A mom in Texas feels it’s no longer safe to walk her kids to school.
A grocery store in Virginia lost the butchers at its meat counter.
At a cherry orchard in Oregon, unpicked berries are rotting in the sun.
And at a mall in Georgia once packed with shoppers, a jewelry seller sighs on a recent summer afternoon as she surveys the desolate scene.
“It’s like one day everyone left in a puff of air,” Maria López says.
Daily life is changing in many communities across the US as President Donald Trump and his administration step up their immigration crackdowns. Officials vow they’ll carry out the largest deportation operation in American history, put more undocumented immigrants behind bars and eliminate abuse in the immigration system.
Just over seven months in, it’s too soon to say whether they’ll hit all the targets they’ve set. But their messaging as Immigration and Customs Enforcement gets a massive infusion into its budget couldn’t be clearer: This is only the beginning.
Authorities are ratcheting up arrests and detentions in highly publicized operations. And as fears of immigration raids spread, there’s also another story unfolding that’s quieter but no less dramatic.
No press releases get issued when an immigrant family slips into the shadows. But CNN reporters across the country are starting to see what that looks and feels like – and the unexpected ripple effects that can follow.
For years, Lupita Batres had a front-row seat as generations of young women prepared for joyful occasions. From the stall where she sells colorful hand-woven skirts, scarves and purses at Plaza Fiesta, she’d watch girls going from store to store in search of lavish dresses for quinceañeras and confirmations. She’d see family members picking out presents. And occasionally, she’d help someone find just the right gift.
Now she says that kind of business has virtually disappeared from the mall outside Atlanta.
“I haven’t heard of anyone throwing parties, quinceañeras or weddings right now,” Batres says. “And if they do, ah Dios mio, what a risk, right? Being at a party like that.”
On a Friday afternoon, Batres carefully arranges bracelets and trinkets as she waits for customers. So far, none have shown up. On some days, she says the only faces she sees are other vendors. Some customers are even avoiding grocery stores, she says, let alone gift shops.
“They send someone else to shop for them, someone with papers,” she said. “It has changed everything, even how we eat.”
Maria López, who’s worked at a Plaza Fiesta jewelry store for 14 years, says the mall has never faced a moment like this.
López remembers when Plaza Fiesta was so popular visitors flocked here from other states across the Southeast. The once dilapidated mall’s fortunes turned in the late 1990s when developers transformed it into a marketplace catering to the growing Latino community. On weekends, the stores pulsed with life. Chatter floated through the aisles, children ran ahead of their parents to the indoor playground and lines stretched out from the food court. Now it’s eerily quiet.
“People are scared of being arrested just for being outside,” López says. “There is always this tension, this feeling that something could happen. And it is exhausting.”
At Ivan Marín’s graphic design business, a display showcases rows of sparkly and intricate quinceañera invitations. It used to be common for him to get mass orders for party invitations, and also for T-shirts for family reunions, Disney vacations and community events. But not anymore.
“Everything has changed. … Now people don’t travel. Parties at home are very restricted,” he says. “It’s just family.”
A woman with her curly hair bunched into a bun smiles as she walks through the sanctuary of her Maryland church, where light is streaming through the stained-glass windows.
The 38-year-old undocumented immigrant, who asked to be identified by her last name, López, feels like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. But a month ago, everything felt far darker.
López rushed to the emergency room that night. Back in El Salvador, she’d worked as a nurse. And she’d never been the kind of person to blow health problems out of proportion. Based on the pain she felt, she was convinced she was having a heart attack.
Until the next day, when doctors told her that her heart was fine. She’d had an anxiety attack, they said.
That’s when López knew she had to make a change. Worries over immigration raids were consuming her. Every daily task seemed suddenly fraught with danger.
López loved the US and once dreamed of bringing her children to live with her here. Now the risks no longer seem worth it. And López recently bought a plane ticket to return to El Salvador, where she hopes to use money she saved over more than a decade working in the US as a restaurant manager to open her own pharmacy.
“I feel so happy to be leaving,” she says. “A life with fear isn’t life.”
Father Vidal Rivas says the choir member isn’t the only person in his congregation at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Hyattsville who’s decided to depart.
For weeks, he’s been looking out at the pews during noon mass and noticing far fewer people in attendance. At a service where more than 200 people once regularly gathered, these days about half that number are showing up.
The summer vacation slump could be partially to blame, he says. And many stalwarts are still coming. But Rivas says in recent days he’s heard from several families who told him they’re leaving the US. He’s also fielded calls from parishioners who are hunkering down and feel that coming to church is too risky, especially given that it’s known for having a largely immigrant congregation.
Rivas tries to reassure them. Church doors are locked during services now, no trespassing signs are on the doors and online videos of the services don’t show parishioners’ faces. And being well known, he feels, should make them safer.
