This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

None of the 22 staff members at the Mexican consulate in Salt Lake City gets much sleep these days. Not since President Trump got into office.

This year has seen a 700 percent jump in demand from Utah's almost 300,000 Mexican community for documents so parents can register their children as citizens of the USA's southern neighbor.

"We are now working every waking moment, opening at 7 a.m. and often staying in the office after 8 p.m.," says recently departed Consul General Javier Chagoya. While the consulate has always encouraged Mexican citizens to register children born in the United States as dual citizens, "people only take action when there is a desperate need."

That need is driven by the U.S. government's renewed focus under President Trump of picking up undocumented immigrants, arrests nationwide having jumped 66 percent (in 2017).

Whereas prior to Trump the push was primarily towards immigrants with criminal history, the net has now expanded to include anyone here without papers.

"If you're in this country illegally and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable," Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting Director Thomas Homan recently told the House Appropriations Committee's Homeland Security Subcommittee. "You should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried."

What this has meant for the close to 18 million children in this country who can claim at least one immigrant parent is that for the last eight months, the world has become a far more fearful place.

In Utah undocumented families are taking note and preparing for the worse by going to the consulate. (The people I interviewed for this column all requested anonymity) One family that's keeping the consulate's staff busy is that of Maria and her husband, who, in Maria's case, emigrated to the U.S. 12 years ago. She met her second husband in Utah shortly after and they've built a small, successful cleaning business in North Salt Lake.

Maria has three children, ages 6, 10 and 18. The oldest was born in Mexico and is a "Dreamer," here legally under DACA, at least until the president decides such a status is no longer acceptable. Maria wants her 18-year-old daughter to go to community college next year.

"I encourage all my children to work hard at school," she says. "I'm also getting them their Mexican citizenship so they are dual nationals."

It's taken a year to get all the paperwork together, but that was more than worth it, she says. At least in Mexico, my children will have all the rights that all Mexicans have. They can go to school, get medical assistance and find a job."

For some families, the only alternative is to turn their back on the dreams that brought them to this country and return to Mexico, even if that means leaving their adult children behind. Augustine says he's tired of being a second-class citizen who lives in fear. A foreman in a local production plant where he has worked for 20 years, Augustine's U.S citizen daughter is a straight A honors college student who dreams of being a doctor. Moving back to Mexico was the hardest decision he and his wife have had to make.

"At least there the money we make will be all ours and we can send it to our daughter to help pay for medical school," he said.

They have also sought dual citizenship for their adult child, in case she someday wants to work or study in Mexico.

Some Utahans, watching their friends go through such herculean struggles to keep their families together, earn living wages and not be bound by fear, feel they must step forward to help. Carol is a schoolteacher and U.S. citizen. Her closest friends, Jose and Natalia, have recently given her power of attorney over their home, cars, bank accounts and three children. After working hard for so long to build a home in Utah, her friends, she says, "are afraid and are beginning to prepare for a possible return to their homeland which they haven't seen for over 20 years. If they are deported it is my job to sell all their property and take their children and money to them in Mexico."

As Consul General Chagoya prepares to leave Salt Lake for a new posting, he knows he has handed over a consulate that is weighted down by a level of need that it has never seen before.

"People are queuing up from early in the morning because they are scared, if not they wouldn't be here," he says. "But it is the children who are most afraid, they don't want to lose their parents and friends nor the only home they have ever known."

Patricia Quijano Dark, Salt Lake City, is an editor and translator who has worked in the United States, Great Britain and Argentina. She was born in New York and is a graduate of Columbia University.