CHICAGO _ Each day when Consuelo Martinez drops her two children off at school, she is confronted with a contradiction: Her children are living a better life than she and her husband ever imagined when they came illegally to the U.S. 20 years ago. Yet she fears that all the advantages of their American life _ a house with a mortgage, two steady jobs, special needs services for her 13-year-old daughter with autism _ may be taken away under the new administration.
"It's a feeling of anguish knowing that Jan. 20 is coming and not knowing what will happen," Martinez, 46, of Chicago, said through tears. "I don't know what will happen with my family. What will happen with my little house?"
Martinez's fears are echoed by others like her: unauthorized immigrants who are part of mixed-status families, with other family members _ often children _ who are U.S. citizens or are residing in the country legally.
In Illinois, 87 percent of an estimated 511,000 unauthorized immigrants live in households with mixed-immigration status, according to a study from Rob Paral, a Chicago demographer.
Their futures are uncertain given the potential changes supported by Donald Trump _ including deporting millions of unauthorized immigrants who are felons, building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which offers some children who entered the U.S. illegally the opportunity to stay in the country, work and attend college.
Trump has contended that the reforms are needed to protect jobs for U.S. citizens and make the country safer.
He is joined by many Americans who favor stricter enforcement of immigration laws, including Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a longtime conservative think tank based in Washington.
"The average American knows that we've been a country of immigration for a long time _ it's made us a great country," Spakovsky said. "But they resent the idea that we should get rid of the line between legal and illegal immigration."
Spakovsky argues that the cost of benefits used by unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. _ from health care to education and law enforcement _ is greater than the amount they pay in taxes.
He added that he and other proponents of stricter enforcement might be willing to support a program approved by Congress that allows unauthorized immigrants to stay in the country as long as they are needed to raise their children who are U.S. citizens.
But people who have entered the country illegally should not use their children indefinitely to benefit from their illegal behavior, he said.
"You are hurting legal immigrants who come to this country, who go by the rules, who abide by the laws that we have set," he said.
Advocates from local immigrant rights groups said they have been flooded with anxious calls from people like Martinez, fearful of what may happen to their mixed-status families under a Trump administration. Here are three mothers' stories.
