“Family separation is the most cruel form of torture I can think of,” said Melina Gonzalez, the director of community engagement and immigration services for Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service, a small Catholic nonprofit in East Harlem that serves the neighborhood’s immigrant community.

Ms. Gonzalez has experienced the psychological trauma of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown firsthand. In this uncertain era of immigration enforcement, supporting her clients now requires preparing for near-impossible circumstances.

“I get calls from the community—‘I think [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is at 106th,’ ‘ICE is at 116th and 1st,’” Ms. Gonzalez said. “I got a call at 4 o’clock in the morning,” she added, explaining that a parent coordinator who works at a local high school counseled by Family Health Service was “desperately blowing [up] my phone.” 

“One of her students had been arrested and she needed help figuring out how to respond,” she said.

“The fear has been very great in our community,” Lucia Aguilar, L.S.A.’s director of family support services, said. The agency offers online resources for people with irregular residency to prepare for an encounter with ICE. “We want our families to be ready for the worst-case scenario.”

That worst-case scenario most often involves what happens to the children of people with irregular immigration status. The Family Health Service advises parents to be ready with a detailed plan about what should happen to their children if they are detained by ICE, which includes designated caregivers for their children in the event of their deportation.

Those discussions can be fraught, Ms. Gonzalez said. It is not easy for parents to decide what to do with their children in the event one or both of them are arrested and face deportation.

Should they be reunited with their children in the nation to which they are deported to or should the children remain in the United States, left in the care of another family member or loved one awarded guardianship? “I have seen grown men cry” during those conversations, Ms. Gonzalez said. “You are never prepared emotionally.” 

For Ms. Gonzalez and Ms. Aguilar, the work at L.S.A. is deeply personal.

Ms. Gonzalez was once a client at L.S.A., first connecting with the agency in 1995 after emigrating from Mexico in 1989. The Catholic nonprofit accompanied her as a young mother, providing educational guidance with her children and offering English-language classes (a service that L.S.A. no longer offers because of budget constraints). Formally an undocumented immigrant herself, she eventually became a U.S. citizen and continues to work with the agency today.

“Lucia and I came when we were very young. I was 14, Lucia was 3 years old,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “We know exactly what it is to walk in the shoes of someone without documentation. This is more than a day of work; this is a mission.”

President Trump’s first term led to aggravated conditions for immigrant communities, but “this time is worse,” Ms. Gonzalez said. She described the whirlwind of volatile and vague enforcement policies as “nerve-wracking.” Her family, like many others, must now contend with a Supreme Court decision that allows what critics describe as racial profiling by federal enforcement agents.

The Little Sisters founded L.S.A. Family Health Service in 1958 to serve the mostly Italian and African American communities that at that time lived in East Harlem. In its early years, the service dispatched home nurses across the city. The health service eventually focused its efforts on East Harlem exclusively, where it began to provide a wide variety of services. 

Today, it serves the immigrants and asylum seekers in the neighborhood through holistic family support services, helping their clients find jobs, navigate government bureaucracies and legal systems and clothe and feed their families. 

Many of the families the nonprofit serves have mixed immigration status. That is, some members of the family are undocumented and others are citizens or legal residents. Many families include children who are native-born U.S. citizens and others who may have entered the country with their parents. They are families at most risk of separation or hardship if a parent or breadwinner is detained.

Ms. Gonzalez said that L.S.A.’s Family Support Program sponsors educational outreach for mixed-status families and assists in acquiring U.S. passports for the children of undocumented parents. The passport protects the children by providing legal identification in the event of family separation and the travel documentation they may need in the future in an emergency situation or to reunite with their parents.

“If the parents get deported and the children don’t have passports, they’re not going to be able to see their parents for years to come,” Ms. Gonzalez said.

Ana Maria Aguilar is one of L.S.A.’s clients. Speaking through a translator, she said she still hopes for a better life in the United States despite the growing fear and uncertainty in immigrant communities across the country.

Ms. Aguilar came to the United States with her husband and two children in 2023 to escape the violence in her home country of Colombia. She said the agency has been key to her and her family managing their transition to a new nation.

“[L.S.A.] is my second family,” she said. “During Christmas, we didn’t have anything to offer my children, and we were able to get things from here.”

Ms. Aguilar emphasized that her family came to the United States to make a better life for themselves. She said that she and her husband are both working legally and paying taxes.

“We don’t come here to harm anybody,” she said, describing the current climate as “very difficult.” 

Like many others who share her predicament, she finds the new aggressiveness of ICE agents intimidating. She is afraid to venture out for required check-in meetings at immigration court. “I was really, really nervous because I’ve heard that people are not coming back.”

Her two children are both attending school, and the eldest, Damien, is fluent in English.

ICE’s presence in East Harlem has begun to affect the agency’s day-to-day work, according to Lucia Aguilar. Her clients have become afraid to venture out of their homes, and L.S.A. is seeing fewer people at its food pantry.

Worried that ICE agents may attempt to enter, L.S.A. staff members have decided to close off part of their offices to visitors. “Before, there were many people who called this their second home,” Ms. Gonzalez said. 

The service’s budget has also been affected by the administration. Federal Emergency Management Agency cuts to the Emergency Food and Shelter Program, combined with other reductions in direct government assistance programs, have forced L.S.A. to slash 20 percent of its food pantry budget, according to Ms. Gonzalez.

Through the ongoing immigration crisis, she emphasized the importance of community-based organizations like L.S.A. that affirm the dignity of immigrant people. But it is never easy to keep going, especially when initiatives are underfunded. 

“For me, I try to see the positive. Take the few wins that we do get,” Ms. Gonzales said. “We see hundreds of families come through our doors, but if one day you get to see a smile on the client’s face because they see a little ray of sunshine at the end of the tunnel, that’s a great feeling.”

Edward Desciak is an O'Hare Fellow at America Media.