“It gives us certain protection, because it’s a very visible church,” he says.
But during services, when Rivas makes announcements about upcoming church events, he also reminds churchgoers to fill out forms designating guardians for their children in case someone is detained or deported.
When he hears about families who are deciding to leave now on their own terms, he worries about the economic crisis his church could face if too many members depart. But even more, he says it’s devastating to think about all the talent the church community is losing.
The guy who always knew how to fix anything that was broken. The committee members who organized cookoffs and bake sales. The reader whose booming voice made Biblical passages come alive. And now, the always-smiling singer in the choir’s front row.
Her friends in the choir didn’t believe she was leaving until she showed them her plane ticket.
“They call me the joy of the choir, because I’m always laughing and joking,” López says.
But lately, López says, it’s been much harder to be light-hearted. Fear already stopped the choir from holding rehearsals at members’ homes. Only now, as her plans to leave fall into place, can she feel her joy returning. It was hard to share the news with the choir, she says, which has become like a family. She’s ready to leave the US behind. But this group’s love, López says, is one thing she’ll always carry with her.
Lisa and her three children sit with the shades drawn in their central California home.
Normally they’d be in Oregon picking cherries at this time of year. They’re among many migrant workers who travel to different locations along the US west coast as the seasons change. But this year, with immigration enforcement intensifying, they decided not to make the trek.
Lisa, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym because several members of her family are undocumented, is protected from deportation by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. But her parents and husband aren’t, and they’re keenly aware that these days the slightest misstep could land them behind bars.
So this summer, rather than traveling to Oregon and enjoying the outdoors, she’s been staying inside with her three US citizen kids as much as possible. The children try to amuse themselves with TV and video games, but their boredom is clear. When CNN visited recently, one child was sitting alone and tossing a frisbee in the air.
“We love the outside, up there in Oregon. We used to go to the waterfalls, all those beautiful places that they have. It was so much fun for our kids. And for ourselves, too,” Lisa says.
Lisa knows staying inside is taking a toll on her family; with so much less time playing in the sun, her younger daughter was recently diagnosed with Vitamin D deficiency.
But even so, outside their home, Lisa feels the risks are greater. She’s thinking of homeschooling her children in the fall, just to be safe.
At his cherry orchards in northern Oregon, Ian Chandler says many migrant workers like Lisa’s family didn’t show up this year as immigration enforcement intensified in California.
“That kind of had a chilling effect on people wanting to move,” Chandler says.
The result: cherries are rotting on the trees, in what Chandler says is costing him at least $250,000 in revenue.
In Woodbridge, Virginia, Todos Supermarket owner Carlos Castro is also struggling with worker shortages, though for a different reason.
He recently had to let the butchers and bakers he’d trained to work at his store go after the Trump administration revoked their work permits when it ended humanitarian parole programs for Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.
“They had important jobs…that can’t be filled very easily,” he says. “Great employees, this is the saddest thing, productive people with the desire to take care of their families, to get ahead, they take away their visas and give them a letter with the number of days they have to leave the country. And then for us as a company, we’re left scrambling to cover them.”
The butchers were trained in using the complicated heavy equipment behind the meat counter. Now the remaining staff are struggling to keep up with orders, he says.
“What could be done quickly before now takes more time, and people get discouraged, and they leave and don’t buy anything,” Castro says.
It’s something Ricardo never imagined would happen.
In more than a decade of regularly waiting for day labor jobs at a Home Depot parking lot in Southern California, he’s seen plenty of things.
There were the people who refused to pay him after a week of work.
There were the men who gave him checks that bounced.
But until this year, he says he’d never seen immigration authorities targeting this location. In recent months, he says, they’ve come three times.
Ricardo narrowly missed being detained; during two of the raids, he happened to be working elsewhere. And on one occasion, he’d just gotten picked up from the Home Depot for a job minutes earlier.
But despite those close calls, the 60-year-old from Mexico, who asked to be identified by his first name, says he keeps waiting for work there. Most day laborers, he says, don’t have the luxury of staying home.
“There are some people who’ve stopped going out, but I have bills to pay, I have to work,” he says.
Recent immigration arrests in the Los Angeles area have had a dramatic impact, he says. Far fewer workers have been waiting at the Home Depot, he says. And the number of people coming by with offers of work has also decreased significantly.
“People are afraid to go there and pick up people because of immigration,” he says.
On a typical day before, at least two dozen workers would wait in the parking lot, he says. Now, on some days, just three or four are there with him. Recently, though, he says the number of workers started to grow after local volunteers began waiting nearby and alerting them about anyone who looked suspicious.
On one recent summer day, his decision to stick it out paid off.
An unexpected visitor came to the Home Depot parking lot: Jesús Morales, a TikTok influencer known for surprising day laborers and street vendors with theme park visits and donations to support their work.
