Fear and Dreaming in the USA

Summary

Summary of NPR’s Up First Episode: "Fear and Dreaming in the USA"

Release Date: April 6, 2025
Host: Aisha Rascoe and Jasmine Garsd
Title: Fear and Dreaming in the USA

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Introduction

In this poignant episode of NPR's Up First, hosted by Aisha Rascoe alongside immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd, listeners are taken on an emotional journey through the lives of immigrants navigating the heightened fears and shifting dreams in the United States amidst stringent immigration policies. The episode, titled "Fear and Dreaming in the USA," delves deep into personal stories, community responses, and the broader socio-political landscape affecting immigrant communities nationwide.

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Florida: The Seed of Fear

Setting the Scene:
Aisha recounts her visit to a trailer park in Fort Myers, Florida, highlighting the palpable fear among Latino immigrant agricultural workers following the state's aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration.

Personal Story – Mari:
A central figure in this narrative is Mari, an older church mother from Mexico, who, despite her legal status, becomes a beacon of support for undocumented immigrants. Mari's transformation from attending a domestic violence support group to organizing rides for immigrants underscores the community's resilience.

• Notable Quote:
  Mari: "What now? Everyone is gone on Sunday mornings out here. They are going to turn us into a ghost town." (01:04)

Broader Implications:
Jasmine Garsd contextualizes these local fears within the national landscape, noting that Florida's actions were early indicators of the widespread fear instilled by President Trump's immigration policies. The episode highlights the ripple effects in other parts of Florida, such as Plant City, where labor shortages in agriculture have prompted workers to flee.

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Nebraska: A Contrast of Fear and Hope

Economic Context:
Nebraska, a state grappling with one of the nation's most severe labor shortages and a top beef producer, serves as a contrasting backdrop. Here, despite voting overwhelmingly for Trump, local business leaders have long aimed to make Nebraska welcoming for immigrants.

Personal Story – Tim Thompson:
Tim Thompson, a rancher from North Platte, expresses confidence in the administration's selective deportation policies, emphasizing support for workers who are integral to Nebraska's economy.

• Notable Quote:
  Tim Thompson: "I think things are going to calm down." (10:08)

Community Resilience:
Despite fears, individuals like Berta Quintero, the owner of Renita Little Queen bar in Fremont, Nebraska, embody hope. Berta's establishment becomes a sanctuary where the fear of deportation is palpable, yet dreams for the future remain undeterred.

• Notable Quote:
  Berta Quintero: "Why wasn't I born here? Or why didn't I go to school here to be able to speak English like white people?" (16:14)

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Illinois: The Escalation of Fear

Chicago's Vulnerability:
Moving to Illinois, Aisha describes Chicago as one of the first cities targeted for immigration raids under the Trump administration. The atmosphere is one of disorientation and fear, with basic services becoming inaccessible as immigrants retreat into their homes.

Personal Story – Rosa:
At a local food bank, Aisha meets Rosa, a young Honduran woman grappling with late pregnancy amid the fear of deportation. Rosa's reluctance to seek medical care and her contemplation of "self-deportation" exemplify the deep-seated anxiety pervading immigrant communities.

• Notable Quote:
  Rosa: "It's in God's hands now." (22:26)

Self-Deportation Phenomenon:
The episode explores the unsettling trend of "self-deportation," where undocumented immigrants consider leaving the U.S. voluntarily to protect their families. This sentiment is further illustrated through conversations with members of Siembra NC, an immigrant workers' rights organization in Durham, North Carolina.

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Durham, North Carolina: Organizing Amidst Fear

Activism and Resistance:
In Durham, Aisha engages with activists like Jose and Elle, who despite the overarching climate of fear, continue to advocate for immigrant rights and educational opportunities for children of immigrants.

Personal Story – S.:
Elle shares her family's intimate struggle with anxiety and insomnia due to the constant threat of deportation. Her proactive approach to securing her children's future by obtaining U.S. passports underscores a resilient pursuit of the "American Dream."

