I don’t usually cry in front of my students. But sitting in the darkened theater for an exclusive screening of the “Separated” documentary recently, there was no stopping my tears from the back row alongside USC Annenberg journalism students reliving the Trump administration’s child separation policy in 2017 and 2018. 

When we get invited to these types of high-profile events — this one held at Creative Artists Agency on the Avenue of the Stars— we usually take cheesy photos and I push the students to do as much networking as possible, collecting business cards for possible internship opportunities.

Instead, the students fanned out to get contact information for the many advocates and immigration attorneys in the room. They will need them as sources when the raids start in Los Angeles next month. 

Too intense of a sentence? Not possible thanks to the city’s sanctuary status? In all honesty, I’m not sure. 

I spend a lot of time teaching techniques for how to prepare, whether that is planning for coverage of a sports matchup, readying for new administrators in charge of the university or reporting from a swing state you know little about. 

Right now, the student newsroom I oversee is preparing for the Trump administration. 

This column aims to provide a window into the West. Out here, the idea of mass deportations goes far beyond the undocumented student population on a college campus.

Many of our students come from mixed immigration status families. They have mothers and aunties and grandparents without papers. Some are already in long lines awaiting hearings or seeking review of their petitions for asylum. Others have never come out of hiding, even as they’ve seen their loved ones soar to attending an elite private university. 

And the national media has started to pick up on something my students have been reporting on for weeks — how the international student population is being warned about what may be to come. 

In early December, USC’s Office of International Services issued an urgent message to any students without U.S. citizenship “given that a new presidential administration will take office on January 20, 2025.” That day, the email read, a newly sworn in President Donald Trump could issue executive orders that would affect travel to the U.S. and visa processing. “While there’s no certainty such orders will be issued, the safest way to avoid any challenges is to be physically present in the U.S.” before the inauguration, OIS wrote.

Nearly 27 percent of our students are international, with the majority of them from China and India. Those with student and exchange student program visas were told they should expect travel delays regardless of country of origin, and the school suggested students always carry around their proof of university enrollment.

Similar messages are surfacing across the country, scrambling winter travel plans and even post-graduation potential. 

The preparation for a post-Jan. 20 world differs across campus. At a recent standing-room only forum hosted by the Gould School of Law Immigration Clinic/Immigrant Legal Assistance Center, you could feel the fear in the room. 

What’s going to happen? Will there be raids?

Gould Professors Jean Lantz Reisz and Niels Frenzen went slide by slide to outline first a bit of the history, from the Eisenhower era’s horribly named “Operation Wetback” to Trump’s Muslim travel ban in 2017. Then they walked through every possible policy, from ending temporary protective status and the asylum process to rescinding DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. And yes, mass deportations and raids.

Those could start, for example, in the garment shops just a few miles from campus. (If any journalists can help train student journalists on best practices for covering a raid, let me know.)

The professors were practical and direct, providing guidance for undocumented students, anyone in visa limbo and international students alike.

Avoid international travel, they said. Want to head across the border for Spring Break? Forget it. Don’t think about buying marijuana, which is illegal for any noncitizen, even if it’s legal recreationally where you live. 

For students or family members who might be in between status, such as waiting for a green card, the advice was much the same: “Be cautious” and “Consult with a lawyer.”

Make an emergency plan. Don’t sign anything if you are detained, but know you have rights under the Constitution — “no matter who is president.”

The most simple piece of advice, which comes naturally to this generation: If something happens to you, your friends or your family, start recording. 

“Videotaping what happened is going to be powerful evidence,” said Reisz, a former public defender.

The room had just as many allies as students whose lives might change under a Trump presidency. No one needs to sit idly by, the professors stressed. 

The child separation policy stopped because of outcry and shock, Reisz said. 

That’s a major focus of the aforementioned “Separated,” which debuted on MSNBC earlier this month and is being screened across the country. 

It features Trump-era officials talking openly about the child separation policy that the then-president of the American Academy of Pediatrics dubbed “government sanctioned child abuse” in 2018.

“The only reason it was stopped was the public outrage,” said NBC’s Jacob Soboroff, an executive producer of the Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris’ documentary based on Soboroff’s 2020 book, “Separated: An un-American Tragedy.”

He views “Separated” as “a road map to not only what they might do, but how people might push back on this policy that I think sort of galvanized everybody across the world in opposition” to the policy’s “cruelty,” Soboroff recently told Jen Psaki on MSNBC. “It’s a story that we all should remember and carry forward here.”

For college students figuring out a way to cover all of this, the film can be a primer for what’s to come. And we’ll find out soon enough what that might be.

Christina Bellantoni is a former editor-in-chief of Roll Call and is now a professor of professional practice and the director of the USC Annenberg Media Center. Contact her at Christina.Bellantoni@usc.edu.