FRESNO, Calif. \u2013 On a Friday night in late January, around 100 members of Fresno\u2019s Southeast Asian community gathered in a banquet hall. They were there to discuss immigration concerns in light of aggressive and at-times-violent immigration enforcement recently carried out in Minneapolis and other cities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had representatives from our Khmer community, our Lao community, our Mien community, and our Hmong community,\u201d said May Gnia Her, who was in the front row of the gathering at The Fresno Center, a non-profit organization that serves members of Southeast Asian and other diaspora in the Fresno area.<\/p>\n
Her is the executive director of a different non-profit: Stone Soup Fresno, which runs a preschool and other services for both kids and adults.<\/p>\n
Her is Hmong \u2013 an indigenous ethnic group from Southeast Asia and China \u2013 and she explains that the Hmong-American story is unique<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many Hmong people fled to the U.S. as refugees beginning in the 1970s. During the Vietnam War, countless Hmong people had risked their lives fighting alongside the U.S. in a parallel \u201cSecret War\u201d in neighboring Laos. As a result, tens of thousands of Hmong people died, and hundreds of thousands were no longer welcome in their communities.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were left with no homeland,\u201d Her said. \u201cWe were left with no villages, no place to go back.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, decades later, many who came to the U.S. as refugees have become naturalized U.S. citizens, and younger generations of Hmong-Americans who were born here were granted birthright citizenship.<\/p>\n Still, many say they\u2019re afraid of being detained and even deported under a federal immigration crackdown by the second Trump administration.<\/p>\n Democratic Congressman Jim Costa also attended that January meeting. Some attendees told him they\u2019re scared to leave their houses, while others said they fear family members with criminal records could be deported \u2013 even if they\u2019ve paid their debt with prison time.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a sense of: we live in America, we’ve done right, we follow the rules. We sacrificed 300,000 of our own people to be here, and now we have no protection,\u201d Her said.<\/p>\n Costa responded to the community members to forcefully say that the tactics being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies are wrong \u2013 and that he\u2019s tried to fight ICE through legislation along with other Democrats in Congress. But he said those bills have largely stalled in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.<\/p>\n He couldn\u2019t assure the community members gathered here that they\u2019d be safe from deportation.<\/p>\n \u201cI left early because I really felt like it didn’t really matter what I had to say,\u201d Her said. \u201cAnd I think that’s a concern with the entire community.\u201d<\/p>\n Costa later told KVPR he\u2019s not ignoring community concerns. He said he and other Democrats are banking on regaining control of Congress in the midterms \u2013 and that on-the-ground conversations like these will help to inform future policy.<\/p>\n \u201cThese community forums are more than just conversations\u2014they are essential groundwork,\u201d he wrote in an email. \u201cWe are gathering firsthand intel from local leaders and families to understand exactly how these policies are hitting the ground. We are listening now so that when we regain control of the House, we can act decisively with policies shaped by the real-world experiences of our neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n What immigration enforcement looks like in the Valley<\/p>\n Meanwhile, local law enforcement agencies don\u2019t have solid answers for the community, either.<\/p>\n When asked whether federal immigration officials have ramped up their presence in the Valley, representatives of the Fresno Police Department and the Fresno and Madera County sheriff\u2019s offices couldn\u2019t say \u2013 though they did all confirm they don\u2019t cooperate directly with ICE.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a matter of policy, the Madera County Sheriff\u2019s Office does not speculate on the presence or operations of other law enforcement agencies. ICE\/CBP are not required to inform local jurisdictions, as immigration is a federal responsibility. Our focus remains on serving the residents of Madera County and ensuring public safety,\u201d wrote Madera County Sheriff\u2019s Office representative Kate Woertman in an email.<\/p>\n In the absence of information about whether the landscape is changing, some locals have taken it upon themselves to be immigration vigilantes, flooding social media with photos and videos purporting to show ICE agents in the community.<\/p>\n And although a few of these videos likely did capture ICE agents, many were other local law enforcement operations. For instance, the Merced County Sheriff\u2019s Office in mid-January confirmed that a set of videos claiming to shed light on ICE operations<\/a> in fact captured a massive law enforcement operation being carried out by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation<\/a> and a handful of other law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n Community groups step up to fill in the gaps<\/p>\n Misinformation in times like these can backfire, said Gregorio Matiaz, an immigration program manager with the non-profit Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Ind\u00edgena Oaxaque\u00f1o that provides services to the local indigenous Mexican community.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s causing more uncertainty and fear amongst the community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That fear was compounded by the fact that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services abruptly cancelled a Fresno naturalization ceremony in late January, though it was later rescheduled to a date in February.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I’m hearing is a lot of fear, a lot of precautions when going out,\u201d Matiaz said.<\/p>\n Part of the confusion is that ICE agents are difficult to identify and commonly wear plain clothes and face masks<\/a>.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also not a secret that federal agents are already in the San Joaquin Valley \u2013 though they more commonly detain people at check-ins with federal agencies<\/a>, rather than in the community raids as we\u2019ve seen unfold on national television.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we don’t want is to cause panic in our communities,\u201d warns Nora Zaragoza-Ya\u00f1ez<\/p>\n with the non-profit organization Faith in the Valley.<\/p>\n She runs the Valley Watch Network, which takes pains to confirm ICE reports then put out alerts<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a team of legal observers across the eight counties where minute that we receive the information, they’re activated, and they go and verify to confirm or dispel the activity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Still, federal immigration enforcement has undoubtedly ramped up in other places \u2013 like Minneapolis \u2013 and protesting immigration enforcement agencies has also led to some unusual bedfellows.<\/p>\n High school students who have for weeks staged mass school walkouts<\/a> in protest of ICE in the Fresno area have found themselves speaking out on the same side of an issue with others like Fresno\u2019s Republican Mayor Jerry Dyer, who has called for keeping local control<\/a> in order to maintain community trust.<\/p>\n Dyer, though, praised the Trump administration for things he says it has done right \u2013 like adding more security to the U.S.-Mexico border.<\/p>\n With few major immigration enforcement operations in the Valley, protests have largely been conducted in anticipation of what could come.<\/p>\n And some residents still recall a Border Patrol operation in Kern County a year ago<\/a> that resulted in 78 arrests \u2013 and led to plummeting attendance at both local schools and in agricultural fields<\/a> that typically employ immigrant farm laborers. That operation has been largely considered a blueprint for immigration enforcement actions that happened later in other parts of the country.<\/p>\n Community organizations are finding themselves in the middle of it all.<\/p>\n In Fresno, community advocates say they\u2019re serving as primary sources of information as fears settle in and misinformation rises. May Gnia Her said parents and community members commonly have come to her so many times for information about local immigration enforcement that Stone Soup Fresno recently led a \u201cKnow Your Rights\u201d workshop.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a very diverse community that showed up,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so we know that the questions are there, we know that the need is there.\u201d<\/p>\n