US immigrant parents are taking intense precautions in case of detention: ‘I need to prepare for the worst’

She called it the “end times”.

In a quiet living room in south Florida, a 42-year-old South American woman sat at her kitchen table signing her will. Her hands trembled, and the ink smeared when tears fell hard enough that she had to reprint the pages.

In the background, her three young children – two boys and a toddler daughter – began to cry at the sight of their mother weeping over paperwork they could not understand.

The documents spelled out what should happen if she died: guardians for her children, instructions for her belongings, an advance health directive. She has no relatives she can rely on, so she named her neighbors.

When two friends from her church signed as witnesses, she broke down again.

She is not ill. And yet she is afraid to die – from immigration enforcement.

The Guardian has agreed to withhold the woman’s identity and many of her details because she lacks legal immigration status and fears possible arrest and detention.

Many immigrants say they are so afraid of being swept up in immigration raids, killed during enforcement encounters or dying in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody that they are drafting wills, as government crackdowns intensify and deaths in detention reach record levels.

“I need to prepare for the worst,” she said in Spanish, wiping her face and taking a breath. “It breaks my heart, but I need to do it for my kids. Miami could be the next Minneapolis.”

That phrase has been circulating in south Florida, long one of the country’s most prominent immigrant hubs, as shorthand for the fear that aggressive immigration enforcement could expand rapidly into new cities.

Sandy Adams with her mom, Gayle Bojerski, on 12 November 2025. Bojerski’s husband, Paul John Bojerski, 79, was incarcerated at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ until recently, when he was transferred to ICE detention in Miami. Photograph: Orlando Sentinel/TNS

Even as the Trump administration has pulled back from some of the inflammatory rhetoric and highly visible street tactics that thrust Minneapolis into international headlines earlier this year, the underlying policy has not changed. Hardline immigration enforcement and the push to detain people to further the administration’s mass deportation agenda continues.

Fear in the Miami area intensified after the massive federal operation in Minnesota in particular. Following aggressive operations in Chicago, New Orleans, Charlotte and Los Angeles, Minneapolis residents described themselves as under siege. The Department of Homeland Security, the umbrella agency of ICE and border patrol, called the deployment there the largest operation in its history. It led to the fatal shootings of two US citizens by federal officers and the detention of children as the operation swept through neighborhoods.

The drawdown of the additional federal agents from Minneapolis amid intense community pushback and spreading publish backlash, and the firing of the DHS secretary Kristi Noem, have done little to quell the anxiety there or in other cities, however.

Reports that warehouse spaces across the country are being acquired or retrofitted to expand detention capacity deepened concerns that enforcement infrastructure was not shrinking – just shifting.

If federal authorities could mobilize so quickly in one city and then disperse, where might those agents go next, people ask?

That uncertainty is increasingly reflected in legal planning. Lawyers and immigrant advocates in Florida, Texas and California have reported a rise in undocumented parents drafting wills and guardianship papers because they fear dying in custody or being deported without warning.

“It was not common in the past,” said Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, of people preparing final documents as a precaution. “It has become more so as people are learning about it.”

The trend accelerated sharply over the past year, she said: “A lot has changed.”

For families already living with the possibility of deportation, the shift has deepened a fear not only of detention, but of what could happen inside it.

“People are really, really afraid,” Petit said. “Since the administration started in January of 2025, we’ve already had [at least] 40 people die in detention. People are hearing more and more stories of not being given access to healthcare.”

That fear is not just about deportation itself, she said, but about the possibility of sudden disappearance.

“Definitely the stress level has increased because people have seen an increase in violence toward immigrants,” Petit said.

Yiralit Vanegas (left) hugs Laura during a vigil at Christ Lutheran church on 9 August 2025, in Oakland Park, Florida. Laura, who is undocumented, has a 13-year-old son and was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. She watched two months ago as her husband, Luis, was detained by ICE and taken to a detention center in Louisiana. Photograph: Miami Herald/TNS

In south Florida, the shift has been rapid and local law enforcement is participating.

On 1 January, the Miami-Dade sheriff’s office had 100 “designated immigration officers” – deputies certified by the federal government in a partnership to perform immigration enforcement functions. By the end of that month, that number had climbed to 334, more than tripling in less than 30 days, according to figure requested from the sheriff’s office.

