SULLIVAN COUNTY, NY — Local immigrants, minorities and members of the LGBT community are feeling anxiety in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, now the president-elect of the country. That’s according to Sandy Oxford, a long-time community activist and the current executive director of the Sullivan County NAACP. She said, “I think that there’s a feeling that some of this stuff that’s been unleashed with Trump’s victory is making people uncomfortable.”

Oxford said that although she is not seeing any real increase in incidents of bias or hate crimes, the apprehension in those communities is widespread. She said she has been encouraged by steps recently announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to protect all residents of the state. Following the election, he announced the creation of a new Hate Crimes Unit in the State Police, “to investigate and offer assistance to other law enforcement agencies investigating potential hate crimes.”

He also announced the “nation’s first emergency public/private legal defense fund to ensure all immigrants, regardless of status, have access to representation. The initiative will be administered by the state’s Office for New Americans and be run in partnership with major colleges and universities, as well as law firms, legal associations and advocacy organizations.”

Since the presidential election, the Sullivan NAACP has scheduled an informational meeting with the Lower Hudson Valley ACLU for January 19. The national ACLU reacted strongly to several of Trump’s campaign promises.

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the national ACLU, said in an open letter to Trump on November 9 that his organization would take the new administration to court if it tried to implement some of his campaign promises. Romero said, “These include your plan to amass a deportation force to remove 11 million undocumented immigrants; ban the entry of Muslims into our country and aggressively surveil them; punish women for accessing abortion; reauthorize waterboarding and other forms of torture; and change our nation’s libel laws and restrict freedom of expression.”

Asked if she thought there would be an increased focus on expelling undocumented aliens from the country, Oxford said she thought that would not be very easy to do in New York State. She said that her hope is that as part of a Trump backlash some safeguards to protect immigrants would be adopted at the state level, which now seem unlikely at the federal level.

She further said that it was not likely that local law enforcement officials would participate in a crackdown on undocumented workers, as they already have their hands full with the ongoing heroin and opioid crises and the addiction-related crimes that come with it.

She also noted that mass deportations in Sullivan County would be damaging to Sullivan County’s economy because there are a couple of significant businesses in the county that employ undocumented workers who contribute to the local economy and tax base.