Super Tuesday: Donald Trump rides high in Texas - and the state's illegal residents live in fear and dismay

The Republican frontrunner has pledged to deport 11 million Mexican immigrants if he gains power. But what would that mean for those workers who make America tick – and their children?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie arriving for a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday (AP)

A teacher in an elementary school in East Austin, Texas, Liliana Batista was getting organised between classes one morning when a pupil approached. “Miss,” the seven-year-old girl said, “President Trump is going to kick all the Mexicans out and we won’t be able to come to school.”

What struck Ms Batista first was that the child imagined Mr Trump to be nominated and elected already before 11 states, including Texas, went to the polls. But that was just an indication of the depth of the chill Mr Trump has cast over the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants whom he has indeed pledged to deport – and then keep out with a “beautiful” wall. Ms Batista said she was heartbroken that someone so young should feel such fear because of a presidential election.

Fear is already a way of life for the undocumented. Most of Ms Batista’s pupils were born in the US and are legal, but she estimates that at least three quarters are growing up in undocumented homes. She just doesn’t ask the parents the question. “It’s like the Army. Don’t ask, don’t tell,” adds Ms Batista, who was herself was brought into America illegally by her parents 30 years ago when they fled Mexico to pick grapes in California.

No president has sent more illegal immigrants home than Barack Obama. The number deported – not just to Mexico but to places like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – reached 414,481 in 2014, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

There is a political explanation: only by showing himself tough would he be able to win serious immigration reform to lift millions out of the shadows. It didn’t work. On average, 17 people are deported from Austin alone every day.

The fear came to the home of Carmen Zuvieta on 19 February 2013. Her husband, Roman, initially picked up for a small road collision, had been fighting a deportation order for months, many of which were spent in a detention centre, or prison, near the border with Mexico. After being released, he was ordered back ostensibly for a hearing in his case. Instead, they told him the game was up. They were shipping him out.

Ms Zuvieta, who seems tough, can no longer hold back her tears as she describes the confusion felt by their son, who was only two years old. Every day for weeks, she would bring him home from kindergarten and his father’s pick-up truck would still be in the short driveway. She said: “‘Is Daddy there?’ he would shout and I would say: ‘No, he’s not there.’ He didn’t understand. ‘Why, Mummy, why?’”

Because her oldest son, who was born in the US, has now turned 21, there is a route for Ms Zuvieta to also become a citizen. Then she will she be able to travel to Mexico to see her husband, whose chances of returning are slim.

The Trump campaign opened with the smear that Mexicans are “rapists” and “criminals”. But the xenophobia has proved contagious. After first saying that sending “jack-booted” agents to corral illegal residents would be wrong, ahead of Super Tuesday, the Texas Senator Ted Cruz had embraced the policy and averred that while his rival might let “the good ones” back in if they undertake the process legally, he would not.

Indignation, anger, a sense of helplessness and sheer dismay are among the emotions expressed by those who would be targeted by such a mass deportation effort.

“It makes me mad, mad. Because Trump can’t imagine the bad nightmare we are living in,” says Ms Zuvieta. She and many others point out that without its undocumented – and therefore exploited – workforce, Austin, which has boomed in recent years with an influx of tech professionals from California, would come to a grinding halt.

“I have a question: who is going to work in the restaurants, who is going to make the food, who is going to work for the oil companies, who is going to work in the fields?” Ms Zuvieta demands. “And who is going to build those tall towers in downtown?” Asked to guess how many people in her neighbourhood are living illegally, she issued a long “whoooo”. “Almost everyone,” she says.

Margarita, who withholds her full name as an undocumented resident, is typical. A single mother – her ex-husband is in a Kansas lock-up pending deportation after he drove with a broken back light – she leaves at daybreak to clean homes, four a day, returning at night. She wants to know something else: how can the people she has loyally served for years be turning their backs on her? “I work for some wealthy people and it makes my heart shrink when I see the image of Mr Trump on the covers of all their magazines piled up on their living room tables,” she said. “When Donald Trump speaks they marvel at him.

“Some of these people I have worked for for 10 years, I have taken care of their kids, in some cases I have fed their babies. And then I think of that man. If he does this, what will they do about me? Will they protect me? I have this question in my mind and it’s frustrating and painful and it makes me very mad.”

A mother and child are stopped by Border Patrol agents having just illegally crossed the US-Mexico border into Texas, near Rio Grande City, last December (Getty) (Getty Images)

In cooler moments, some shrug and say that whatever Mr Trump and Mr Cruz say, they will never be a be able to implement their plans. “It’s another Trump reality show, in my opinion,” Ms Batista, who was granted amnesty and made legal in 1985, offers. There are networks of support in Austin, just as when she was on the picker camps in California. Children will be deployed to alert adults at the first sign of the immigration police. Everyone will hide.

Yet that in itself shows the calamity that a mass deportation effort being attempted would bring. At least three quarters of Ms Batista’s classroom would be emptied overnight because the undocumented parents of her wards associate school with government and would no longer trust it. “They would take the children into the undergrowth, that’s what would happen,” she said. And if there is fear now, imagine how it would be then.

States of play: Trump and Clinton

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are looking to consolidate their leads to be the presidential nominees of their parties in the 11-state Super Tuesday dash.

As voters stream to the polls across the north-east and the south, the stakes are at their highest yet. The Republicans are chasing a trove of 661 delegates while 865 Democrat delegates are up for grabs.

The proven popularity of Ms Clinton among African-Americans could squeeze her opponent, Bernie Sanders. For Mr Trump, a sweep of most of the 11 states, if not Texas, home state of Senator Ted Cruz, could put him within reach of becoming the party’s standard-bearer.

House speaker Paul Ryan has indirectly chastised Mr Trump for his refusal to condemn the KKK, saying any nominee must reject a group “that is built on bigotry”.

David Usborne