In Orange County, California, dozens of immigrant parents have signed legal documents authorizing friends and relatives to pick up their children from school and access their bank accounts to pay their bills in the event they are arrested by immigration agents.
In Philadelphia, immigrants are carrying around wallet-size “Know Your Rights” guides in Spanish and English that explain what to do if they’re rounded up.
In New York, 23-year-old Zuleima Dominguez and other members of her Mexican family are careful about answering the door and start making worried telephone calls when someone does not come home on time.
Around the nation, US President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on the estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the US have spread fear and anxiety and led many people to brace for arrest and to change up their daily routines in hopes of not getting caught.
In El Paso, Texas, Carmen Ramos and her friends have developed a network to keep each other updated via text messages on where immigration checkpoints have been set up.
She said she also is making certain everything she does is in order at all times. She checks her taillights before leaving the house to make sure they are working. She will not speed and keeps a close eye on her surroundings.
“We are surprised that even a ticket can get us back to Mexico,” said the 41-year-old Ramos, who with her husband and three children left Ciudad Juarez because of drug violence and death threats in 2008 and entered the US on tourist visas that have since expired. “We wouldn’t have anywhere to return.”
The unease among immigrants has been building for months, but intensified in recent weeks with ever-clearer signs that the Trump administration would jettison the former US president Barack Obama-era policy of focusing mostly on deporting those who had committed serious crimes.
The administration on Tuesday said that any immigrant in the country illegally who is charged with or convicted of any offense, or even suspected of a crime, will now be an enforcement priority.
That could include people arrested for shoplifting or other minor offenses, or those who simply crossed the border illegally.
Some husbands and wives fear spouses who lack legal papers could be taken away and many worry that parents will be separated from their US-born children.
Dozens of immigrants have been turning up at an advocacy group’s offices in Philadelphia, asking questions like: “Who will take care of my children if I am deported?”
They are also coached on how to develop a “deportation plan” that includes the name and number of an attorney and other emergency contacts in case of arrest.
An organization in Austin, Texas, that runs a deportation hotline said it normally would receive one or two calls every few days. After recent immigration raids, the phone rang off the hook.
“We got over 1,000 phone calls in three days about the raids,” Grassroots Leadership immigration programs director Cristina Parker said. “And certainly a lot of those were people who wanted information about the raids saying, ‘I’m scared, I’m worried, what can I do?’... A lot of them were people who were impacted by the raids who saw a friend or family be taken.”
Immigrants in the Chicago area have said they are scared to drive, and some are even wary of taking public transit.
When Chicago police and federal authorities conducted regular safety checks on a train line earlier this month, many assumed it was an immigration checkpoint. Word spread so quickly that Chicago police issued a statement assuring immigrants, “You are welcome here.”
In Arizona, immigrant Abril Gallardo said the policies have prompted new conversations with her parents and siblings.
Her father, who is in the country illegally, made sure all the taillights work in the van he drives to his construction job in the Phoenix area. They look through the window if anyone knocks.
“We have a regular life, but with this new executive order, anyone, just for the fact that you’re here, you can become a priority,” said Gallardo, 26, who is in the US with permission under the Obama administration policy for people who entered illegally as children.
In the Bronx, Dominguez, a college student protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, is looking into what she needs to do to raise her US-born brother and sister, ages six and 11, if their parents are deported.
When Dominguez goes out, she tells the others where she is going, with whom, and when she will be home, and expects the same from her parents and siblings.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion