As a Spokane Father Faces Deportation, His Son Wonders If He Will Be Next

window as he was about to drive to work. A police officer stood outside with his gun drawn. After confirming his identity, Salazar-Campaña was ordered to step out of his car to answer the officer’s questions. The police officer told him his car was reported as stolen. (The Spokane Police Department was unable to locate any incident reports listing Salazar-Campaña as a suspect, according to documents provided to The Stranger.) An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer walked from behind Salazar-Campaña’s car and asked for his legal status. The 39-year-old father of four refused to answer.

That was in April. Salazar-Campaña has been incarcerated at Northwest Detention Center since then. His eldest son, Luís, now worries he could end up there, too.

Luís, 18, is also undocumented, but he is a recipient of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects immigrants who arrived in the United States as minors from deportation and grants them work permits. President Donald Trump announced his plans to end DACA earlier this month.

“I’ve never been to Mexico, but talking to my grandparents and stuff over the phone…it makes me never want to go there,” he said. “It gives me more fear with this DACA thing.”

Trump’s promised immigration crackdown could affect at least 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S. On February 21, the president rescindedObama-era immigration enforcement priorities and empowered law enforcement officials to arrest anyone suspected of violating immigration law. Although Trump said he would target undocumented people with criminal records for deportation, arrests of those without records more than doubled compared with arrests under Obama.

Now, Luís and his father are just two of the 250,000 undocumented Washingtonians whose futures are in jeopardy. If the Trump administration gets its way, two generations of the Salazar-Campaña family could be displaced.

(Read on at The Stranger)