• Notable Quote:
  Elle (S.): "I want us to be doctors and teachers, to be great. You know, when I go to a hospital, and I see a doctor who's Latino, I feel this joy. I think we're going to make it to the top." (28:00)

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Themes Explored

1. Fear and Its Paralyzing Effects:
   The episode vividly portrays how fear stemming from aggressive immigration policies leads to social and economic paralysis within communities, hindering access to essential services like healthcare and education.

2. Resilience and Hope:
   Amidst fear, stories of resilience shine through. Individuals like Mari and Elle demonstrate unwavering commitment to their communities and personal aspirations, striving to create better futures for their children despite systemic challenges.

3. The Immigrant Dream for Future Generations:
   A recurring motif is the focus on children’s futures. Immigrants often prioritize the opportunities and safety of their offspring, embodying a forward-looking vision even when their present circumstances are fraught with uncertainty.

4. Community Organizing and Activism:
   Organizations like Siembra NC represent the critical role of community activism in providing support, advocating for rights, and fostering a sense of solidarity among immigrants facing adversity.

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Conclusion

"Fear and Dreaming in the USA" offers a compelling exploration of the immigrant experience under heightened scrutiny and restrictive policies. Through intimate narratives and on-the-ground reporting, Aisha Rascoe and Jasmine Garsd shed light on the complexities of fear, resilience, and hope within immigrant communities. The episode underscores the profound human impact of immigration policies and serves as a poignant reminder of the enduring spirit of those striving for a better life in the United States.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Mari: "What now? Everyone is gone on Sunday mornings out here. They are going to turn us into a ghost town." (01:04)
• Berta Quintero: "Why wasn't I born here? Or why didn't I go to school here to be able to speak English like white people?" (16:14)
• Tim Thompson: "I think things are going to calm down." (10:08)
• Elle (S.): "I want us to be doctors and teachers, to be great. You know, when I go to a hospital, and I see a doctor who's Latino, I feel this joy. I think we're going to make it to the top." (28:00)

---

This summary encapsulates the heart-wrenching and hopeful narratives presented in the "Fear and Dreaming in the USA" episode of NPR’s Up First, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and aspirations within immigrant communities across the United States.

Transcript

[Aisha Roscoe]

Aisha.

[Jasmine Garsd]

I'm Aisha Rascoe and this is the Sunday STORY from Up First. Every Sunday we do something special. We go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. Not Too long ago, NPR's immigration correspondent Jasmine Gartz was at the Laundromat in her predominantly Latino neighborhood in New York City. And this ad came on the wall mounted TV that's always playing there. It featured Kristi Noem, the US Secretary of Homeland Security.

[Kristi Noem]

President Trump has a clear message for those that are in our country illegally, leave now. If you don't, we will find you and we will deport you. You will never return.

[Jasmine Garsd]

This ad, it caught Jasmine's attention because she spent a lot of time over the last year talking to immigrants with and without legal status quo who are scrambling to adjust to this moment. People who have seen this coming for a while now, there's one woman in particular who really stuck with her.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Okay. So about a year ago, I was in Florida in Fort Myers, and I'm in this trailer park where mostly Latino immigrant agricultural workers live. And I'm hanging out with this woman. She's this older church lady. Her name is Mari. And she says this thing to me about a popular Sunday market in the city. And these days I think a lot about what she said. So what now? She asked me, everyone is gone on Sunday mornings out here. There used to be cars and now there's nothing. They call it a ghost town. They're going to turn us into a ghost town. So when I was in Florida in summer of last year, the state had enacted some of the nation's toughest laws targeting people without legal status. And suddenly this fear had taken hold. And people told me they were scared. They were scared to go to the hospital, scared to go to school. And Mari, the reason we are using her first name only is that this totally unassuming church mom, she started working kind of on the fringes of the law. She was helping out some of these immigrants who didn't have legal status.

[Jasmine Garsd]

What Jasmine was seeing in Florida, it was kind of a foreshadowing of what was to happen around the country. Since President Donald Trump took office, he's taken unprecedented measures to crack down on illegal immigration. And in many places, these measures have instilled a lot of fear. When we come back, a conversation with NPR's Jasmine Garzt. Stay with us.

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[Jasmine Garsd]

We're back with NPR's immigration reporter, Jasmine Garsd. Jasmine, welcome.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Hi, Aisha.

