Descending beneath the streets of New York City into the labyrinthine subway system, you might have seen them: women with babies strapped to their backs, carrying boxes of brightly wrapped candy and chocolate bars, gently coaxing commuters to look up from their phones long enough to make a sale. Rarely would a couple of crumpled bank notes change hands. Snuggled in swatches of fabric, their babies would sometimes doze, heads lolling to one side. Other times, tiny eyes would peep over their mother’s shoulder. Seldom did I see these babies cry. Perhaps a life constantly on the move is all they have known.
When we arrived in the US more than a year ago, I’d see these women and their babies just about every time I caught the subway. But now, as we pack up to move back to Australia, they’ve all but disappeared. Fear, it seems, of arrest and deportation has pushed them off the subways of America’s largest city and out of sight.
Political Climate and Cultural Adjustments
We moved to New York from Newcastle for my husband’s work in August 2024, just in time for the pointy end of an acrimonious election campaign. Then US presidential candidate Donald Trump was making headlines with controversial remarks, including false accusations against immigrants and promises of a massive deportation program.
Watching the election results come in, it became clear that Trump’s unique mix of no-holds-barred rhetoric, caustic criticism of his opponent, and pledge to restore American “greatness” had again proven a winning formula. The next morning, when my daughter woke to the news of Trump’s victory, the disappointment hit hard. Then nine years old, she couldn’t articulate the difference between Republicans and Democrats, but she’d had her heart set on seeing a woman in the Oval Office.
As large parts of the country celebrated the election result and others fretted over what a second Trump presidency might bring, we settled into daily life, learning how to navigate the subway, embarking on the quest for decent coffee, and getting the kids settled into their new school.
Adapting to New York Life
On their first day at school, another mom greeted me with a hug, exclaiming, “Welcome to the center of the universe!” before laughingly warning me to expect rubbish-strewn streets and the smell of weed on the short walk to school in Greenwich Village. I’d soon learn she was right.
Having come from Australian schools, with their leafy playgrounds and sports fields, it took some time for the kids to adjust to New York City life. But they got used to climbing the five flights of stairs to their classrooms every morning and learned to recite the pledge of allegiance to the US flag alongside their new classmates. At lunchtime, the teachers would block off the narrow street in front of the school, and the kids would play American football on the asphalt, their soft ball bouncing off the parked cars.
In the afternoons, the paths and piers along the Hudson River became our backyard. Among the hordes of runners decked out in the latest activewear, we’d battle to carve out space to throw a baseball or for a game of soccer. I lost count of how many balls we lost over the edge into the murky waters below.
Immigration Policies and Public Reaction
The American people did not deliver the glass-ceiling breakthrough moment my daughter had hoped for at last year’s election, but since then we’ve seen the man voters returned to the White House unleash a relentless stream of history-making moments. The Department of Homeland Security has said that the Trump administration is on track to “shatter historic records and deport nearly 600,000 illegal aliens by the end of President Donald Trump’s first year since returning to office.” His immigration crackdown has sparked not only fear but also protests.
“The Trump administration is on track to shatter historic records and deport nearly 600,000 illegal aliens by the end of President Donald Trump’s first year since returning to office.”
On a warm June night earlier this year, we were clearing dinner dishes in our Greenwich Village apartment when wailing sirens drowned out the live coverage of the Los Angeles protests playing on our television screen. My 12-year-old son dashed to the window – watching the NYPD race down Seventh Avenue had become a daily pastime for him – but this night, the police vehicles kept coming.
The TV coverage soon switched to protesters outside the immigration court in downtown Manhattan, where there had been reports of officers forcibly separating family members as they made arrests. Then came scenes of protesters converging on Washington Square Park, a five-minute walk down our street. My son alternated between watching the television coverage and returning to the window, where he reported that NYPD officers were stationed at the subway entrance across the street. As he stayed up long past his bedtime, he wondered whether the protests might mean a day off school. I wondered whether Trump would send National Guard troops to New York streets, as he had done in Los Angeles. But by the next morning, the protesters were gone.
Freedom of Expression Under Scrutiny
Today, speaking out can bring consequences in the “land of the free,” where the idea that it’s acceptable to try to silence people who express different views is spreading. Academics, teachers, a nurse, and a restaurant worker were among scores of Americans who reported being fired or suspended for comments they made about conservative activist Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated, according to The New York Times.
