• 2025-09-24 11:47:32
• Gun Violence

Every morning before her children leave for school, Judhe, a 33-year-old asylum-seeker from Peru, reminds them of her phone number — just in case they encounter immigration enforcement officers. One of her in-laws was detained a few months ago, and the fear has lingered in her household ever since.

“We don’t have peace,” Judhe said in Spanish. “But the fear of returning to our country is greater than the fear of staying here.”

She is one of the

The immigrants interviewed for this story say they remain under constant mental strain and worry, and asked that their full names not be used because they feared deportation. Many say the radius of daily life has shrunk since Trump took office, with fewer subway rides, fewer errands, and fewer hours outside the home. Some say they are seeing their livelihoods erode.

In nationwide

“There is just widespread fear among immigrants, across immigration statuses,” said Drishti Pillai, director of immigrant health policy at KFF. “Some of these fears are being amplified by Trump administration policy changes.”

Immigration arrests in New York City jumped 56% from last year, according to government data analyzed by

Some immigrants report seeing ICE agents in their neighborhoods, or know relatives and friends who’ve been detained. Others say they scroll through videos of ICE raids on social media. For many, the calculation is constant: how to keep working, caring for family, and moving through the city while staying one step ahead of federal agents who might take it all away.

‘Everyone has their own family to look after’

Since Trump's return to the White House, 40-year-old Lin, from Fujian province in China, says her world has narrowed to the few blocks around her Brooklyn apartment. She stopped using the subway. No more taking her children to museums, zoos, or parks — or any crowded places. The goal is to leave the house “as seldom as possible.”

After entering the country illegally and living in New York City for two decades, Lin said she’s constantly considering the fallout if she’s deported. She's seen videos of ICE arrests surfacing daily on RedNote, a Chinese social networking app, feeding a loop of late-night what-ifs she can’t switch off. She's haunted by the question of what will happen to her three minor children — who are all U.S. citizens — if she's detained.

A few months ago, Lin began scouring newspaper ads and internet reviews to find lawyers to put the questions to. The lawyers urged her to name a standby guardian, a person who would care for her children if she no longer could. Otherwise, the lawyers said, her children may end up in foster care if she’s arrested.

Lin asked her sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen living in another state, if she’d be willing to take on the role. Her sister-in-law said she needed more time to think about it. Lin said she was heartbroken, but she hasn’t pressed for an answer.

“Everyone has their own family to look after,” Lin said in Mandarin. “I don’t want to cause too much trouble to my family.”

In the meanwhile, Lin picks up extra shifts at the Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn where she works, to save money for her children in case the worst happens. Her husband, who's also undocumented, works in another state and has postponed returning home to Brooklyn because he’s afraid of getting deported. She doesn’t talk about her fears with her children; saying she doesn’t want to traumatize them, too.

Every day at 7 a.m., Lin said she prays to Jesus that one day, things will be better, and she won’t have to live in fear. And every day, she said she thinks to herself: I just need to safely get through this day.

‘So we bear it, we bear it, we bear it, we bear it’

Judhe said her brother-in-law, also from Peru, was detained by immigration officers a few months ago after being pulled over by police while driving on Long Island. Since then, Judhe said she has been on high alert. That’s even though she is an asylum-seeker, with legal permission to be in the United States while her court case plays out.