Although the department – one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the United States – has participated for years in ICE’s so-called 287(g) program, which allows local officers to perform certain federal immigration enforcement functions and is rapidly expanding across the US, in November it formally added a new 12-page policy to its standard operating procedures, embedding immigration enforcement procedures into routine local policing.

Under the policy, certified deputies who develop “reasonable suspicion” that someone is undocumented may run immigration checks through federal databases. If the person is flagged, deputies must request a designated immigration officer within the hour.

Once that officer confirms an administrative warrant with ICE, the sheriff’s deputies may carry out a civil immigration arrest, even if no state or local criminal charges are filed.

The department has also added a new processing step. People taken into custody are brought first to police headquarters before being transported to jail. There, a certified immigration officer conducts an immigration status check and contacts federal authorities if there is a match with someone who is a target for enforcement.

While the policy notes that civil immigration warrants are not judicial warrants, it creates a pathway for local officers to execute them. Deputies are required to collect detailed biographical information and report immigration-related encounters to the state, establishing a formal tracking system for immigration investigations.

For immigrant families, advocates say, the message is clear: immigration enforcement is no longer confined to federal agents, but increasingly woven into local patrol shifts, traffic stops and jail intake procedures.

“Throughout history, people have always asked: when is the right time to make preparations?” said Sui Chung, executive director of Americans for Immigrant Justice, Florida’s largest non-profit immigrant defense law firm. “Nobody tells you you’re next.”

Florida, she said, has increasingly become a proving ground for aspects of immigration policy.

“Florida is the testing location for what the worst can happen,” Chung said. “It’s happening so seamlessly and so quietly. It’s precipitous and swift – and people are not really awake to it.”

As such policy shifts filter down into everyday life, preparation has taken on a quiet urgency in many immigrant communities there and elsewhere.

Some parents are drafting wills and guardianship agreements. Others are assembling emergency packets for their children – documents that include birth certificates, vaccination records and instructions for who should pick them up from school if a parent does not return.

Many are transferring their properties into trusts. Others have uploaded years of medical records to encrypted cloud storage so they can access them from abroad if deported.

Several have created backup email accounts on encrypted platforms such as Proton Mail, accessible from almost anywhere in the world.

Others have designated a trusted friend or relative as a “point person” – someone who holds passwords to phones, financial accounts and social media profiles in case the parent suddenly disappears.

“It’s not about leaving,” said a 37-year-old undocumented father from Central America during a phone interview from his home in south Texas. “It’s about making sure your children survive if you don’t come home.”

One undocumented mother, 50, from Europe living in southern California said she stopped taking public transit because she feared being stopped by authorities. Instead, she drives everywhere – taking different routes home each day and leaving an hour early to account for traffic and avoid the temptation to speed.

Another said she sold most of her furniture and belongings so that if she is deported, there will be less for her family left behind in the US to sort through.

Several said they now rely on grocery delivery services so they can avoid unnecessary trips outside the house.

One immigrant mother from the Caribbean, 35, said she created a new savings account that only her designated “point person” can access. If she is deported, that person can wire the money to wherever she ends up. She said her friend, also from her home country, bought a second phone and gave it to a family member, who has instructions to mail it overseas if she disappears.

Even clothing has become part of the calculation.

One woman from south-eastern Europe living in north Miami said she now wears comfortable clothes whenever she leaves the house and always carries a sweater – something she can use as a pillow or blanket if she ends up in detention.

The adjustments are small on their own. Together, they form an infrastructure of contingency planning for a life that could abruptly split in two.

Chung said one of the most wrenching aspects of that fear is what happens to children when parents vanish into detention.

“It’s really terrifying to think that parents could be deported somewhere remote and have no access to their children,” she said.

Even within the US, she noted, parents already face enormous hurdles trying to regain custody from child welfare systems.

“It’s hard enough to get your kids back from DCF when you’re domestic,” she said, referring to state child protection agencies. “Imagine trying to do that from abroad.”

Back in the kitchen in Miami, crayons sit where the woman’s children left them. On the refrigerator, a drawing that reads “Te quiero, mamá” curls beside birthday invitations and a calendar crowded with appointments.

Several copies of the will and guardianship papers now rest folded – one in a drawer, another in her car’s glove compartment and a third tucked inside the diaper bag.

Just in case.