Local News

In new era of Trump, Mexico, US groups offer aid to migrants

Emilio Rabasa, consul general of Mexico in Boston, talked with a farm worker from Mexico while on a tour of a dairy barn in Bridport, Vt. Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The Boston Globe

By The Boston Globe

December 21, 2016

1 minute to read

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — The general consul from Mexico pulled on his hat, gloves, and boots and tromped to a dairy farm this month in the 18-degree chill, stepping over cow dung and grain to reach his compatriots.

“It’s freezing,” the Boston consul, Emilio Rabasa said, surveying the barns and hay silos that increasingly rely on the labor of immigrants.

The consul makes the trek to Vermont annually, but this year it comes with added urgency: President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly criticized Mexican immigrants, has sent a bolt of fear through farm workers in the state.

Rabasa is part of a loose confederation of diplomats, church pastors, nonprofits, and city governments scrambling to reassure immigrants before Trump takes office next month. In Massachusetts, churches are offering immigrants refuge from deportation, lawyers are teaching immigrants their legal rights, and consulates from Mexico and other places in Latin America are pooling resources to aid all their citizens.

Nationwide, cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York are vowing to help ensure that immigrants facing deportation have legal aid, while Mexico created a 24-hour hot line for immigrants in the United States who need help.