[Jasmine Garsd]

So let's head to Fort Myers, Florida. This was a city you visited in the spring of 2024. Why were you down there?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah, so I was working on a story about the fear in the immigrant communities because of these new Florida laws and policies. And I kept hearing about something called raiteros. Like, everywhere I went there were posters or little business cards offering raites. And raite is a word that comes from ride, like car ride. Basically. When the new rules targeting immigrants without legal status went into effect in Florida, people started to get scared, especially scared of driving. And, and so this kind of underground transportation system took off. And I was kind of expecting these drivers to be like these tough trucker type guys, you know, like straight out of central casting with the, the cutoff denim and the trucker hat. But instead I met a lot of church ladies. Now, if you can imagine, like, like a helmet, hair of hairspray and pink lip gloss and blouses with rose patterns like, like your classic Thea, your, your auntie. And one of them was this woman, Mari. She's the one I spoke to in the trailer park and she'd been driving people in part to make a little extra money. You know, she offered kind of like a cheap Uber service, but also because she was really, really worried about the whole situation. I mean, like, these are her friends and her neighbors who are very scared.

[Jasmine Garsd]

So, so tell me about her.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah, so Mari is a resident of the U.S. she's here legally with papers. She's originally from Mexico. And for a long time she was married to an American Guy, they're now separated, and she says that he was abusive. So she started attending this domestic violence support group. But after Florida started seriously cracking down on immigrants without papers, Mari noticed that a lot of women stopped coming to the domestic violence support group. So she started offering rides, rides to some of the women who are here without legal status. She started taking people to the supermarket to get food, and then she started taking kids to school, and it became like this little mini business. And she's saying, I've never seen anything like it. Imagine being so scared of going to get food for your kids. It broke my soul. And then Mari told me that pretty soon people started heading further north to places that were friendlier to immigrants. And so Mari kind of graduated to the interstate. She does these long overnight trips transporting entire families trying to get out of Florida, and all of these people picking up and leaving. That's what Mari was referring to when she told me, they're going to turn this into a ghost town. Is.

[Jasmine Garsd]

Is Fort Myers unique, or is this something that's happening throughout Florida?

[Aisha Roscoe]

I found that it was happening throughout Florida. I found a widespread fear, particularly in agricultural areas. I spent a lot of time in central Florida in like, a called Plant City, where a lot of workers had just picked up and left north. And also in areas that have been hard hit by hurricanes, where there is a labor force like roofers and builders who just again, picked up and left.

[Jasmine Garsd]

Have you gone to other states and seen similar situations where people are fleeing or staying out of sight?

[Aisha Roscoe]

You know, I spent a lot of time in Springfield, Ohio, where the rising xenophobia and lies, just outright lies about Haitian immigrants. That was a preview of where we're at now. And that's gotten so much coverage. So I want to tell you a different story today about my trip to Nebraska in late December of last year. Now, Nebraska has a huge labor shortage. I mean, look, we know there's a labor shortage across the U.S. but Nebraska has one of the worst in the country, and they're also one of the top beef producers in the nation. And for these reasons, Nebraska business leaders and the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce have for years had this goal of becoming the most welcoming place in the country for immigrants. Nonetheless, the state overwhelmingly voted for Trump. So when I was in Nebraska, I talked to people who voted for Trump and who told me they believed in no uncertain terms that he would only go after criminals, that he would not go after the everyday immigrant workforce. And one of those people who told me that was a rancher I met. His name is Tim Thompson of North Platte, he drove me around his property. It was dusk. It's a small property. There were a lot of deer. And as we sat there in his pickup truck watching the deer, I asked him about the workers and the beef plants, and rancher Tim told me he really appreciates them and that they're very hard working people. To which I asked, do you worry that they're going to get deported? Like the mass deportation?

[Tim Thompson]

I, you know, I, no, I don't worry about that. I think they will facilitate those who are here to work, either with the green cards or the other exemptions that already exist in the immigration laws, so that the folks that are here to work probably are going to be allowed to continue to work. I think, I mean, what they've said so far is the folks they're going after are the criminals with criminal histories. And I'm not sure anybody has a real objection to that. I think things are going to calm down.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Do you think he, Trump, I mean, I'm assuming you voted for him.

