President Trump believes building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico will stop the flow of illegal immigrants into American cities.
Pat Jones runs the Immigration Outreach Service Center. She works with immigrants and refugees from dozens of countries. She's worried about their future.
"They're all hearing this very negative rhetoric that demonizes and makes it seem like people who come here and who're coming here is because they want to take advantage of the country," Jones said.
During a visit to the Department of Homeland Security Wednesday, President Trump said there's a crisis in the southern border and signed an executive order pledging a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"I'm not sure that particular executive order today which talks about the borders and a wall and deportations that this is anything new. We have to wait and see exactly what he's going to do," said Jones.
Another executive order includes an overhaul of the immigration system, upping border patrol forces, and doing away with sanctuary cities.
"It just raises fear, it raises anxiety and we see it worsening everyday. We get phone calls from people who are very afraid. Who are afraid to go out of their homes, afraid to go to work, Jones said.
According to Jones, many immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, are just trying to survive.
"They come here to live their lives in peace with their families in a secure home, secure situation," she said.
Something one asylum seeker whom we can't identify says can only happen here in America.
"America represents hope, peace, I mean, the place where you can become anything, the place where you can be what you want to be," he said.
He said keeping people from the states forces them to return to deplorable and many times dangerous conditions.
"It is scary right now, people working with fear not knowing what the next day will be, not knowing, if they're going to walk and be rounded up, thrown into jail or put in a plane or shipped out of the country," he said.
An immigrant, a word synonymous with the birth and advanced of the nation, has this plea for president Trump.
"Please reconsider your stance and allow people to live happily with their kids, their loved ones, freedom to be whatever they want to be," he said.
President Trump says his plans are in the best interest of the nation. Jones says immigrants, both documented and undocumented contributed close to $40 billion to the state of Maryland in 2014.
Thursday, the president is expected to take more action on immigration this time with a focus on the vetting process and refugee programs.
