Former President Donald Trump is expected to be the next president of the U.S. — which comes with drastic implications for immigration.

One claim Trump touted on the campaign trail was the idea of mass deportation. With his election to the Oval Office, the idea could become a reality leaving immigration nonprofits and resources around the country nervous and fearful — including those in Iowa.

The Catherine McAuley Center, based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a nonprofit organization focused on aiding immigrants. They offer adult education, immigrant and refugee, and women’s services in the Corridor — mainly Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Marion, and Hiawatha.

Within their education services, the organization reports 99 percent of the participants are immigrants or refugees.

Immigrant is a blanket term used around the U.S. and in U.S. rhetoric. An immigrant is defined as somebody who comes to another country and decides to stay and is planning on staying. As for refugees, it is someone who has been forced to flee their country due to persecution, conflict, violence, or other circumstances that make it unsafe for them to return home.

Asylum-seekers are similar to refugees but ask for status through the country they are trying to enter. They are ineligible for public assistance in the U.S.

The immigrant and refugee services at the center include:

• Resettlement directly from refugee camps through the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
• Career and Employment Services
• Refugee Social Services

Interim Executive Director Anne Dugger said the effects of Tuesday’s election were met with some anxiety around their office, but their focus remains on their clients.

“Keep your head down and do the work,” she said. “We don’t want the anxiety to bleed over into our interactions with our clients, with our volunteers, with the public. We’re interested in, ‘How do we continue to offer that hope and opportunity.’”

Dugger said the anxiety stems from the uncertainty regarding immigration moving forward.

“There’s a lot of anxiety around the uncertainty of what might happen, what could happen, what won’t happen, and just the unpredictability of it,” she said. “I will say, with any administration, we know that there’s some uncertainty. This one particularly we can guess, but we don’t know.”

The center is slated to bring in 250 refugees to the area within this coming year, she said, but things are — again — uncertain.

“Things are very uncertain at the moment, they’re bringing people in as much as they can before the inauguration, basically,” Dugger said.

Path of Hope, another nonprofit in Coralville, was founded to help immigrants, refugees, and their families through the resettlement process

Executive Director Mike Mbanza said the tone of the office was quiet among both workers and clients on Nov. 6.

“Everybody was quiet,” he said. “It’s something that affected a lot of people. It happened overnight, and no one is talking much about it, because they know what it was like back when he was the president and kind of figuring out what to do next.”

Path of Hope serves clients nationwide, according to Mbanza, and their services include:

• Helping immigrants get legal documents in the country like work authorizations and U.S. citizenship
• Intensive case management services for newcomers
• Social adjustment services
• Education services

Mbanze said he knows immigrants and refugees in the area are fearful.

“There’s no guarantee that they will be facing the challenges that they are fearing right now,” he said. “We do know that that’s what happened in the past, but they should remain calm and not panic.”

Mbanza said their office is working to create informative videos for the community for potential avenues to explore before the inauguration.

The Catherine McAuley Center, during Trump’s first term, received and resettled less and less refugees each year.

“The last year, I think somebody just said the other day, we only resettled 38 people, or 38 cases in Cedar Rapids,” Dugger said.

However, Dugger also highlighted that this year the center requested fewer refugees.

“We asked for less people because we knew the whole area had more resettlement agencies, so we kind of knew we were going to kind of calm down a little bit on bringing people, just because housing has been really, really difficult, and so has employment right now,” she said. “We’re not trying to overburden the capacity of our community.”

One other agency Dugger discussed was the International Refugee Committee. The international agency opened a new office in Iowa City at the beginning of the year.

The agency sent out a press release following the election calling for Trump to continue the U.S.’  traditions of humanitarian leadership and care.

Dugger said, no matter who you voted for we are all one community.

“We see people laughing and talking and crying in here with their kids,” she said. “I mean, it’s the same thing that we all have in our lives. So I think just that message of we still have a community that we’re taking part in, whether or not you agree on politics, we can agree on our community. I really believe that.”