Among the frightening campaign promises/threats issued by our new president was the prospect of mass deportations beginning with a form of concentration camp where the deportees would be assembled.

This would be one of the key actions that would presumably make America great again. Looks like a key person in this effort will be be Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s most sinister acolytes, a man from an immigrant family who is determined to make America white again.

Buried in some of the campaign rhetoric I heard a word that was new to me, “denaturalization.” Is that even a thing? I wondered. Yes, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Even if you are a naturalized citizen, the government can move to take away your citizenship.

I felt a shiver. My whole family was naturalized in 1943 after coming to this country from Hungary in 1939. I have my naturalization papers with a photo of a serious-looking 7-year-old with slightly unruly hair. My parents are dead, but could my sister and I be denaturalized? Surely a very long shot, but long shots now seem to be prevailing.

Very few people were denaturalized in previous years, only about 11 a year from 1990 to 2017. But according to the ACLU, under the previous Trump administration the Immigration and Customs Enforcement had planned to review the files of 700,000 U.S. citizens.

So what are the grounds for this procedure? Illegally procured naturalization is one that seems at least logical. But what about this one: “Became a member of or affiliated with a subversive group.” Who decides what is a subversive group? Shades of Joe McCarthy. Would they count my membership in a late 1960s women’s liberation support group?

Not long after we arrived in this country, my family were designated as “enemy aliens” because our homeland of Hungary had now allied with Nazi Germany. We could not travel outside the country and could be deported for any infraction. This could explain my father’s lifelong anxiety when approached by any law enforcement officer. Extreme deference was his response when he was caught rolling through a stop sign. He was the least subversive of men and only wanted to live in peace and relative comfort.

I do not believe that my sister or I will be subject to this sort of action. But a scene develops in my imagination of a family barricaded inside their house while the feds bang on the doors. They have come to deport the grandfather.

As in other authoritarian regimes I have read about, the threat of extreme government action is enough to cast a pall, to make people anxious, to censor their own actions, to feel that someone unfriendly is looking over their shoulder. For marginalized people, for our nonbinary grandkid, for our Ecuadorian ex-daughter-in-law, for the DACA people brought to this country as children, this is surely a fraught time. Not great for America.

Marietta Pritchard lives in Amherst and can be reached at mppritchard@comcast.net.