A child comes home after school in tears, asking his parents what it means to be undocumented. “Do I have documents?” he asks. They reassure him that he does. He was born in the United States. 

During recess, he was playing soccer with his classmates. His team scored a goal and were celebrating when a classmate on the opposing team approached him. He told him that Donald Trump was going to come for him and his family at night to take them out of this country. 

“The boy didn’t want to go back to school,” Idefonso Magana, a union organizer for more than 20 years, told America in a Spanish-language interview. An anxious coworker shared the story with him a couple of months ago. 

“From school children to their parents to the workers to housewives, the Arizona immigrant community is living in fear,” Mr. Magana said. 

After border czar Tom Homan announced last week that the Trump administration would end its immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, some local religious and community leaders in Arizona are asking themselves if their state is next. 

Their fear is not unfounded. In late January, news broke of a 1,500-bed warehouse in the Phoenix area that would be used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE purchased the 418,400-square-foot warehouse for $70 million in the suburb of Surprise. The space will be used as a processing facility, according to an ICE statement. 

The development follows Arizona’s sale last year of an empty prison facility in Marana, just north of Tucson. A private detention company known for managing ICE detention facilities bought the property, which has a capacity for 500 inmates. 

Last year, the Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated $170 billion to immigration and border enforcement, including $45 billion for immigration detention centers. The current impasse in congressional funding for D.H.S. is not expected to affect immigration enforcement efforts. 

“We could just be scratching the surface of what’s possible, given the size and the scope of what these detention centers can do,” Tim McManus, the supervising organizer for Valley Interfaith Project, told America. “Private prisons and others are making a lot of money daily with everybody that’s on a bed in one of these detention centers. So they’re opening more and more of them.” 

Mr. McManus has helped organize “know your rights” workshops for immigrant communities at churches throughout the Southwest. After one event, a group of participants told him that knowing your rights would not be enough. 

“This is not about being able to express your rights,” they told him. “We’re watching people get grabbed at Home Depot and thrown into vans. There’s not an opportunity to express your rights and have a civil back and forth that then allows you to go home.”

As a result of that conversation, Valley Interfaith Project leaders pivoted and began helping families prepare for the potential deportation of a family member. Families should have their assets in order and have a plan for their children, Mr. McManus said, and undocumented immigrants should apply for legal status if they have an avenue to do so. 

“When we do these sessions, we have to operate as if everybody in that room could end up in detention,” he said. “How do we prepare for that situation? We try to give some sense of security that at least they have some things in order, should the worst happen.” 

In Arizona, Mr. McManus helped organize sessions in churches like St. Louis the King Church in Glendale, a parish that celebrates Masses in five different languages every weekend. According to Deacon Joe Stikney, the church has also been welcoming visits from the Arizona State University Immigration Law Clinic to assist in document preparation. 

St. Francis Xavier, a Jesuit-run church in Phoenix, has done the same. 

“I know there’s fear,” said Robert Fabrini, S.J., the pastor of St. Francis Xavier, noting that despite widespread concern, attendance at Spanish-language Masses has not diminished. “Perhaps the church is a space where they feel comfortable, where they feel community.” 

Mr. Magana is one of Father Fabrini’s parishioners. He immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the 1990s, after the North American Free Trade Agreement gutted the economy in his home state of Michoacan, he said. Mr. Magana became a U.S. citizen in 1997.

“We can all do something,” he said. “If I’m in a vulnerable situation, I should learn more about how I can protect myself and my family. If I’m not vulnerable, I have to understand that what happens to my community happens to me.”

At weekly gatherings at St. Francis, Mr. Magana hears stories from other parish families: 

  • Some undocumented immigrants are exploited by landlords who know that, given the current circumstances, the tenants cannot report them. 
  • A young man who works as a carpenter injured himself on the job, but his company refused to pay the medical bill and threatened to report him to ICE if he filed a legal complaint. 
  • Green card holders are unsure of whether to renew their status because they fear that simply attending a court hearing could lead to their deportation. 

“We are living in fear that it will soon become an enforcement effort like the ones we’ve seen in Los Angeles, in Minneapolis and elsewhere,” he said. “This is a big city with many people who have an irregular legal status.” 

Reports from the U.S.-Mexico border shed light on what has already begun. Tracey Horan, S.P., a member of the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Ind., is the associate director of education and advocacy for the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, Sonora, a binational effort to serve migrants, educate the public and advocate for justice. 

Sister Horan estimated that D.H.S. deports between 40 and 100 people every day in Nogales, most of whom she believes are Arizona residents.  

“The increased presence of ICE agents in Arizona communities is being felt,” she told America. “We are talking to people who were surprised after they were detained and who, in many cases, were just going about their day or were actually in legal proceedings. That didn’t matter. They were deported anyway.” 

People are often deported in the clothes in which they were detained, Sister Horan said, reporting that Kino is seeing people in work uniforms or with clothes stained with paint. 

“A lot of people are being targeted because of the work that they do,” she said. 

At their shelter in Mexico, Sister Horan has heard stories of violent tactics ICE used while detaining people, many of which echo incidents reported in the media. The Associated Press, for example, reported the story of Alberto Castañeda Mondragón who says he suffered skull fractures after being beaten by immigration officers. He struggles to remember precious moments with his daughter. (ICE blames Mr. Castañeda Mongragón for his injuries.) 

“We might hope that some of the stories of the most violent scenes are exceptions,” she said. “But unfortunately, we see those scenes repeated over and over. It’s not to say that it happens every time, but it’s happening in my experience more frequently than we saw in the past.” 

The abuses in themselves are not new, she said, but the rules have changed. Undocumented immigrants with criminal records are not being prioritized, she said, and ICE agents are going to courthouses. 

“The tactics that this administration is using make it clear that they want to intimidate people,” Sister Horan said. “In some cases, that means using physical violence, and in other cases, it’s just using the presence of hundreds of agents. The message is that you’re not safe at work, you’re not safe at school, you’re not even safe at your house of worship.” 

The Kino Border Initiative accompanies those who have been deported and helps them reintegrate and reunite with family when possible, Sister Tracey said. Some more recent policies have complicated that. As an example, she cited Operation Irish Goodbye, a program that places ICE agents at the border to intercept undocumented immigrants who are leaving voluntarily. 

Sister Horan spoke of a father who had been deported, but his wife was unsure if she should follow voluntarily with their child. The child is a U.S. citizen, and the mother feared she would be detained at the border and that they would be separated. 

Within the last year, polls have found that a majority of the U.S. population disagrees with the Trump administration’s tactics. Still, Sister Horan drew attention to some polls that find a majority of Americans want all undocumented immigrants deported. 

“When we feel O.K. with our neighbors being taken away as long as it’s done in kind of an acceptable way, that to me is kind of a deeper concern in all of this,” she said. “I’m really grateful that there has been so much of a response. And I think it’s time, as Catholics and as people of faith, that we consider how we value our neighbor. Whatever way you separate someone from their family, it is never a moral act.” 

J.D. Long García is a senior editor at America.