Morales took Ricardo and another worker to a water park that day. And a few weeks later, he raised thousands of dollars for them in a GoFundMe campaign, hoping the workers would take some time off and stay safe.
Ricardo says he was overwhelmed by the generous donation. But he still can’t afford to stop looking for work. So many jobs seem to be drying up right now, in what’s usually the busy season, and he’s worried about the months ahead.
“Imagine how it will be when we get to October, November and December. It’s scary. That’s why I have to work now and save money,” he says.
Ricardo says he’s well aware of the risks.
“You just have to believe in God,” he says, “and if it’s your turn, then that’s it.”
Marisol loves walking with her two children to the elementary school near their home in San Antonio, Texas. But as they get ready for classes to begin this year, she’s come to a difficult realization: Walking to school isn’t safe.
Inside her car, she hopes they’ll feel more protected. But if raids in the area intensify, she says she’ll be weighing an even more stressful question: Is sending them to school at all too risky? Last year, she already kept them home twice.
“I’m always saying, ‘Go to school, go to school, don’t be afraid.’ And I try to be brave,” says Marisol, who asked to be identified by her middle name because her family is undocumented. “But in the end, you get scared, and you don’t send them, and these fears get into your head, these monsters, asking ‘What could happen if I go to get them and they grab me outside the school? Or when I’m going from home to work? What will the children do?’ It’s a constant fear.”
Hearing those fears from parents breaks Velia Cortalano’s heart.
In the last school year, she says, multiple families kept their kids home from her school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on several occasions as immigration enforcement fears spread. Each time, Cortalano would try to convince them their children were safe at school. Most of the kids returned eventually. But she says one family left and never returned.
“The kids packed up all their things,” she says, “and then they just didn’t come back.”
Just as troubling as those sudden disappearances, Cortalano says, is a different sort of absence that’s even more prevalent in her classrooms.
“Even though they might be here, they’re not able to fully engage, because there’s that fear. ‘I’m here, but where’s my mom?’ or ‘Who’s going to come and pick me up?’”
Cortalano estimates that’s the situation for about a third of the students at Cien Aguas International School, where she’s the executive director. Many students in the K-8 school are part of immigrant families, she says. The strain is bubbling up in different ways, depending on students’ ages, and it makes it more difficult for everyone to learn. Several girls told her they felt like they had to be perfect and shouldn’t speak Spanish anymore. And some kids were roleplaying as “la migra versus the immigrants” until a gym teacher intervened.
“It’s been difficult for all the kids to sift through and manage in a healthy way. … It’s a lot of pressure,” she says.
The school does what it can to help students cope, she says. Among their strategies: a designated “wellness room” that includes soft lighting, a space for meditation and yoga exercises – and a punching bag.
Between raids and rumors, some restaurants are struggling
During what used to be the lunchtime rush, many tables sit empty at Spoon & Pork in Los Angeles.
Running a restaurant has never been easy, with razor-thin margins and rising costs. Co-owner Jay Tugas says the recent increase in immigration enforcement has been another devastating dent in the Filipino restaurant’s business.
“People don’t want to spend money. They don’t want to go out … People are scared. And I know it’s not just my restaurant, it’s pretty much everyone,” he says.
And employees often are scared to come to work.
“Everybody’s legal, but they’re still afraid they’ll get hassled or taken away, just because of how they look or how they talk,” says Ray Yaptinchay, another co-owner of the restaurant. “It’s just crazy, and it’s pretty sad, and it’s disrupted pretty much our whole industry.”
After rumors about immigration raids spread on social media and messaging apps, a 20-year-old Guatemalan immigrant saw a similar slump in business at the Mexican restaurant he manages in northeast Mississippi. He asked to be identified by his initials, J.F., because he’s undocumented and fears he could be targeted for speaking out.
That week earlier this year, he says, many nearby businesses closed when workers didn’t show up. His stayed open. And all day, he braced himself.
“You had this fear, just waiting to see if they were going to come through the door,” he says.
Among employees, morale has plummeted, he says, and comments from some customers can be tough to bear. Recently, after he asked how her meal was, one woman gave him a surprising response: “I hope they deport all of you soon.”
At a Mexican restaurant in Corpus Christi, Texas, rumors of ICE raids have also affected business.
“Sometimes we’re all alone for hours,” says L.V., a Guatemalan server at the restaurant who asked to be identified by her initials.
Some regular customers have stopped showing up, she says. And those who are still coming seem more somber.
The other day, she waited on a man who used to frequent the restaurant with his wife and children. Now he’s eating alone. The rest of the family has left the country, he told her, because the risks were too great.
“You can see he’s not OK, and how much he misses them,” she says.
At first, Esmeralda thought she’d leave the country and study abroad when Trump returned to power. But seeing many places she knows targeted during recent immigration raids in the Los Angeles area sparked a new feeling in her.
