For immigration attorney Lizz Cannon, it's hard to imagine what part of the immigration system won't be touched by the incoming Trump administration.
"Anything and everything is possible at this juncture, and that's my concern," said Cannon.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to conduct mass deportations of immigrants without legal status and restrict legal pathways as well.
In the weeks leading up to his inauguration, the incoming administration has talked of scaling back existing programs such as Temporary Protected Status and ending DACA, which, altogether, allows more than a million people to stay in the U.S.
About 300,000 people protected by those programs live in Florida.
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Cannon says she's also watching for renewed attempts at sweeping travel bans, which could directly affect her work. In Trump's first term, he temporarily suspended immigration from majority Muslim countries.
"I had clients from those countries, and at that time, we had no idea when and if their family members would be able to immigrate into the United States," said Cannon.
Tough rhetoric could mean tighter restrictions
While the Muslim ban was rescinded under the Biden administration, Cannon said she fears he could bring it back along with similar actions.
"I can imagine with the rhetoric coming from the incoming administration right now, that we might see a much worse bar towards immigrants coming into the United States legally," she said.
Cannon's work in particular, is known as consular processing, which involves getting people abroad into the U.S. — that could be a spouse of a U.S. citizen applying for a green card, who had to travel back to their home country in order to apply because they entered the U.S. without proper documentation.
U.S. immigration laws penalize those who enter illegally, in some cases triggering a three- or 10-year ban from reentering the U.S.
READ MORE: Tampa-area immigrants brace for Trump's promise of mass deportations
Cannon's job is to help clients apply for waivers that lets them forgo the ban and reunite with family members, if they meet the requirements.
But she fears that under a second Trump term, her clients will experience pushback or even be denied entry entirely.
This time, Cannon says the president-elect will have more judges on his side from federal court appointments he made during his first term.
"The mechanisms are in place," she said. "What the administration could not do last time, it can do now."
Concerns for victims of abuse
Alison Foley-Rothrock, another Tampa area immigration attorney, works with victims of crime and abuse who apply for legal status through a U Visa or U nonimmigrant status.
The visa allows victims of certain crimes to live and work in the U.S., protecting them from deportation.
In some cases, her clients are only able to stay in the U.S. through an abusive spouse — the U visa would allow for the victim to stay in the U.S. and eventually obtain a Green Card without their spouse.
"It can be an abusive adult child, it can be an abusive parent, it can be an abusive spouse, and the idea being to give the individual the power over their own immigration status so that the abuser can't continue to manipulate them that particular way," said Foley-Rothrock.
But she's worried that with Trump's hardline stance on immigration, her clients will be deported before getting a chance to obtain their U-visas.
That's happened before under Trump's first term, she said.
That's because U.S. Citizen's and Immigration Services (USCIS) handles visa applications, while the immigration courts are under the Department of Justice.
Under a "friendlier administration" the court could wait for USCIS to make its decision before deporting an individual.
"Under the previous Trump administration, we definitely saw less of that," said Foley-Rothrock. "Under a less friendly administration, the prosecutors are likely to say, 'we don't agree judge, we want to move forward with removal.' "
Foley-Rothrock says in her over 20 years as an immigration lawyer, she's seen how "politics at the top" has influenced the outcome of her clients' immigration proceedings.
"The ebbs and flows of dealing with opposing counsel at immigration court very much relate to the politics at the highest level," Foley-Rothrock said, "even though these are supposed to be independent and non-political positions."