[Tim Thompson]

I did.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Do you think he is, like, what we need, like he's a solution?

[Tim Thompson]

I think he can be if he stopped doing stupid tweets, which I think he's done pretty well on. And before he says anything stupid, take a deep breath and maybe think, think it through.

[Aisha Roscoe]

What do you like about him?

[Tim Thompson]

Well, I think he's a changemaker, he's a businessman, and I like that.

[Jasmine Garsd]

And we should just remind everybody you were talking to all of these people before Trump had even taken office, you know, at this point. But I imagine that you probably heard something different from many of the immigrants in Nebraska, or did you?

[Aisha Roscoe]

So, you know, it's interesting and it's worth noting that across the country, many immigrants who have become US citizens appear to have shifted towards President Trump in 2024. I mean, Trump may have in fact won the immigrant vote, or at least split it 50, 50. But in Nebraska, you, you know, by many estimates, there's about 40,000 immigrants without legal status. And it is common knowledge that many of them work in the meatpacking plants. And a lot of people I spoke to told me they were really afraid. I spent a lot of my time in Fremont, Nebraska. You know, let me paint a picture for you. Nebraska has so many of these meatpacking towns. You know, picture this. It's, it's the Great Plains, right? So it's just really flat. And the light, I've never seen light like that before. Just eerie and stunning. And in that flatness, you see these factory towns With. With their billowing smokestacks and. And you can see them on the horizon. Sometimes you can smell them too long before you get there. And so I got to Fremont to this meat packing city, and it was empty. And I was kind of freaking out about that because, like, you know, I'm a reporter, I'm in town to talk to people, and everyone is locked in their homes. So I ended up going to this bar downtown. It's called Renita Little Queen. Now, if you can imagine, like, this secret tropical bubble in the middle of this frozen industrial tundra, that's Renita. There were tropical flowers hanging everywhere and, like, this really loud festive music. But the place was totally empty. It was like a deserted tropical island in the tundra. I ended up speaking to the owner, Berta Quintero, and she told me she built this place to seem like home, like Antigua, Guatemala. Now Berta has legal status. And Aisha, I've gotta say, she brought me some of the best pupusas I have ever eaten in my life.

[Jasmine Garsd]

The best ever. And it's in Nebraska.

[Aisha Roscoe]

I'm prepared to go on record saying that those were the best pupusas I've ever had on this side of the Americas. And my theory, hear me out, is that nostalgia was the secret ingredient. Like, these pupusas could only have been created in the nostalgia of an industrial town in the Great Plains in winter. So, anyway, I sat down with Berta Quintero and we talked about fear. Fear and dreams. That's the title, I guess, of this chapter, Fear and Dreaming. In Nebraska.

[Berta Quintero]

Right now, people have a lot of fear. They prefer to be at home rather than going out.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Do you feel that now, in this moment.

[Berta Quintero]

People don't want to go out to eat anymore? Not even to, like, the young people who used to come out to dance. Even if it was just to come for a drink, they don't come out anymore because they are afraid that they will get caught. They prefer to just stay at home.

[Aisha Roscoe]

So as the night went on, we spoke about her own story. And Berta told me that after she left Guatemala, she took a job at a meatpacking plant.

[Berta Quintero]

Well, I always pray to God that I don't have to and go back to work at the factory. The factories are difficult. The entire shift is standing in the same place every day. I came back home with my shoulders in so much pain from lifting those big pieces of pork.

[Aisha Roscoe]

She was rubbing her shoulders as she told me this. And then Berta pointed at her teenage daughter who was waiting tables wearing this big Harvard sweatshirt. A school that Berta says her daughter dreams of attending.

[Berta Quintero]

God willing, she's going to be a lawyer.

[Aisha Roscoe]

And then she asked me this question. She says, you know what I always think to myself?

