The day before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, a group of immigrant families visited Nora Sandigo’s ranch, requesting her to become the legal guardian of their children. Now, they are urging her to come to their homes to complete the necessary paperwork.

This situation highlights how undocumented immigrants in the U.S. have adjusted their travel habits, with many choosing to stay home as much as possible. They are avoiding visits to the residences and offices of advocates like Sandigo due to fears of being caught in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation. Their concerns have intensified following Trump’s campaign promises of mass deportations and his termination of programs that previously provided immigrants with legal entry into the country.

Over the past few weeks, Nora Sandigo has received hundreds of calls from immigrant parents across the U.S. She shared that she has visited at least 15 homes where parents have completed paperwork, granting her the authority to sign documents on behalf of their children at schools, hospitals, and courts in case they are deported. This power of attorney also enables her to assist children in traveling to reunite with their families.

"People are now telling us they are afraid to go outside, afraid to drive, and worried about being stopped on the street," said Sandigo, a 59-year-old mother of two daughters who resides in Homestead, a city of around 80,000 people south of Miami. "They have asked me to come to them instead of them coming to me."

Immigration arrests under Trump

The White House has reported that since Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, over 8,000 undocumented immigrants have been arrested. Between January 23 and January 31, ICE averaged 787 arrests per day, a significant increase from the daily average of 311 during the previous 12-month period under the Biden administration. ICE has since stopped releasing daily arrest figures.

In Homestead, a community where many Mexican and Central American immigrants work in nurseries and agricultural fields, some are avoiding supermarkets, relying on neighbors to do their grocery shopping instead. Outside stores like Home Depot, men no longer gather in search of work. Others have even stopped attending Sunday services at Sacred Heart Church.

"People have stopped coming, and when they do, they ask if immigration officials have been here," said Elisaul Velazco, who owns a clothing store in the downtown area. "Everything has come to a standstill. Sales have dropped by 60%."

Parents fear their children will be taken from them

Sandigo has been preparing immigrant parents for the worst—being cut off from their kids—for years.

Rather than having those parents come to her, she now goes to them.

She visited four homes on a recent Sunday and obtained documentation pertaining to more than 20 children. In certain instances, the children are citizens who were born in the United States. The documents only give Sandigo the authority to make choices on their behalf; they do not grant her complete legal guardianship or transfer parental rights.

The majority of parents worry that if they don't designate a legal guardian, their kids will end up in foster care, they'll lose their parental rights, and someone else will take them in.

Visiting immigrant parents' homes

Julia, a 36-year-old Guatemalan woman who requested to be identified only by her first name due to fear of deportation, hesitated for a few minutes before opening the door for Nora Sandigo, as a group of people rushed out the back.

"It’s me, Nora, the lady you called to come," Sandigo reassured her.

Julia cautiously cracked the door open, saw Sandigo, and then stepped outside. She explained that her husband had been detained a few days earlier while traveling in a van with other immigrants on their way to a construction job.

After a brief conversation, Julia invited Sandigo, along with a notary and a volunteer, into her small home.

She recalled how, eight years ago, her first husband—also from Guatemala—had been deported, leaving her behind with their two American-born children, now 18 and 11 years old.

"We are afraid. I feel very sad about what I am going through," Julia said, her voice trembling and her eyes welling with tears.

The notary asked her to provide her daughter's birth certificate and clarified that her son, being an adult, did not need a legal guardian.

"I don’t want my children taken away from me. If something happens to me, I want them to stay with me," Julia said before signing a power of attorney naming Sandigo as the legal guardian of her youngest child.

In the backyard of another home, Albertina, a 36-year-old Mexican mother, held her 2-month-old baby while sharing her fears about what would happen to her six children if she were deported. Like Julia, she requested to be identified only by her first name.

"I am very afraid that they will take me while I’m on the road and separate me from my children," she said.

She asked Sandigo to care for her two oldest daughters, 15 and 17, since they did not want to return to Mexico, while requesting that her four younger children be sent back to her home country if she were forced to leave.

Sandigo has been a guardian for 2,000 children

Sandigo can identify with the families she assists. A devoted Catholic, she left her parents behind when she was sixteen years old and fled Nicaragua when the Sandinista government took away her family's farm. She is now a citizen of the US.

She started offering to act as a legal guardian for immigrant children around fifteen years ago. Since then, about 22 children of deported parents have temporarily resided in her home. She has been the guardian of almost 2,000 children, some of whom are now adults. Sandigo claimed to have helped hundreds of them kids.

"I feel love for God, solidarity, and empathy for them." She said, "I want to do something."