Foreigners have also paid the price for expressing their views. A Turkish student had her visa revoked and was pulled off the street by masked agents and detained for weeks after co-writing an opinion piece in a university newspaper; travelers have been denied entry to the US for comments they’ve made on social media.
When I wrote a column about the Trump administration’s war on words, an editor asked whether it could cause me problems the next time I tried to enter the US. He wasn’t the only one wondering. “Can Trump get you for writing that?” my daughter asked, reading the story over my shoulder.
A journalist writing about censorship hardly seems revolutionary, but I have to admit to a few nerves before flying back to the US after a trip to Australia in August this year. Before heading to Sydney airport, I didn’t just buy Tim Tams and Allen’s Red Frogs for the kids. I also bought them AirTags to wear on cords around their necks. If we were detained and separated when we landed in the US, I wanted to be able to track them. I scribbled my husband’s phone number on a piece of paper and stuffed it in my pocket. Thankfully, the immigration officer simply waved us through, leaving me feeling like I’d just been paranoid.
Historical Narratives and Future Implications
It’s not only the present-day narrative that Trump is trying to control. He’s also trying to put his own stamp on the past. Critics have accused him of trying to “whitewash” the country’s record on race relations by ordering a review of museums run by the Smithsonian Institute. The move came after he issued an executive order in March titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, in which he accused the Smithsonian Institute of promoting “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”
During a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, I met Sandra White Shelley, a 74-year-old navy veteran from Illinois. She was visiting the museum with her daughter and two sisters, one of whom was wiping away tears after reading shocking accounts of slavery. “We didn’t learn about black history in school,” Sandra said. “I think that’s awful what our president wants to do … Our people, our children need to be able to go to a place and learn about our history.”
A couple of months later, I traveled to the southern city of Charleston, South Carolina, a major center of the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. After the city prohibited public slave auctions in 1856, men, women, and children were bought and sold like livestock at the Old Slave Mart, a large trading complex, which is now a museum. Inside, iron shackles hang in a glass case, alongside descriptions of how slaves were branded by their owners, with letters or symbols burnt into their flesh. I saw kids scanning a “price table,” looking to see how much a slave their own age had been worth in the 1850s. A two-year-old was valued at $US125; a 10-year-old, $US400.
A two-year-old was valued at $US125; a 10-year-old, $US400.
On a walking tour that morning, our tour guide described how many of the grand homes that still preside over the city’s cobblestone streets had been built with the wealth produced by slaves on nearby cotton plantations. The tour guide, a former history teacher, kept prefacing his information with emphatic statements like, “What I’m about to tell you is fact.” His frustration at having to spell this out was impossible to miss. He told me that Americans who take his tours increasingly question whether the slaves’ treatment was as horrific as history books have depicted.
This current era of America’s history is still being written, but already it feels like a defining one. Under Trump’s leadership, monumental shifts are playing out, which have the potential to change the country for years to come – from the makeup of society and how Americans treat one another to the nation’s place in the world.
But as the turbulent Trump show continues, my family’s American adventure has come to an end. There’ll be no Christmas-morning walk in a snow-covered Central Park for us this year. Instead, we’ll be home in time to celebrate with family in Newcastle and savor prawns with our turkey instead of mac and cheese.
But there’s plenty I’ll miss about New York, mostly the things you don’t see on the tourist trail. Like walking out the door every morning never knowing what nuggets of surprise await, from the St Bernard dogs that sprawl across cafe floors as if they own the place, to the city’s colorful cast of characters, many of whom are only too happy to stop and chat with a stranger.
I’ll miss walking into my favorite coffee shop and chatting with Christina the barista from Alabama (who performs as a combat actor on weekends) or Joan the retired psychotherapist turned painter, who now takes art classes instead of listening to Manhattanites’ darkest troubles.
I’ll miss the streetscapes that transform so distinctively with the seasons; the spring flower-boxes bursting with tulips of every color; the vivid gold and amber leaves that cloak the footpaths in autumn.
I won’t lie. Some features of New York life I’ll be happy to leave behind, such as the super-sized rats that feast on rubbish spewing from the black garbage bags piled high on the streets, and the futility of trying to sleep in a city that never does.
But as we swap the nightly soundtrack of sirens for possums pounding across our roof, I’ll look back on our American chapter as the time we got a glimpse into the country that so often sets the tone for the rest of the world. Whatever the US delivers in the new year, I’ll be watching on from afar.
