Legal experts expect big changes for immigrants, the U.S. border starting Jan. 20

President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday, and legal and community groups are bracing for changes for immigrants in the U.S. and along the border.

Immigration and legal experts say they expect several changes on Day 1, including a ramping up of 287-G agreements that allow federal agents to collaborate with local police.

Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, said changes are also expected at the border.

“We know that the Trump administration is considering a series of actions and reinstatements of various policies, including Title 42, MPP and others that will be used to restrict or end access to asylum,” she said.

MPP, or Migrant Protection Protocols, forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their immigration hearing. Title 42 was enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic and blocked people from seeking asylum.

Gupta said they’re also expecting executive orders to end Biden administration programs allowing some immigrants to live and work in the U.S. temporarily — including one for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

"There are currently 530,000 benefitting from the CHNV program, with no option to renew," she said. "The question will be, what happens to those currently here under that parole program?"

Gupta said it's not yet known whether the Trump administration will simply let that temporary protection expire or proactively end the program outright.

Community and border aid groups in Arizona are also expecting changes.

At a church just outside Tucson on Friday morning, aid groups discussed what could come next during an annual borderlands event. Tucson aid worker Dora Rodriguez said rhetoric around deportations and other crackdowns has immigrant families that she works with afraid to go to the food bank or seek other help.

“This is not families with no documents, this is families with a process, with an immigration process, but the words are so hateful, that they’re afraid they’re going to be [a] target,” she said.

But, Rodriguez said, she also worries about how rhetoric is impacting other people. Last month, she says she received a postcard to her home address that had a phone number and a web address for ICE and the words "report illegal aliens" in big block letters.

"Before I was afraid, but then I got very angry, and disgusted, because it brought me so much memories of my country when I fled the country, because that's exactly what they were doing, targeting innocent people through other people in the community," she said.

Years ago, Rodriguez crossed the Arizona border herself years ago fleeing civil war in her home country of El Salvador.

She said aid efforts have been focused at the border in Nogales, where more migrants are being sent under a Biden administration protocol that blocks asylum for those apprehended by the Border Patrol. Despite new fears of crackdowns on aid workers, she says she plans to continue her work along the border.