[Berta Quintero]

Oh, my God, why wasn't I born here? Or why didn't I go to school here to be able to speak English like white people? Because, I mean, if I knew how to speak English, I would have already eaten this country up. If I had good English. Right. Perhaps my daughter will have the opportunity to achieve her dream, her American dream, because she was born here. I tell her, you are already flying. You are going to get what you want. She's going to be what we could not be.

[Jasmine Garsd]

The dream of your child being able to have those opportunities that you didn't have. I didn't get to do these things, but you, my child, my offspring, maybe not. Maybe it's my grandchildren, but you gonna do it. That is very. That is very American as well.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah. And I think that there's, like, this idea that the immigrant dream is for the immigrant themselves, but I've never met an immigrant that has the dream for themselves. I think there's, like, every time I've spoken to an immigrant, there's, like, this acknowledgment that life is going to continue to be very difficult, maybe less difficult than it was back home, but that the reason you're doing this is actually for your kids. And, you know, there's been so many policy changes that it's become hard to see the forest for the trees. Like, where are we heading? What I really started to see clearly when I was in Nebraska was how this constant state of fear would make the kind of social mobility that Berta dreams about for her daughter really hard.

[Jasmine Garsd]

So you were already starting to see this extreme fear, this kind of almost a paralysis in Nebraska in the lead up to Trump's inauguration. I know you were in Illinois soon after Trump actually took office. What were you seeing and hearing there?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah. So the Chicago area was one of the first places the Trump administration targeted for immigration raids. So I wanted to be there. It was late January of this year. And, you know, I've often described covering immigration right now. Like, do you remember that early scene? It's a famous scene in Alice in Wonderland where she's falling down the rabbit hole and she can't hold on to anything, and. And she doesn't know where she's heading.

[Jasmine Garsd]

Yeah. Yes, I do remember that.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Like, that's how it feels to be covering immigration right now. And that feeling that started when I went to the city of Waukegan, which is right by Chicago. It all just felt like it was moving nightmarishly fast. But there are details, like snapshots that really stuck with me, like the thick coat of ice covering Lake Michigan, the feeling that life had suddenly moved underground. I mean, people weren't accessing basic services like food pantries or medical services. And people were actually starting to hide in their own houses.

[Jasmine Garsd]

When we come back, people waiting in line at a food bank express their own feelings of disorientation and fear. Stay with us.

[Kristi Noem]

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[Jasmine Garsd]

We're back with NPR's Jasmine Gars talking about her recent reporting on immigration. So, Jasmine, when you were in Waukegan, Illinois, in January, you went to a food bank hosted by a church in a Latino community. What was the mood like there?

[Aisha Roscoe]

It was like a mix of somber and frenzy. There's this one woman I remember, especially a young Honduran woman. Her name is Rosa. You know what I remember? She was wearing an enormous, slinky winter hat. It was like the color of coffee. And I think I remember her hat because there was something very youthful and quirky about it, like you might expect to see it on a hip young mom in Brooklyn throwing back to the 90s, except that we were at a food bank and it was Freezing. And she was late in her pregnancy, and she was so scared. And she asked that we withhold her last name because she was really scared of deportation. See?

[Jasmine Garsd]

Solo pasamo en la casa no salimo.

[Aisha Roscoe]

She said she was just spending her time at home. She. She just wouldn't go outside out of fear of being deported. And she told me she had not been to the doctor. She hadn't been going to the doctor for fear of crackdowns in hospitals, and that if things continued this way, she wasn't sure she'd go back to the doctor. And I asked, well, how are you going to give birth? And she said, it's in God's hands now. Yeah, it was. It was like. Like watching a health crisis really unfold in that moment. And. And it was at this same food bank in the midst of this frenzy, that this woman passed me by and. And said, I'm getting my kids their US Passports. I want us to get out of here.

[Jasmine Garsd]

As in go back to her home country?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yes. Right. That was the first time someone said that to me. In fact, the pastor who was in charge of the food bank told me that she's been getting a lot of these inquiries. How do I get my kids a passport in case I want to leave so that, you know, maybe someday they can come back? They are U.S. citizens. So, you know, I don't know. I don't want to overstate self deportation, but the truth is, I've been covering immigration for some years now, and I never heard people talk about self deportation so much in private, behind closed doors.

