Local immigration advocacy groups report that some people are staying home from work or school because they鈥檙e scared to be detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Kathy Keesee 鈥� program coordinator with , an immigrant rights group in the Rogue Valley 鈥� said so far, ICE arrests seem to have mostly targeted people who have prior deportation orders or felony charges.
"They're the ones who they're going after," she said. "I think we've had maybe...eight or 10 [arrests] here in the valley, so not a huge number either. But I mean, there's just so much uncertainty, and we never know from one day, even from one hour to the next, what this administration is going to come up with."
She said Unete has been conducting training sessions so people know their They鈥檙e also working on putting together a rapid response team to document any ICE detentions.
, an immigrant rights group in far Northern California, is doing the same. The group has a people can call to report ICE sightings. The group will then confirm whether or not the rumor is true.
William Dirks works with Centro del Pueblo and said he doesn鈥檛 know of any ICE raids in his area so far. But, he said there has been a lot of misinformation and fear-mongering, which just makes people more scared.
Their biggest concern right now is community well-being.
"You're going to sleep scared, you're waking up scared, you're scared to go to work, scared to take your kids to school," he said. "A lot of the rhetoric has been very anti-immigrant coming out of the new administration. Our priority is to make sure that the people here feel safe and comfortable and are informed of their rights and can follow through with their daily lives."
He said they're working with local schools in an effort to make them into sanctuaries.
"We also have a plan for custody in case something happens to parents," Dirks said. "It's part of the that Centro del Pueblo spearheaded in 2018, which was to keep families together, and that was to make sure that the parents have a decision in what happens to their children in case something does happen to them."
John Almaguer, an immigration attorney in Medford, said he's been doing presentations for organizations, churches and schools to "try to calm people down, to try to separate fact from fiction and educate people on their rights."
He pushed back against the anti-immigrant sentiment from the Trump administration, pointing out that Elon Musk is an immigrant, as is Trump's wife Melania.
"No one is going to fight over keeping gang members, violent criminals out of the country," he said. "I'll even give some money for that cause. But we're not all criminals."
Still, Keesee said Unete has heard from many volunteers offering to help with English classes and donations of food or money.
"[One woman] had heard that families were afraid to go to the grocery store because they were fearful that they were going to be picked up by ICE," Keese said. "And so she said, 'Well, I'm willing to go to a grocery store and take their groceries to their home.' And it was a day that was 鈥� it was pretty dark, in terms of politically, what was going on, and it just kind of re-instilled my faith in humans."
