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A new wave of migrants is putting Whitewater, Wisconsin, in the political spotlight.The population boom comes as polls show immigration is a top issue for voters in battleground states near and far from the southern border. City officials estimate that, since early 2022, approximately 800 to 1,000 people from Nicaragua and Venezuela have moved to Whitewater, a city of 15,000. The Community Space, which offers free food, clothing and furniture to people in need, has helped many of those new arrivals settle in.”We saw people coming in who didn’t have jackets, who needed blankets, who had all sorts of needs. So that was our first clue that there was something going on,” said Kristine Zaballos, co-founder of The Community Space. The influx of immigrants is expanding a long-standing Hispanic community in Whitewater.Ana Leon left Mexico 26 years ago and has called Whitewater home ever since. She takes English language lessons at The Community Space. Her teacher helped us translate.”My husband and I, we decided to immigrate to the United States to help our daughter find a better life,” Leon said. But as the presidential election gets closer, Leon fears she could be separated from her children. She says they are U.S. citizens but she is not. “I am very worried,” Leon said. “We are always together. I think, as a mother, if we get separated, if those parents are separated from their children, that would be a disaster.”Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly pointed to the migrant wave in Whitewater and other Midwestern cities while making his immigration pitch on the campaign trail. Trump has pledged to remove millions of migrants in what he has branded as the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. “I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion,” Trump said at a rally in Prairie du Chien in September. Vice President Kamala Harris has also promised tough enforcement at the border. “When I am president, we will quickly remove those who arrive here unlawfully, prosecute the cartels, and give border patrol the support they so desperately need,” Harris said at an event in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.According to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, there were 1,503,090 deportations during Trump’s term in office. She said the Biden-Harris administration is on pace to match that total but with a different strategy that’s focused on immediately returning new arrivals at the border rather than interior enforcement. “The Biden administration has put forward priorities that mean that people who have been here for decades, who have family ties, who might have U.S. citizen children, for example, are not the ones who are being prioritized for deportation,” Bush-Joseph said. Trump is proposing new strategies, like deploying the military, to ramp up removals of “illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers.” His campaign didn’t directly address whether he would seek to deport undocumented parents with U.S. citizen children. The outcome of the presidential election could also impact programs, such as humanitarian parole, that have allowed migrants to enter the country through legal ports of entry. “Former President Trump has said that he would end the lawful pathways put in place by the Biden administration that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being allowed to come into the United States,” Bush-Joseph said. In Whitewater, the legal status of the latest wave of migrants is mixed, according to city leaders.”Regardless of the individual situations, these people need resources like anyone else, and their arrival has put great strain on our existing resources,” Whitewater Police Chief Daniel Meyer and City Manager John Weidl wrote in a joint letter to the White House last December. The letter also detailed various challenges, from a surge in unlicensed drivers to over-occupied apartments to “serious crimes linked to immigrants in some manner, including the death of an infant child, multiple sexual assaults and a kidnapping.”Whitewater resident Nora Neumeisther, who is planning to support Trump for president, is concerned about the growing migrant population. “It is not good here as it is all over our country,” Neumeisther said. “We are not safe.”But Zaballos said at The Community Space, migrants are giving back. “What were starting to see is some of the families that have been coming to us for a year are starting to bring things back and share things back with the community,” Zaballos said. “Some of our volunteers are part of this newest wave of migration. So truly, in that sense, (they’re) integrating themselves in the community.”