In Ana Luna’s home, an image of an American flag adorns the kitchen wall. On her iPhone, the wallpaper is a picture of her eldest daughter, in her dress blue U.S. Marine uniform.
And tucked in folders are years of tax returns, a paper trail of working lives that helped Ms. Luna, 47, and her husband rent their three-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles where they have lived for almost two decades.
“We’re upstanding people who love this country,” Ms. Luna said.
She is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. So is her husband.
For a family of modest means, life in Southern California has been defined by simple pleasures, like going to the park, the mall or services at the church that they made their spiritual home.
Now those joys have been colored by a fear that has swept through immigrant communities of the United States since the Trump administration launched its mass deportation campaign in January.
About one-third of noncitizen immigrants now say they are avoiding aspects of everyday life, according to a new national survey of immigrants from The New York Times and KFF, a nonprofit that conducts polling and research about health policy. Among undocumented immigrants, that share rises to 59 percent.
“With the way things are now, we feel afraid and insecure,” said Ms. Luna, who said she and her husband were speaking to The Times on the record becausethey were proud of their family’s contributions to the United States.
Large shares of undocumented immigrants like Ms. Luna describe changes to their daily life. Most say they or someone in their family now regularly avoid travel, nearly half have avoided seeking medical care, and 40 percent say they or someone in their family has avoided going to work.
About 52 million people living in the United States are immigrants. A little over half are naturalized citizens. The rest, noncitizens, are a mix of people who are in the country legally and who are not.
The new survey provides a window into the sentiments of noncitizen immigrants, both those with a temporary legal status — such as foreign students and workers — and those who are undocumented, because they entered the United States illegally or lack an active visa or other permission to reside in the country. At a moment when the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics in Chicago and elsewhere have stirred resistance among not only immigrants but growing numbers of U.S.-born citizens, the results help illuminate life as an immigrant right now in the United States.
The results come at a time when many Americans support tougher policies on illegal immigration: A Times/Siena poll in late September found that 54 percent of registered voters supported deporting immigrants who were living in the country illegally.
More than half of noncitizen immigrants now say they are worried that they or a family member will be detained or deported, an increase since 2023. Among undocumented immigrants, 75 percent say they fear detention or deportation.
Even immigrants in the country lawfully, whether permanent residents, students or workers on visas, are taking precautions they did not before. Many are carrying their green cards, required under the law but not usually enforced, nervous that an accent or a darker complexion could make them targets.
“Agents look at our face, assume we are illegal and treat us like criminals,” said Sandra Perez, 40, a legal permanent resident who lives in a New York City suburb, who never leaves home without her green card.
Half of noncitizen immigrants report carrying a passport, residency card or work authorization with them, twice as many who said that in April, a sign that intensified enforcement, from Los Angeles to Chicago, New York and beyond, has rattled even those who have temporary legal status.
In interviews, many said that their sense of belonging has been replaced with vigilance and dread.
John, 31, who is from India, came to the United States to study and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees. Two years ago, he received a green card after marrying an American citizen.
He teaches at a public school in Philadelphia, and that makes him uneasy.
The Trump administration lifted a directive that had banned immigration agents from conducting operations at “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals and houses of worship.
“I definitely hear stories and talk of immigration agents waiting outside of schools,” he said.
“I used to leave my green card at home in a safe place,” he said. “Now I have it in my wallet, just in case.”
John is among those interviewed for this article who spoke on condition that their last name be withheld for fear of jeopardizing their immigration status, even though he is residing in the United States lawfully.
He and his wife are expecting a child, and his green card is still temporary, or “conditional,” pending approval of a permanent one.
Like most immigrants, John believes the immigration system has treated him fairly. Nearly 70 percent of noncitizen immigrants, including half of undocumented immigrants, expressed that sentiment, according to the survey.
However, he said, “I feel I have to pay close attention to every aspect of life.”
“I have stopped posting anything on social media,” he said. “I am wary of what posts I like.”
The Trump administration has also increased vetting of citizenship applicants, to ascertain whether they hold anti-American sentiments. Immigration officers can also conduct interviews with neighbors of applicants.
Nearly one in three noncitizen immigrants, including half of those without legal status, say they personally know someone who has been detained or deported, roughly double the share who said the same in April of this year.
What keeps some undocumented immigrants especially on edge, they said in interviews, is the reality that the enforcement doesn’t differentiate between those who are dangerous criminals and those who have been in the country for decades working, paying taxes and often raising U.S. citizen children.
They also expressed frustration that there has been no progress toward comprehensive immigration reform, which Congress last passed in 1986.
Not all immigrants share the same fears.
Lemay Oliva, 42, crossed the southern border in California in May 2015 and, as a Cuban, benefited from the now-defunct “wet foot, dry foot” policy that offered a fast track to legal residency for any Cuban who touched U.S. soil — a path not offered to other migrants.
