Should they stay or should the go? The debate over president Trump's crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

• Author: Ross, Brooke
• Position: NATIONAL

On a recent evening in Phoenix, Arizona, protesters surrounded a van as it was pulling away from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.

The activists were demanding the release of the woman inside the van, who, they feared, was about to be sent out of the United States. Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, had been detained earlier that day after reporting for her annual meeting with immigration officials. She'd been required to attend the meetings since a 2008 arrest for using a fake Social Security number, which is a crime.

Rayos, a custodian, said she used the false Social Security number to get a job to support her two kids, who were both born in the U.S. (and therefore are citizens). She'd been allowed to stay in the U.S. since then, but now, despite the demonstrators' efforts, the van departed. Rayos's family didn't know where she'd been taken until she called the next morning--from Nogales, Mexico. She had been deported.

Rayos was one of the first immigrants to be removed from the country since President Donald Trump announced new policies on illegal immigration. To many of Trump's supporters, she was a lawbreaker who got what she deserved. On January 25, he issued an executive order that gives immigration officials greater authority to carry out deportations: Any undocumented immigrant who has committed any crime, even a minor offense such as a traffic violation, can now be deported.

This is a sharp contrast from former President Barack Obama's policy, which prioritized deporting dangerous criminals, such as murderers. That's why Rayos, who wasn't considered a threat, had been allowed to remain here. (Obama did, however, deport more undocumented immigrants--more than 3 million--than any previous administration.)

Because undocumented immigrants break the law just by living in the country illegally, experts say that Trump's order could easily be applied to all of the estimated 11 million of them who are currently in the United States.

"Every administration has to prioritize who they will go after," says Steve Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell University in New York. "This goes further than any other president. To make it simple: If someone is here illegally, they are targets for removal."

The majority of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. come from Mexico and Central America (see chart, p. 8.). About two-thirds of them have been in the U.S. for more than 10 years...