“My community has been terrorized. … At first I felt fear,” she says, “but then I was angry, actually. … This is my city. This is my state. And I’m going to stay here to protect not only myself, my livelihood, but the people that I know.”
The 30-year-old, who was brought to the US from Mexico when she was 3, has DACA and a driver’s license. She asked to be identified by her first name to protect undocumented members of her family. She’d driven her parents and siblings around when asked before. But now, she says what started as something convenient has become a necessity.
“Don’t even think about taking the bus,” she warned them.
Similar concerns have been spreading in LA after reports of authorities boarding public transportation and targeting people waiting at bus stops. Ridership on the city’s bus system downtown is down 35%, officials said in a recent court filing.
LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn says it’s a telling sign that represents just “a fraction of the toll” on immigrant communities.
“People aren’t just worried about taking the bus — they are terrified of leaving their homes or going to their jobs or going to the hospital,” Hahn said in a statement to CNN.
From behind the wheel of her gray Ford SUV, Esmeralda says she’s doing what she can to help. She’s extending her efforts beyond her family, too, delivering groceries locally to people who are too scared to leave their homes.
Quiet grocery delivery networks like the one Esmeralda recently joined are popping up in communities across the country, from LA to Chicago to Philadelphia.
“They don’t advertise much, they’re using WhatsApp, and they have a good system,” says Denisse Agurto, who leads a non-profit advocacy group in the Philadelphia suburb of Norristown.
Many residents in Norristown, which is about 35% Latino, were rattled recently after immigration authorities targeted a Latino supermarket there in July. CNN affiliate KYW reported that 14 undocumented immigrants were taken into custody that day.
Now Agurto, executive director of Unides Para Servir Norristown, says Latinos in the area are terrified.
“They’re not coming out of their houses,” she says, and the community’s main business corridor looks like a ghost town.
Undocumented immigrants aren’t the only ones who are worried. US citizens like her are fearful, too, says Agurto, adding that she’s started carrying around her passport.
In a Facebook group, locals recently discussed which grocery stores could be safe to go to now. One commenter warned neighbors to be skeptical: “Given how this situation is, we can’t trust anyone. Question: Is this an infiltrator from ICE who wants to know where we’re going next?”
Days before the Colombian heritage festival he’s been hosting for over a decade was slated to start in July, Jorge Ortega’s phone rang.
“Something happened at the museum,” the voice on the other end told him. “It looks like some federal agents showed up.”
The presence of federal law enforcement in a Chicago museum parking lot sparked a flurry of rumors and panic in the city’s immigrant communities. A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman later denied authorities were targeting the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture that day, stating they merely had a quick briefing in the parking lot about a narcotics investigation, CNN affiliate WLS reported. But many in the neighborhood remained unconvinced.
The museum is in Humboldt Park, where the Great Colombian Festival also takes place every year, and Ortega knew he needed to act quickly.
In some cities, festivals have been cancelled after similar incidents. Concerts and sporting events have reported dips in attendance.
But for Ortega, calling off this festival wasn’t an option.
“I was really nervous … You think in your head, ‘What if no one shows up?’ Or the biggest worry for me was how were we going to keep the community safe?”
Fears forced organizers to take more precautions, he says, including last-minute emergency planning and increased security for the event.
And still, half the vendors who’d been slated to come to the festival didn’t show up.
“Many of the workers didn’t want to come to work. They were afraid that they would be detained,” Ortega says.
Ultimately, attendance numbers for the three-day event dropped significantly. But still, more than 6,500 people came. Restaurants and vendors who participated sold out. And Ortega says he sees an important lesson in the experience.
“We celebrated our independence, kept moving forward, presented our culture. And in the end, we won. … I think we defeated fear,” he says. “Because if you live with fear, what are we going to do? Am I going to stay locked up at home doing nothing? That’s not life.”
Next year, Ortega plans to organize the festival again. In the face of uncertainty, he’s still determined to push forward.
So are many vendors at Georgia’s Plaza Fiesta.
Miguel Pollania, a photographer who’s worked at the mall for more than two decades, remembers when his shop was so busy, he needed assistants just to handle the weekend rush.
Today he’s frustrated by false rumors about immigration enforcement at the mall that are scaring many would-be customers.
“They saw a picture online, maybe just mall security, but they think it is immigration,” he says. “And that is enough to keep them away.”
But Pollania is holding out for better times. He looks around his studio and points to a frame in the center of his display wall. It’s a series of traditional baby portraits, featuring multiple poses in circular cutouts. The infant pictured is the child of someone he took a baby portrait of 20 years ago.
“We have been here 22 years,” Pollania says. “We have seen a lot. We have survived a lot.”
And through it all, Pollania and other vendors keep coming to work at Plaza Fiesta.
They sweep the floors, open their stalls and wait, hoping that someday soon customers will return.
