Because of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s increased presence, Alex, a Northeast-based hospital researcher, has been staying home more.
Alex does not eat at restaurants or travel for fun. He prefers to walk 30 minutes to his work’s shuttle stop over driving his car or taking a bus on a road where an ICE agent might be.
“I look Latino,” said Alex, who is one of several people HuffPost agreed to identify by first name only for their safety and privacy. “I get very self-conscious when I’m outside in public. If I go to pick up something at the store, I get very anxious if I have to stand there waiting for too long.“
This September, after the United States Supreme Court ruled that immigration agents can use race as a factor when deciding who is a reasonably suspicious target in Los Angeles, Alex stopped going to the grocery store and started getting his food delivered.
Alex came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 16 years old without documentation and became a permanent resident in 2023. Last year, Alex kept his green card at home in a safe, because it is hard and expensive to replace. But he now carries his green card with him at all times in his wallet in case he needs to show proof of his lawful status: “ICE strikes me as an organization that acts and then asks questions later,” he said.
Alex’s story is just one of the many ways that Latines across the country are reacting to the recent Supreme Court decision. The ruling is a win for Trump’s administration, which asked the nation’s highest court to block an order that banned agents from stopping people solely because they looked, talked or worked in ways agents think are associated with undocumented people. These factors include apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish, speaking English with an accent, or presence in a location where undocumented immigrants are believed to gather.
This decision now lifts that ban and allows immigration agents in Los Angeles to use these as relevant factors when interrogating people –– and has been causing Latines and Spanish-speakers across the country to worry ever since about what this could mean for their own future.
‘I Carry My Passport With Me At All Times.’
Jonah, a Visalia, California, resident and U.S. citizen, said he carries proof of citizenship because he lives near farms, which have been targets of ICE raids.
“I do feel American,” Jonah said. “I do wonder, though, if my neighbors see me that way.”
“I have a Spanish surname and dark brown skin, so I carry my passport with me at all times,” Jonah said. When he goes to the grocery store, Jonah’s wife, who is white, will drive to “put ourselves in the best position to not be pulled over, harassed or arrested” by immigration authorities, Jonah said.
ICE asserts that it has the authority to question any “person believed to be an alien concerning his or her right to be, or to remain, in the United States.” In Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion for the decision, he wrote that when federal agents question people who reside here lawfully, “The questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States.”
But Kavanaugh’s idea of “brief” encounters with immigration authorities is in marked contrast to the traumatic experiences some Americans are reporting, and the anxieties Alex, Jonah and many of the estimated 63.7 million Latines living in the U.S. say they now feel.
The federal government does not release numbers of citizens who have been wrongfully questioned and detained by immigration authorities. But according to court records and news reports, more than a dozen U.S. citizens say they have gotten swept up in the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
These encounters include a Philadelphia man who got handcuffed at gunpoint without being given a chance to explain where he was born, a pregnant woman in California who said she got detained even after she told agents she was a citizen, and a Chicago man who said he was detained by ICE for 10 hours before being released when an agent checked the ID in his wallet.
And even for the Americans who do not get interrogated or arrested by an immigration agent, the fear that they or their family could one day be next keeps them up at night.
Daniela Hernandez, a Westminster, Maryland-based citizen, said she doesn’t take her 2-year-old son to parks and nature walks far from the house anymore out of fear that her son could be targeted by ICE or witness someone being detained. Instead, Hernandez walks with her son outside near their home: “That way, he can be distracted if something were to happen. I can put him in his room.”
Alex said he is sleeping less and is distracted at work with worries of what he will do if ICE comes to his neighborhood. Being detained by ICE would mean lost income, and the experience itself would be “very scary,” he said.
And this kind of widespread fear is valid, said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel for the National Immigration Law Center.
“While the case was brought on behalf of people impacted in LA, it certainly gives a signal to ICE officers in other parts of the country that they can engage in the same sort of conduct, and who’s to stop them until somebody sues them,” Whitlock said.
She noted that the Trump administration’s actions are sending a message that some people are “second-class citizens” that “should not be given the same level of protection” because of how they look, their ancestry or the language they speak.
Whitlock recommends that U.S. citizens give proof of citizenship, like a passport, to a trusted person rather than keep this kind of documentation on their person.
Because ICE won’t let you access your personal items when you are detained, it makes more sense “to have your passport in a place that’s secure and be ready to call someone if you’re arrested, who can then actually scan copies to the ICE office,” Whitlock said.
Spanish Is Also Now A Politically Contested Language In Public.
Since speaking Spanish is one of the categories that federal immigration agents in Los Angeles can now use when deciding whom to target for questioning, some Latines also fear that speaking the language central to their identity will be used against them. As a result, for some Latines, speaking their family’s language in public has become more political.
Karina Perez, a Tennessee-based accountant, is a U.S. citizen, along with her parents, but is cautious about speaking Spanish when she is with her parents in her rural town.
With her mom, who is more comfortable speaking Spanish, “I’m going to talk [in] Spanish, but I’ll make sure to include English words so that someone knows ‘Oh, they can speak English’...We’re American citizens.”
Though the Supreme Court ruling specifically affects people living in California, Perez believes it will help embolden racism throughout the country.
“A lot of people’s behavior will change because of this,” Perez said. “It makes people feel free to say something, even though I don’t think they should, and I don’t want to bring that unwanted attention to my family that I’m with.”
But some other Latines are taking the opposite approach, and say they will speak Spanish more now as a result of the Supreme Court case.
Hernandez, who worries that her Spanish accent makes her a potential target for immigration agents, said she nevertheless plans to keep speaking Spanish outside: “I don’t want that fear to be placed in me or placed in my son, that we shouldn’t speak Spanish, that we should only speak Spanish inside the house.“
Jonah feels both ways: he is proud of his Mexican-American heritage and wants to speak Spanish freely in public, but is also pragmatic about the current political climate and understands why his wife would prefer he does not.
“I do feel this sort-of pull between my frustration and anger and wanting to be defiant, and also my desire to be a husband and a father and make sure I come home every day,” he said.
Why Latines Aren’t Giving Up
“We do continue to have civil rights and civil liberties in this country, but they are under threat,” Whitlock said about what she would tell Latines feeling intimidated by ICE right now.
And one way Latines are countering the stress of living under the threat of ICE surveillance is by building communities. Jonah said that when the constant vigilance wears on him, he will remind himself: “Not everyone voted for this. Not everybody here is your enemy.“
And despite fears about ICE limiting what he does each day, Alex maintains hope.
He channels his anxieties into becoming more involved with voter turnout groups. Alex was excited by liberal Susan Crawford’s win in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, despite Elon Musk pouring millions of dollars into Crawford’s Republican opponent.
“That was very motivating,” Alex said. “I get hope that in next year’s midterm elections, and in 2028, things are going to get better...I have hopes that people are realizing that it’s not just about deporting so-called criminals.”
It’s this desire to better America that makes Alex feel American.
“The administration is doing everything in its power to intimidate and to terrorize people like me,” he said. “But then again, I also know that there’s a lot of people out there who are advocating for my communities, and I know that my community is also very resilient, and I have hope that things are going to change, and that people are going to realize how harmful all these policies are.”