[Jasmine Garsd]

Well, can you take us to one of those conversations that you've witnessed?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah. So early this year, I went to the city of Durham, North Carolina. Now, North Carolina is estimated to have over 300,000 people living in the state without legal status. I was there to spend time with this nonprofit organization called Siembra nc. It's an immigrant workers rights organization. And one of the members, Jose, invited me over for dinner. So Jose and his wife are from El Salvador, and they requested that we refer to them by first name only because they don't have papers. They have two small kids. Both are U.S. citizens. And I do want to issue a correction on my earlier reporting. Jose and his wife invited me to eat chicken pupusas, homemade chicken pupusas, and those were actually the best pupusas I've ever had on this side of the border. I'm issuing a correction.

[Jasmine Garsd]

See, now, now you're. You're catering to everybody here. Yes, but I'll allow it. Durham is My hometown.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Oh, really?

[Jasmine Garsd]

I'll allow it.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Oh, wow. Okay. I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah. So I miss doing a retraction. So we sat there having dinner and we started having this really intimate conversation. And Jose's wife, who, she asked that we use her first initial only, S. And she said, you know, when the election happened, she's saying, you know, during the day I'd be so tired, I didn't want to do anything. I just wanted to lie down and sleep, and sleep and wake up when it was all over like a dream. But then at night, she couldn't sleep. She had really bad insomnia, and so did her husband. So they would talk all night about leaving the U.S. maybe we need to get out of here. And in one of those insomniac nights, she called her father up. He lives in Las Vegas. He has legal immigration status. And S says she told her dad, I'm driving out there, I'm driving to Vegas, because if we get deported, you can get the kids quick. And S's dad talked her out of it. He said, listen, it's a 30 plus hour drive. You guys get hurt. And he advised her to take the kids to get their U.S. passport. And then if you get taken or if you decide to leave, to self deport, at least they have passports. And that's exactly what they did.

[Jasmine Garsd]

But for now, are they staying put?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yes, for now they're staying put. But they told me it is an ongoing conversation.

[Jasmine Garsd]

You mentioned Jose, her husband, is involved in activism. How does that fit into this climate of fear?

[Aisha Roscoe]

There is a tremendous climate of fear, but I've also found a lot of resistance in communities of people organizing and taking a stand. And when you invited me to talk about that big picture, you know, that big picture, I've been thinking about social mobility, about whose kids get to move forward, whose kids get to go to school without fear, whose kids get prenatal care. And so on this really sunny spring day, this group Siembra, they were out canvassing in this trailer park. And my dinner host, Jose was there. And at this canvassing event, I met one of the activists. Her name is Elle. We're dropping her last name because, you know, she's. She's concerned about repercussions for her activism. She's an immigrant from Mexico, and in her free time, she volunteers to talk to us born children of immigrants about going to college. So I'm like following her around as she's knocking on people's doors. It's the most important thing she said. That they go to school, they have to go to school. And she said, yeah, times are very scary. But you know what's really scary? Just last Friday, she says, I was knocking on doors just like this. I was trying to get kids to fill out college financial aid applications. And these kids told me they didn't want to because what if asking for financial aid makes their parents, who are undocumented, a target? Que noso lamentesia de o impiar? I don't want us to just be people who clean and wash dishes. I want us to move forward. I want us to be doctors and teachers, to be great. You know, when I go to a hospital, she says, and I see a doctor and he's a Latino, I feel this joy. I think we're going to make it to the top.

[Kristi Noem]

Algundia muy pronto.

[Aisha Roscoe]

See, it's like a mosquito. One day very soon, it is what I most desire.

[Jasmine Garsd]

Jasmine, thank you so much for joining us today and for all of your reporting.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Thanks for having me.

[Jasmine Garsd]

Correspondent Jasmine Gartz is with NPR's immigration team. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Andrew Mambo and was edited by Jenny Schmidt and Liana Simstrom. The mix engineer for this episode was Kwesi Lee. Fact checking for this episode was done by Katie Doggart. The Sunday Story team includes Justine Yan. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. We always love hearing from you, so feel free to reach out to us at the Sunday Story P npr.org I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up first is back in your feed tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

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