President Donald Trump’s executive orders leave immigrants in Central Virginia fearful for themselves and their families as they wait to see what happens next in Washington DC. Trump banned entries from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan on 27 Jan. of this year.

The executive orders have effected a few of Caroline Biggs close friends on a personal level.

“People assume that people coming from other countries are less intelligent or have less capabilities or they will be more of a drain on the system and that’s just a preconceived idea that has to be conquered merely from getting to know those people,” Biggs said.

A local friend of Biggs is separated from his wife who was scheduled to come to America early this year but due to the orders is now delayed.

A few of Biggs other friends have not seen their parents in several years. The parents wanted to come and visit but now they are delayed as well.

“I think how it has affected things on the local level has been mostly psychological,” said Edward Summers, immigration lawyer and owner of The Law Office of Edward Summers law firm. “Lots and lots of people are scared about getting in trouble with the police. They’re scared about communication with the police even in situations where they may be the victim. There’s a lot of fear in the community.”

Potential changes to the executive orders, such as immigrants taken into custody following police action, could occur as enforcement priorities, according to Summers. Immigrant parents are trying to find solutions for what would happen to their US citizen children in cases where they might be picked up on the way to work.

Green Cards holders have also been affected by Trump’s priority ban, Summers says. Green Card holders began to wonder what will happen if they need to go out of the country for a work conference or to see family and whether they would be able to come back into the US. The action has caused some immigrants to look into applying for citizenship while it has pushed others to begin looking for job opportunities outside of the US.

Under the previous priorities, prosecutors would dismiss cases of immigrants with potentially clean criminal records who were picked up by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) according to Summers. This has been suspended under the new priorities.

“The recent ICE actions were one of these coordinated things that ICE does periodically,” Summers said. “They’ve done it a half dozen times since 2011 where they go looking for people all at the same time in various parts of the country.”

Daniel Griswold is the co-director of the Program on the American Economy and Globalization at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Griswold says the effects the ban has effected immigrants negatively.

“The number of people effected isn’t large compared to the total flows of immigration and entries,” Griswold said. “But it’s still significant in terms of how the process works and the effects it’s had on individual people which have been very negative."

Griswold says the original order was so sweeping that even a legal, permanent resident of the US who has lived here for 20 years or a person with dual citizenship with Iran and the US could both be stopped from entering. America benefits from tourism and international students, Griswold says. The US will never know how many people were thinking of coming but now will go elsewhere.

“The problem I have with a blanket ban is that it is a blunt instrument when we should be using a scalpel for identifying particular threats, people and organizations, and preventing them from entering,” Griswold said. “There was no evidence that anybody was in the process of coming to the United States from those countries and plotting to do us harm. Those seven countries do pose a problem because it’s more difficult to vet people from those countries. I don’t think that’s an argument for a blanket prohibition on anybody from those countries coming to the United States. I think it’s an argument for a heightened level of scrutiny.”

According to Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, the immigration rules under Trump are reversed from the rules under the Obama administration. Under Obama illegal immigrants in the US were protected except in the special circumstances of primarily an act of a violent criminal. Under Trump everyone here illegally is subject to deportation, young people protected under Obama’s administration’s program the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

“In effect what the executive order does is say that the immigration law is back in business,” Camarota said. "That could have a significant impact over time.”

Summers does not know what the future of immigration law will look like from here onward since the executive orders have been put into place.

“At this point I would say that to some extent immigration lawyers are dealing with the immediate impact of these executive orders and they’re effect on communities,” Summers said. “People are filing law suits against the orders {and} there organizing in communities. On the other hand I think everybody is just holding their breath and trying not to panic but waiting to see where things are going.”