,” and “bloodthirsty criminals.” He falsely accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, 200 miles to the southwest, of eating household pets. At the same time, HOLA’s work had never received more support from the broader community. When Dahlberg started the group, its headquarters consisted of a corner of her living room. In 2017, it became a registered nonprofit, largely in response to Trump’s immigration policies. Advertisement Now it had its own building where the main hall was sponsored by a multinational corporation. At Christmas, police officers helped hand out presents. In May, the group organized a Cinco de Mayo celebration on Painesville’s historic main square for the second year in a row. The city’s fire chief hoisted a giant pinata from the ladder of one of the department’s fire trucks. Thousands of people of all backgrounds mingled and drank margaritas as a mariachi band played. City officials declined to wade into what might lie ahead. Painesville is “a diverse community that values the safety, security and tranquility of all of its residents,” said city manager Doug Lewis in a statement released last month. “We will not speculate about the future policies on immigration and plan to monitor the situation very closely.” Dahlberg has forged a productive relationship with Dan Waterman, the Painesville police chief. In 2017, Waterman’s predecessor adopted a policy that laid out when the department would contact ICE. The move sparked a backlash from the community, amid fears that people speaking Spanish would be under suspicion of being in the country illegally. Since then, though, Waterman and Dahlberg say they’ve worked together to generate trust between the police department and Latino residents. Police don’t inform ICE of a suspect’s immigration status unless a person is charged with a violent crime, a drug offense or is found to be affiliated with a gang. Waterman said he and Dahlberg have “navigated some pretty tough waters” together, adding that recent years have been “very quiet” in terms of immigration enforcement in the area compared to the first Trump administration. One key source of support for Dahlberg’s efforts back then: area churches that offered sanctuary to people at risk of deportation, including St. Andrew Episcopal Church in nearby Mentor. St. Andrew housed an undocumented single mother and her two children inside a large Sunday school classroom. The mother had a court date for a traffic violation and ICE was picking up people outside the courthouse in Painesville. The family stayed at the church for two years. Lisa O’Rear, the church’s rector, said it can’t shoulder that kind of financial burden again. But she remains committed to helping people who could be deported, even though it won’t include housing them in her building. “The job of the church is the same regardless of the administration,” O’Rear said. “Our job is to welcome the stranger.” Ford, the immigration lawyer who works with Dahlberg, has been inundated by calls and texts from panicked clients since the election. “The stress is just terrible,” Ford said. “One can’t even imagine what’s going to happen.” Most of her clients are from Mexico, but in recent years she has also seen people arriving in Painesville from countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Nicaragua. During last month’s Monday evening meeting at HOLA’s community center, after the tables were cleared of plates of tacos and pitchers of hibiscus tea, Ford offered what advice she could. Parents should apply for passports for their U.S.-born children if they hadn’t already. People at risk of deportation should memorize the phone number of a relative or friend to call if they are detained. And they should gather their important documents in one place, something that saves valuable time in a crisis. Others at the meeting were making different kinds of preparations. Raquel Santos, 31, works down the street at a nonprofit health clinic. She estimates that two-thirds of the patients she sees there are undocumented. During the first Trump administration, Santos and several friends would try to help people who were afraid that ICE agents were waiting for them outside their home or workplace. Santos would walk up and ask the agents what they were doing there, then warn people if she thought it wasn’t safe to come out. Her husband told her she was crazy. Santos thought it was up to U.S. citizens like herself to prevent families from being separated. She’s ready to do it again. “I hope what we can learn from last time is to be brave,” Santos said. For some at HOLA, the fear is not for themselves, but for their relatives. Danna Chirinos, 19, is in the country legally while her mother is not. Chirinos listened to Dahlberg’s presentation about how people in the area were put into deportation proceedings after routine traffic stops during the first Trump administration. She thought about how her mom drives to work each day at a factory. Staying home isn’t an option. Chirinos is taking a year off before attending college. She and her mother are trying to stay positive and take what steps they can to get ready. “She’s scared also, she doesn’t want to be away from me,” Chirinos said. Dahlberg would do whatever she could to prevent families from being separated, including lobbying lawmakers and organizing rallies. Under the last Trump administration, such efforts were rebuffed or met with silence. Dahlberg can think of only one case out of dozens where a public outcry made a difference. At last month’s meeting, Dahlberg tried to end on a note of resolve. She looked out at the dozens of people seated at round tables — grandparents, parents, children. “If they start taking people, are you ready to help?” she asked. The answer was a unanimous yes. Share 1487 Comments NewsletterAs news breaks Exclusive Alerts Breaking news email alerts and investigative journalism you'll only find in The Post. Sign up Subscribe to comment and get the full experience. Choose your plan → Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Company About The Post Newsroom Policies & Standards Diversity & Inclusion Careers Media & Community Relations WP Creative Group Accessibility Statement Sections Trending Politics Elections Opinions National World Style Sports Business Climate Well+Being D.C., Md., & Va. 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