Leticia Jimenez is expected to graduate from Cal State San Bernardino this spring with a degree in business administration.
She came to the country without permission at the age of two and grew up with her parents in the fields of the Coachella Valley while attending school.
She would be excited about the new opportunities her degree could offer her, but is worried every time she leaves the house. “I make sure to say goodbye to my parents,” she said. “I go out more scared – anything can happen.”
Jimenez, 21, is like millions of undocumented immigrants living in California, whose lives are deeply woven into the state's economy and social fabric — and who are reeling from the flood of anti-immigrant executive orders signed by President Trump.
When Jimenez leaves the house, she said, she always carries a red card listing her rights under the U.S. Constitution – one in her wallet, one in her car and another on the back of her phone case.
“That will be a big deterrent,” said Manuel Pastor, director of the Equity Research Institute at USC, who studies immigrants in the state. Approximately one to eight Californians are in the United States illegally or live with a family member who is there. Most immigrants without legal status in the state, for example 2.4 million peoplehave lived here for more than a decade, a factor that sets California apart from other parts of the country.
A dramatic change in enforcement would affect not only undocumented people, Pastor said, but also their family members who are “citizens or documented immigrant relatives.”
Those in California's most immigration-dependent industries — manufacturing, agriculture, hospitality, construction — are limiting their travel or staying home.
“People are afraid to go to the grocery store,” said a farm worker in Ventura County who works with many undocumented workers and did not want his name used for fear of reprisals. “There are migrants who are afraid to even go to the hospital to give birth at this point.”
Mario Cervantes, a gardener from Mexico who has lived in Los Angeles for two decades, said he supports Trump's plan to deport criminals who are here illegally.
But now Cervantes, 50, fears anyone will be arrested without permission. He entered the country illegally two decades ago and has worked hard and obeyed the law ever since. He said he assumed Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric wasn't directed at people like him — until he learned about the president's new implementing regulation targets the birthright to citizenship.
As he travels around Southern California cutting lawns and blowing leaves, he said he wants to be “a little more vigilant,” especially in certain neighborhoods.
“If I get deported, there's not much I can do about it at this point,” he said Tuesday as he and a friend chatted on a corner in Wilmington. Still, he added, “I hope he only targets people who come here to cause problems.”
Trump signed a series of sweeping executive orders — some of which are likely to bring legal challenges — that could radically change the country's immigration enforcement. The orders aim to end the refugee system, make it harder for some to become naturalized citizens, declare a national emergency at the border and allow local police to do so perform some functions of an immigration officera role that California has banned.
Many California elected officials vowed to do everything in their power to protect immigrants. Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced Tuesday morning that his office, along with officials in 17 other states, had filed a lawsuit seeking to eliminate birthright citizenship.
Masih Fouladi, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center, said advocates are prepared for radical change.
But many of those likely to be affected still felt the orders came as an emotional blow. Fouladi said he heard that more than 1,000 Afghans who had supported American efforts in that country and who had been allowed entry into the United States – many to Sacramento – suddenly had their travel plans thrown into disarray.
People are “freaked out to say the least,” said Jenny Seon, general counsel at the Ahri Center, a nonprofit community organization in Buena Park that works with Korean immigrants and others. “Very scary times.”
There are about 560,000 Korean immigrants in California, about 55,000 of whom are undocumented. Her organization works with people without legal status to prepare for possible deportation, including by helping them set up guardianships for their U.S.-born children.
“The community is hearing the message and preparing for the worst,” she said. “The immigrant community as a whole is really suffering.”
In Koreatown, immigrants and their supporters gathered at Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Tuesday evening for a vigil and legal workshop, one of many information sessions held across the state. Organizers provided cards asking them not to say or sign anything if stopped by immigration authorities.
“We don’t know what timeline ICE” — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — “is operating on, but we know we need to prepare now,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles or CHIRLA.
Advocates have created a nationwide clearinghouse for information about possible immigration enforcement actions. CHIRLA and other advocates are preparing a hotline for Southern California residents to report raids or other anti-immigrant activity.
Enforcement actions in Kern County in the final weeks of the Biden administration put groups on high alert. Customs and Border Protection stopped motorists on Highway 99 in and around Bakersfield in what they described as a “targeted” operation against transnational criminal organizations. A border official said 78 people had been arrested and several suspected criminals had been detained. Advocates say about 200 people have been arrested, including many farm workers.
People in the predominantly immigrant San Joaquin Valley area were already suffering from border patrol raids earlier this month when Trump's orders were issued, said Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers union.
The executive actions, she said in a statement, “will only increase the stress, anxiety and fear.”
Still, she and others said, undocumented farmworkers continued to report for work.
In South Los Angeles on Tuesday, several immigrants said they had no choice but to keep working.
“It's hard right now,” said a woman who gave only her first name, Leticia, as she and her husband sold drills and other construction tools in their blue van. The street business barely pays its rent, she said.
“The fear of deportations will only make the situation worse for us,” said her husband Manuel.
“We have to leave it to God,” Leticia said.
The longer immigrants stay in the U.S. — working, having children, building networks of friends and family — the more dire the threat of deportation becomes.
Juan, who also only gave his first name, sat next to the van and chatted with friends. He said the fear is always with him.
“It’s something that never really goes away,” he said.
But concerns escalated when Trump's inauguration took place and Juan's neighbors told him over the weekend that they had seen immigration agents driving around the neighborhood. Since the Kern County raids, rumors of such sightings have been circulating, many of which are unconfirmed or false.
The fear is weighing on the neighborhood's economy as people work less and spend less.
Jose Ruiz, 46, said that although he does have a green card, many of the customers who hire him to reglaze their bathroom fixtures do not have a green card. Because they take fewer jobs, they have less money to hire him.
“I usually have two reglaze jobs a day,” he said. “And now I only have one a day.
“They don’t want to leave their houses. Sometimes not even for work.”