But for all the political furor over the proposal, it's easy to forget that these undocumented immigrants are individuals, each with their own hopes, dreams, fears, and families.
This fact is not lost on Rhode Island-based photographer Mary Beth Meehan. Her photo series, "Undocumented," captures scenes inside the homes of people living in the US illegally. The people themselves are conspicuously absent from the photographs to "reflect who these people were - their human-ness and ordinariness, and possibly their motives and intentions - and not endanger their identities here," Meehan tells Business Insider.
Meehan says her work "[parts] a curtain, opening a window into rooms that are already here in our community, rooms that existed whether I photographed them or not, where human beings were living."
Along with the photos, Meehan provides captions to her photographs to further tell the story of the room's inhabitants, which she has shared these with us here. You can see more of Meehan's work on her website.