The most immediate risk from next week's change of US president does not concern the inhabitants of the countries that Donald Trump has considered invading. This is aimed at the millions of people in the United States who will soon enter a four-year scare: undocumented migrants, whom Trump has vowed to deport en masse.
These include young people who arrived as children and whose lifelong memories exist only within the United States
These people prepare in countless ways. They download the file digital panic button to alert loved ones if federal agents arrive. They research their rights and write down lawyers' phone numbers.
Families are encouraged to plan for the worst: to have food, shelter and childcare ready in case adults disappear one day.
Their situation will be in the spotlight on Wednesday, when U.S. senators will have the opportunity to question Trump's choice to lead border and deportation agencies during her confirmation hearing for homeland security secretary.
“It's a paralyzing fear,” said Saúl Rascón Salazar, who arrived in the country 18 years ago when he was five. His Mexican family arrived on a temporary visa and never left. Now a college graduate, he is working to raise money for a private school in California.
“I say this as someone who hates fear-mongering and who is completely against it. (But) I don't think everything looks good. In every way – emotionally, financially, rhetorically. I don't think so. to see things getting better.”
These young people didn't expect to come here again.
Four years ago they were optimistic. Joe Biden, who has just been elected president of the United States, has endorsed a program enabling them to stay in the countryand there was talk of new immigration law in the air.
Then those hopes evaporated. Congress there were no votes in the name of the law, trump was re-elected, and migrants now face a two-fold threat – from the next president and courts.
Reality hits on election night
Rascón said he didn't feel hopeful until election night. He never believed Trump would win. But a new reality dawned on him as he watched the November 5 election results with friends in Arizona.
“It was quite a gloomy, dark atmosphere in the room,” he said, recalling how he and his friends began to think about things that were going to change.
Rascón has a degree in international relations from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, so, he said, his first thoughts went abroad, to Ukraine and the Middle East, and then to domestic issues such as abortion, minority rights and gun laws.
He said it wasn't until after that that he started thinking about immigration, and he says it took him a few days for his personal reality to really sink in.
For example, Rascón said he urges members of families like his, if they use social media as he does, to avoid posting specific places to meet and stay.
They should use the money for lawyers, moving fees and, in the worst-case scenario, long-term child care providers, he said.
Trump insists he doesn't want to deport young people like Rascón.
He is one of over half a million people signed up for a program created by Barack Obama in 2012, suspended by Trump during his first term as president and revived by Biden, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). This indefinitely delays their deportation if they arrived as young people, went to school or work and had a clean criminal record.
US President-elect Donald Trump is promising the “largest deportation program” in American history when he takes office, but what could that mean for Canada? The National's Adrienne Arsenault asks CBC's Paul Hunter and Catherine Cullen to break down the plan and the potential impacts.
Trump tries to reassure young 'dreamers'
In a recent interview, Trump suggested he would be the last to deport these young people, calling them by the popular nickname “Dreamers”; the future president even said he wanted Congress to protect them with permanent legislation.
“We have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people who were brought here at a very young age,” Trump told NBC in December.
“They don't even speak the language of their country. And yes, we will do something with the Dreamers.”
But there is ample reason for skepticism. “These are just empty words,” Rascón said.
After all, Trump tried to cancel the DACA program during his first term. Even by his own words he would do it deport entire families where the children were born in the USA and are full American citizens. In addition, there is a legal challenge to DACA through the courts.
What's more, Trump's allies vow to do just that punish and prosecute people who interfere with deportations.
One young woman, a college student in Texas, interviewed by CBC News, illustrates a point made by Trump: that this country, the United States, is the only country he remembers. (CBC agreed to keep the woman's name secret because she fears deportation for speaking publicly about her experiences.)
She described being brought by car from El Salvador when she was two years old. Several years ago, she was allowed to travel and re-enter the United States to visit her sick grandfather in her home country, calling it a culture shock.
US President-elect Donald Trump introduced several Cabinet members over the weekend, including vocal immigration advocates Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, who will be tasked with fulfilling Trump's promise to carry out the largest deportation in American history.
The woman recalled a conversation with a street vendor from El Salvador who called her “chele,” meaning white. Others started calling her Mexican. Although she speaks Spanish well, her language changes due to the facial expressions of the many Mexican Americans around her.
As for the possibility of now being treated like a criminal, he calls it cruel.
“I didn't decide to come to the United States,” she said. “How is that fair?”
Same family, different status
One of the big unknowns is the fate of mixed-status households like Rascon's: his parents and older siblings are undocumented, he is covered by the DACA program, and his two younger siblings are U.S.-born citizens.
Trump said entire such families could be deported. His coming border czar later he explained that he could not deport actual US citizens – but if their parents are expelled, they can decide whether to take their children with them.
It's not always clear where they will go. Take the case of Marina Mahmud.
She was born in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, her father is Syrian and her mother is Ukrainian. Her family's common language at home is Russian.
Mahmoud was a small child when her parents took a trip to the United States 20 years ago and never returned home. She has now graduated and works in Michigan as a caregiver.
In 2016, she was pulled from class the day after Trump's election to meet with her parents and lawyer and discuss next steps, such as whether to flee the country or go into hiding.
Since then, her situation has changed radically: Mahmoud has just obtained permanent residence thanks to a relative, which theoretically means that she is spared. She was even allowed to travel abroad and visited Canada three times.
But on election night, she felt sad as she thought about the hundreds of thousands of other Dreamers who lacked the safety she provided.
Driving home from work that evening, she heard about Trump's early days on the radio and tried not to cry while driving. She came home, opened multiple screens and it broke.
“I cried all night,” Mahmud said. “I couldn't stop.”
He compares it to survivor's guilt.
Mahmud promised her friends in the DACA movement that she would continue to support them and protest with them.
She described sending a text message to one of her friends after the election: “I will be your human shield if needed,” Mahmoud said, recalling the message.
However, she admits that her situation is not certain. Trump and his team do I was thinking about striptease the residence of certain people and questioning the Constitution of the United States principles of citizenship.
Being a human shield during a protest is also not without risk. Permanent residents still face deportation if convicted certain crimes.
For undocumented migrants and their allies, four years of fear begin when Trump takes the oath of office in Washington, D.C. on Monday at 12 p.m. ET.