Perhaps unwittingly, Irish Americans who voted for Donald Trump have placed a large number of Irish immigrants in jeopardy of immediate deportation.

The president-elect Trump, during his post-election 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, reaffirmed some of his hardline campaign rhetoric about moving firmly to deport millions of immigrants, a move that apparently would open the door for US Immigration Services to summarily deport immigrants who came to the US on short-stay permits but have overstayed them by months and years.

A great many Irish men and women fall into this category, and under the strictures of the permit, those who signed them agreed to waive any recourse to judicial process. Immigration officers can arrest them, jail them, and summarily put them on a plane to their country of origin.

John P. Foley, Esq., one of Boston’s pre-eminent immigration law attorneys, told the BIR in a recent interview that the short-stay visas contain “fine print that means you [i.e., immigrants on these permits] have no right to traditional processing and can be removed non-administratively from the US.” He adds that “the immigration courts are already overflowing, and going after people on short-stay permits offer the government an easy way to remove a lot of immigrants.”

In other words, he says, “The Irish and other immigrants who have overstayed are low-hanging fruit for the government,” adding that “I’ve been doing this [immigration law] for years now, but I’ve never seen so much fear in the immigrant community.”

Foley relates that since Jan. 12, 2009, Irish citizens coming to the United States through the Visa Waiver Program have been required to file an application through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA. In effect, this is their travel permit. ESTA is not a US visa and applies only to foreigners visiting the United States by plane or ship. Any travelers entering by these modes must provide a “valid machine-readable passport or ePassport,” according to ESTA guidelines. If someone from Ireland tries to take a US-bound flight without an approved ESTA Travel Authorization or a valid US Visitor Visa, he or she might not be allowed to board. If individuals overstay their allotted time—for the Irish it was good for two years—they are considered to be permanently out of the system and subject to immediate deportation.

As is the case with so many illegal immigrants from Mexico, Central and Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the globe, overstaying Irish immigrants have worked and raised families over the years in the US. Having launched his successful presidential campaign with a harsh anti-immigrant stance in which he vowed to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep out “rapists, drug-dealers,” and all other illegal Hispanic immigrants, Trump also pledged to deport all foreigners who have stayed too long on their temporary visas.

Trump voters include millions of Irish Americans who cheered him on with his strident stance against Hispanics, but many of these same people appear taken aback at the prospect that men, women, and children from the “old sod” face the nearing prospect of summary deportation by a Trump administration.

Foley points out that throughout the presidential campaign, Trump asserted that he will revoke every one of President Barack Obama’s executive orders, which include Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. To the fury of the Republican Congress, DACA has allowed some three million children brought to the US by undocumented parents to come out of the shadows with legal status to remain in America without fear of deportation.

“If Trump keeps his promise to overturn DACA,” Foley says, “he’s talking about kicking out kids who all have clean records, are good students, and are positive in every way to America.” He adds, “A lot of these kids are Irish.”

Obama is deeply concerned that Trump will dispense with DACA. With regard to the Irish-American immigrant community, the simple fact is those who have overstayed their visas in recent years face the same fate as undocumented Hispanics and other groups.

In a post-election press conference Obama urged Trump and his pending administration “to think long and hard before they are endangering the status of what for all practical purposes are American kids.”

According to the Irish Times, Anne Anderson, Ireland’s Ambassador to the US, commented on the dilemma a week or so after Trump’s victory: “The immigration issue is, of course, so live. We know about the large numbers of undocumented Irish that have been living in the shadows. Many of them now are living in fear, and that is a huge issue.”

Several Trump surrogates claim that his focus will be on illegal immigrants who have criminal backgrounds. Those words ring hollow, however, to critics who counter that Trump has not backed away from his promise to kick out immigrants who have overstayed their visas. On the campaign trail, he branded them as people who had played the system by grabbing every entitlement—welfare, food stamps, etc.—they could find. Of course, aware that some 40 million Americans claim Irish descent, he singled out Hispanics, conveniently sidestepping any overt references to Irish illegals.

Foley raises another issue: Trump’s pledge that directly targets Irish students in Boston and throughout the US. During the campaign, he vowed to end the J-1 Student Work Program. Given that, young Irish men and women studying and working here face the reality that they might be forced to return home even though they have done nothing wrong.