I worry about venturing outside – the experience of undocumented life in Trump’s America

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  It took great courage for her to talk to us. Her story and experience is a stark glimpse into the life of an undocumented person in America today.

She asked us to call her ‘Luz’. She requested that we not publish her real name or show her face. She also asked us to alter the pitch of her voice too.

That is the level of fear right now in this country among certain communities.

“I never felt this way before,” she told me as we chatted in her small apartment in a suburb of Washington DC. “… the fear I carry with me all the time.”

“I’m afraid of leaving the house. I’m afraid of going outside. I’m afraid of being detained. I’m afraid of, you know, just for them to look at me and see me as a Latino woman. Right?

“And being taken. I’m afraid of that.”

Her experience is replicated across a section of the Latino community around America.

“I’ve seen neighbours being taken. I’ve seen people getting arrested; detained. And it’s hurtful.”

Two weeks ago, we saw where this fear comes from. My team and I filmed as immigration officials, ICE agents as they are known, stopped a landscaping business truck in the Mount Pleasant district of the American capital.

Three of the men in the vehicle were removed, handcuffed, and put into the back of unmarked cars by agents with no warrants and wearing no uniforms except tactical vests with ‘POLICE’ written on them.