The policy, in effect from 1995 to 2017, was designed to advance the U.S. goals of welcoming those fleeing the Communist nation and deterring dangerous sea crossings by migrants trying to reach the United States.
Mr. Oliva, who described himself as right wing, runs a bar service for private parties in Orlando, Fla.
The current immigration crackdown did not bother him. “I’m fine with it,” he said.
“These people broke the law,” he said of migrants who crossed the border. “You need to enforce the law. It doesn’t matter if you broke it 20 years ago.”
Mr. Oliva’s views reflect those of a small but not insubstantial share of noncitizen immigrants. One-third of the group said the level of immigration enforcement in the country right now was necessary.
Their comfort with the current enforcement climate mirrors that of white immigrants who report feeling less threatened by the crackdown.
Immigrants from European countries — undocumented as well as those with legal status — are less likely to experience the fear that many other immigrants describe, according to the survey. One-third of Europeans say they have felt afraid, compared with 57 percent of immigrants from Latin America and 44 percent from Asia.
Tatyana Puzynia, 34, moved to Washington State from Belarus in 2019, with her husband, a tech worker on an H-1B visa by a tech company.
They now live in the Seattle area, where they are raising their two sons, ages 6 and 4.
On the weekends, they enjoy the region’s many trails, museums and playgrounds.
“There are so many possibilities,” she said on the day the family had made a bid on a five-bedroom house. “The quality of life as middle class is so much better” than in Belarus.
Ms. Puzynia said that her family and people in their immediate circle have not been adversely affected by hard-line immigration policies.
She noted that she liked the politics of her Democratic-led state, whose governor has been an outspoken critic of President Trump’s deportation agenda. In her home country, the same man, Alexander Lukashenko, has been president since she was a young child, she said. Here, she said, “it’s great that the president can change every four years. Next time will come another president, and there will be changes.”
Ms. Luna, the undocumented immigrant in Los Angeles, paused when asked whether she would make the journey to the United States again. She never imagined that she and her husband, and by extension her family, would ever feel as unsafe as they do now, she said.
They have five children. Four of them — ages 18, 12, 11 and 7 — were born in the United States. The fifth, a son who is 26, was brought from Mexico as a child and is a so-called Dreamer, shielded from deportation by the Obama-era program known as DACA. They have created an emergency plan, in the event that Ms. Luna or her husband, Gabriel Lorenzo, gets detained.
“We are grateful for everything this country has given us and our children,” said Mr. Lorenzo, who has worked for the same construction company for more than a decade. “But the system has become downright cruel toward immigrants.”
For years, Ms. Luna drove her eldest daughter 45 minutes each way to attend a high school military academy, because she was determined to join the Marines.
Ms. Luna then rushed home to get her other girls ready for school. After dropping them off, she drove another 35 minutes to her janitorial job.
Busy as those days were, they feel like a blissful, bygone time in her life.
On several occasions, agents have shown up in the parking lot of the strip mall where she works, including this month, when a shopkeeper who knows her called to advise her to delay her arrival.
“We have been the work force in construction, restaurants, janitorial,” she said. “Now we have to run, hide or stay inside,” she said. “And it’s especially heartbreaking for our children.”
On a recent day, at 2:08 p.m., her phone buzzed with a text from her youngest child’s school informing parents about reports of immigration enforcement nearby. She prayed as she drove to get her.
Next month, her eldest daughter will graduate as a U.S. Marine at Camp Pendleton after completing boot camp.
Ms. Luna is resolved to attend the ceremony, no matter how risky the drive.
“I wouldn’t want to miss her graduation,” she said.
Here are the key things to know about the The New York Times/KFF survey of immigrants:
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The survey was conducted among 1,805 adult immigrants nationwide from Aug. 28 to Oct. 20.
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The poll includes immigrants who are U.S. citizens, those with visas or permanent residency and those who are likely undocumented, who were identified as not being citizens or having valid visas.
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The survey was conducted on the telephone, via the mail and online, and could be taken in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Haitian-Creole. The survey was designed by researchers at KFF in collaboration with The Times, and was administered by SSRS, a public opinion research company. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here.
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To further ensure that the results reflect all immigrants, not just those willing to take a poll, the poll gives more weight to respondents from demographic groups that would otherwise be underrepresented among survey respondents, like immigrants without a college degree and those who do not speak English proficiently.
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The margin of sampling error for all immigrants is about plus or minus three percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should generally reflect the views of the overall population of immigrants, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. The margin of error is larger for subgroups.
You can see full results and a detailed methodology here. If you want to read more about how this poll was conducted, you can see answers to frequently asked questions.
Miriam Jordan reports from a grass roots perspective on immigrants and their impact on the demographics, society and economy of the United States.
The post How Noncitizens, Anxious Under Trump, Are Altering Their Lives appeared first on New York Times.
