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'We don’t have peace': How undocumented New Yorkers' lives have changed
By
Arya Sundaram
Published Sep 24, 2025
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Christian Rodriguez/Gothamist
By
Arya Sundaram
Published Sep 24, 2025
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Every morning before her children leave for school, Judhe, a 33-year-old asylum-seeker from Peru, reminds them of her phone number — just in case they encounter immigration enforcement officers. One of her in-laws was detained a few months ago, and the fear has lingered in her household ever since.
“We don’t have peace,” Judhe said in Spanish. “But the fear of returning to our country is greater than the fear of staying here.”
She is one of the estimated 412,000 immigrants in New York City who lack permanent legal immigration status — a sprawling group living under the shadow of President Donald Trump's mass deportation threats and a city flooded with immigration officers.
The immigrants interviewed for this story say they remain under constant mental strain and worry, and asked that their full names not be used because they feared deportation. Many say the radius of daily life has shrunk since Trump took office, with fewer subway rides, fewer errands, and fewer hours outside the home. Some say they are seeing their livelihoods erode.
In nationwide focus groups conducted earlier this year, the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found similar concerns raised among immigrants, with even lawfully present immigrants and naturalized citizens reporting increased fears of being detained or deported.
“There is just widespread fear among immigrants, across immigration statuses,” said Drishti Pillai, director of immigrant health policy at KFF. “Some of these fears are being amplified by Trump administration policy changes.”
Immigration arrests in New York City jumped 56% from last year, according to government data analyzed by Gothamist. Officials detained more than 3,300 people across the city between Jan. 20, when Trump began his second term, and July 29.
Some immigrants report seeing ICE agents in their neighborhoods, or know relatives and friends who’ve been detained. Others say they scroll through videos of ICE raids on social media. For many, the calculation is constant: how to keep working, caring for family, and moving through the city while staying one step ahead of federal agents who might take it all away.
‘Everyone has their own family to look after’
Since Trump's return to the White House, 40-year-old Lin, from Fujian province in China, says her world has narrowed to the few blocks around her Brooklyn apartment. She stopped using the subway. No more taking her children to museums, zoos, or parks — or any crowded places. The goal is to leave the house “as seldom as possible.”
After entering the country illegally and living in New York City for two decades, Lin said she’s constantly considering the fallout if she’s deported. She's seen videos of ICE arrests surfacing daily on RedNote, a Chinese social networking app, feeding a loop of late-night what-ifs she can’t switch off. She's haunted by the question of what will happen to her three minor children — who are all U.S. citizens — if she's detained.
A few months ago, Lin began scouring newspaper ads and internet reviews to find lawyers to put the questions to. The lawyers urged her to name a standby guardian, a person who would care for her children if she no longer could. Otherwise, the lawyers said, her children may end up in foster care if she’s arrested.
Lin asked her sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen living in another state, if she’d be willing to take on the role. Her sister-in-law said she needed more time to think about it. Lin said she was heartbroken, but she hasn’t pressed for an answer.
“Everyone has their own family to look after,” Lin said in Mandarin. “I don’t want to cause too much trouble to my family.”
In the meanwhile, Lin picks up extra shifts at the Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn where she works, to save money for her children in case the worst happens. Her husband, who's also undocumented, works in another state and has postponed returning home to Brooklyn because he’s afraid of getting deported. She doesn’t talk about her fears with her children; saying she doesn’t want to traumatize them, too.
Every day at 7 a.m., Lin said she prays to Jesus that one day, things will be better, and she won’t have to live in fear. And every day, she said she thinks to herself: I just need to safely get through this day.
‘So we bear it, we bear it, we bear it, we bear it’
Judhe said her brother-in-law, also from Peru, was detained by immigration officers a few months ago after being pulled over by police while driving on Long Island. Since then, Judhe said she has been on high alert. That’s even though she is an asylum-seeker, with legal permission to be in the United States while her court case plays out.
