Maricé Morales says her small law firm has been so busy working immigration cases since news of President-elect Donald Trump (R) returning to the White House that she’s looking to hire extra help.

“Everybody is really afraid,” Morales said in a recent interview. “And they’re wondering if they have a pending petition, if that is enough to protect themselves under the law, in front of a judge.”

That means the former Montgomery County delegate, the sole attorney in the Law Office of Maricé Morales, who works with four paralegals, is looking for extra hands to deal with the increased workload, as immigrants across the state look to shore up their documentation status in anticipation of a hostile Trump-administration.

Trump repeatedly promised on the campaign trail that he will begin a mass deportation effort on his first day of his presidency. His nominations since the election of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Holman as a White House “border czar” have only increased the likelihood he will hold true that promise.

Immigration attorneys and immigrant advocates looking for every available avenue to keep as many Maryland immigrants as possible in the state. According to CASA, an immigrant advocacy organization, there are around 300,000 undocumented residents in Maryland. Other organizations, like the Migration Policy Institute, put the number at 225,000 in the state.

“They are very devastated, very scared,” said Gustavo Torres, Executive Director of CASA, of undocumented residents in Maryland. “They are concerned about what will happen with their family. But at the same time, they are ready to fight back, meaning they are ready to do whatever it takes to protect their rights.”

He said that CASA is working on outreach, including a “Know Your Rights” educational campaign to help migrants navigate the complicated immigration system and connect them with resources.

Torres and immigration lawyers in the state say a lot of protection for undocumented immigrants and those under certain immigration programs will come from the court system.

Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, senior director of government relations with American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that lawyers are working to get as many immigration cases filed as possible before Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025.

“Trump has promised a lot of things on immigration that can be very scary. A lot of our members are focused on trying to get as many filings in now as they can,” she said. “Many of our members know what happened in the first Trump administration, that litigation became such a key tool in their arsenal to get their clients cases approved or even to challenge those policies.

“The positive is that we all went through a Trump 1.0 administration, so we know what policies they enacted and will then likely bring back,” she said.

That said, Dalal-Dheini noted that Trump’s administration is likely to be more successful this term, as he will be building off of his previous experience from his last presidency that ended in 2020.

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According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a federal records database maintained by Syracuse University, there were 57,395 pending immigration cases in Maryland as of October, a fraction of the 3.7 million cases nationwide. According to Morales, those 57,000 people are more protected from deportation due to the fact that they have a  case open in court.

“As long as you’re within the court system, you have the guarantee that your rights will be protected,” Morales said.

Both Morales and Dalal-Dheini said that Maryland tends to be more immigrant-friendly than other states.

“We’re also in a much more diverse and open-minded and immigrant-friendly community,” Dalal-Dheini said. “Like our leadership in Maryland has always valued what immigrants bring to our country, regardless of whether they are documented or not.”

DACA and TPS in question

Still, immigration attorneys and advocates fear that a Trump presidency may also affect the roughly 7,000 residents who are in the state under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and the estimated 22,000 to 27,000 residents who have been given Temporary Protective Status (TPS).

DACA residents, sometimes called Dreamers, are undocumented immigrants who are protected from deportation because they were brought to the U.S. as children. Those with TPS have been granted temporary immigration status to stay in the U.S. because of a natural disaster or an ongoing conflict that makes it unsafe for them to return their home country.

Both categories are lawfully present, but advocates fear it is just a matter of time before the Trump administration tries to disrupt those programs.

“The Trump administration has used rhetoric that would call people who are here legally — on temporary protective status or DACA or parole, they’re allowed to be here and live here legally  — they now try to refer to those individuals as illegal,” Dalal-Dheini. “So, this sense of fear in the immigrant community … I think that’s the biggest problem, that people are going to be looking over their shoulder all the time.”

Thousands of immigrants in Maryland could be deported if Trump carries through on the mass deportation plans he campaigned on.

“People will be disappearing,” Morales said. “You’ll go to the grocery store and you won’t see workers, or go to your favorite restaurant and you won’t see people … kids in your kid’s classrooms who won’t be there anymore.”

Dalal-Dheini advises that immigrants and concerned residents get in contact with a lawyer to see what their options are.

“They should definitely consult with an attorney to see if there are things that they could do to further protect themselves,” she said.

“I think it will be really important to try to normalize your status, if you are able to change to some kind of more permanent status,” Dalal-Dheini said. “Immigrants should, knowing that there’s this deportation, that people should have emergency plans in place.”