Judhe accompanies her son to school in the Bronx.
Christian Rodriguez/Gothamist
At 11 p.m. every night, she watches Univision on the television at the Bronx shelter where she stays, to keep up with the latest news on ICE and deportations.
When her children leave for school, she reminds them of her phone number — to call, “God forbid,” in case of an emergency. And while her children are in school, she thinks, “What will happen to my daughter? What will she come to me with today?”
On the first day of school in September, Judhe’s daughter was in tears. The child, Judhe said, worried her mother would be detained by immigration officers, leaving her alone. There also were school bullies to contend with, frequently targeting her and joking that they would call ICE or Trump.
Judhe said she has tried to teach her daughter resilience, but the 11-year-old keeps replaying the insults in her head.
“What are you going to do here? I’m doing worse than the little kid,” Judhe said in Spanish, chuckling grimly. “So we bear it, we bear it, we bear it, we bear it.”
‘Love, I’m not going to be with you for a while’
The day before Trump took office, 29-year-old Hortencia and her family, originally from Colombia, crossed from Mexico into Hidalgo, Texas. Five days later, her husband stepped out of the church shelter where they were staying in San Antonio to buy diapers and juice — and never returned.
She learned later her husband Jairo had been arrested, and that he’d likely be deported.
“I was in a state of torture,” Hortencia, who later moved to New York City, said in Spanish. “I felt the world had collapsed on me… I had to summon the strength I didn’t have to continue on.”
In February, Jairo was deported to Colombia, where he now stays inside most days due to fear of local cartels. Hortencia supports him from Manhattan, wiring him half of what she earns braiding and cutting hair on weekends.
Hortencia often imagines how much easier life would be if Jairo were with her. They’d take turns going to work and watching the girls. They wouldn’t have to live in a shelter, because they’d have enough money to rent an apartment.
For now, Hortencia is saving for a work permit — a document that once was free but now costs $550 under new federal rules. After that, she hopes to hire a lawyer to fight for Jairo’s return, or perhaps pursue another path: reuniting in Canada, where she hopes her family might finally live in peace together.
When Jairo called after his deportation, he tried to explain the situation to their 2-year-old daughter: “Love, I’m not going to be with you for a while. I don’t know how long it’s going to be, but I hope it’s soon,” he said he told her. “The only thing is that you can’t come here, but there I hope you will be safe and calm. That’s the only thing that gives us strength.”
‘I feel like a fugitive for something I didn’t do’
For weeks, 50-year-old Petra had planned to turn herself in.
The native of Mexico, a country she hadn’t resided in for 35 years, said she considered returning on her own, rather than waiting to be deported.
She’d live with her sister, and maybe work with her nieces and nephews, at their flower shop or restaurant in Mexico.
But three days before her August check-in, Petra said she decided to remain in the United States, and skipped the appointment. She said she couldn’t leave her children behind.
Her husband was deported to Mexico in 2012. With both her and her husband gone, her three adult children, all U.S. citizens, would have no other family in the country.
So Petra fled. On Aug. 24, she left her apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with a single suitcase, and moved into a borrowed room in Richmond Hill, Queens. She sleeps on an air mattress in her friend’s daughter's room. “I feel like a fugitive for something I didn’t do,” she said.
Petra still works as a home attendant, caring for a cancer patient during three 12-hour shifts a week. But she’s skipped doctor’s appointments, including a check-up after her hernia removal surgery. She transferred her bank account, and custody of her youngest child, to her eldest child, just in case.
Petra’s especially worried about her youngest child, an 18-year-old finishing high school, who she says has turned to alcohol in recent months.
“He’s driven me to fight. I know he still needs me,” Petra said in Spanish. “I ask God to give me the opportunity to not be found until my son graduates from school.”
Tagged
Race And Justice Unit
immigration
new york city
Arya Sundaram
Arya is a reporter covering race and justice. Got a tip? Email: [email protected] or reach Arya on Signal at 512-650-8767.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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