EXECUTIVE ORDERS PROJECT: IMMIGRATION - Possibility of ICE Deportation Frightens Immigrant Families
Orange County outreach worker: "“Lots of families are pretty much afraid to leave their homes"
By Hilary Holladay
PUBLISHER OF BYRD STREET
Editor’s Note: This story by Hilary Holladay originally appeared on her Substack site, Byrd Street, which covers local news in Orange County, VA. As a reporter for the Orange County (VA) Review, Holladay won 10 awards from the Virginia Press Association. She’s also a biographer and scholar of modern American poetry. Follow and read all her work at Substack.
Although the threat of U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officers grabbing people off the street or out of their homes may seem far removed from Orange County, there are undocumented residents in our community living in fear that ICE will soon come for them.
To gauge the situation, I’m talking to people in the county who work with immigrants, both documented and undocumented. (I may talk to recent immigrants as well but am treading carefully here, to protect their privacy.) More reporting on this subject will appear in future issues.
There are volunteers in Orange County who help immigrants in a variety of ways. I had a phone conversation over the weekend with a man regularly involved in outreach to undocumented Latino families. “Lots of families are pretty much afraid to leave their homes,” he told me.
The irony is that many of these people came to the U.S. to escape grave danger. My source said that when he’s asked undocumented residents why they left their home countries, they cite “violence that is commonplace and frequent,” while making it clear they don’t want to discuss the details.
“[Undocumented families] are extremely productive members of our community.”—Outreach volunteer in Orange County
He said that the undocumented immigrants in Orange are working hard to fit in. “I’ve come to the realization that every one of these families has embedded themselves in this community in a productive way. The men have jobs in the Town of Orange,” he said, while the women are typically at home taking care of the children. “They are extremely productive members of our community and have a tremendous work ethic, and when they receive help, you’ll notice an intense level of gratitude.”
He continued, “The children of school age are in school and actively learning English and teaching it to their parents.”
“Some students, despite being born here, are terrified of being deported.” —Elliott Robinson, staff member, Orange County High School
I also learned about the current situation among local immigrants from Elliott Robinson, a staff member at Orange County High School. She has gotten to know immigrant children as part of her job. In a recent exchange of messages, she wrote to me, “There are several students that are worried about their lives here. Some are documented, some are not. Some students, despite being born here, are terrified of being deported.
“Since I primarily work with seniors, I’ve had several students put their college plans on hold out of fear and financial stress. For students who are citizens but their parents are not, they are afraid to apply for federal aid through the FAFSA [Free Application for Federal Student Aid] as their immigration status could be shared and potentially cause the family to be deported.”
Robinson added, “My seniors are no longer able to worry about graduation; instead they are worried about deportation.”
Adding to the mounting fear and anxiety, ICE is now allowed to attempt raids in and near places previously off-limits—including schools, hospitals and churches—provided they have judicial warrants. The Trump Administration’s new directive is spelled out in a Department of Homeland Security press release dated Jan. 21, 2025.
Deportation is not a new threat, of course, and it’s worth recalling that President Joe Biden carried out a massive deportation effort. According to a June 2024 article comparing deportation during the Biden Administration and the first Trump Administration, “The 1.1 million deportations since the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2021 through February 2024 (the most recent data available) are on pace to match the 1.5 million deportations carried out during the four years President Donald Trump was in office. These deportations are in addition to the 3 million expulsions of migrants crossing the border irregularly that occurred under the pandemic-era Title 42 order between March 2020 and May 2023—the vast majority of which occurred under the Biden administration.”
But because President Trump has made the aggressive hunting-down of undocumented people central to his second administration, fears are heightened. Of note, Trump is said to be upset that deportation numbers are not as high as he’d like them to be, according to NBC News.
FERPA shields student data from ICE officers
I also checked in with Dr. Sunithi Gnanadoss, a professor of English at Germanna Community College and an Orange resident, to ask if she’d noticed a drop in attendance in her classes due to fears related to possible deportation. She responded that she’s teaching all her classes online this semester, and attendance remains steady. She added, however, “There are a couple of us who are teaching a new immigrant English, and she is nervous about discrimination based on her religion and not being able to enjoy the rights of citizenship because of her ethnicity.”
Dr. Gnanadoss noted that Germanna’s president, Dr. Janet Gullickson, has alerted faculty and staff that they are under no obligation to share any data about students with ICE, due to the protection offered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
For further details on Germanna, I contacted Dr. Gullickson directly. She emailed me, “We don’t know the immigration status of all our students as they don’t have to report it. We do have resources for all our students that help them during stressful times. For example, we provide access to 24/7 online mental health support.”
Over at the Orange County Free Clinic in Orange, Executive Director Dorren Brown said that a large number of the clinic’s patients are undocumented immigrants, and they are worried. In response to my inquiry, she wrote, “They trust us, so they come to appointments, but they ask questions and get clarification from our interpreters on site. We hope that our patients continue to feel safe enough to come here.”
The “Know Your Rights” document below, posted by ACLU Virginia, offers useful advice to immigrants approached by ICE officers. For immigrant rights written in Spanish and covering a variety of scenarios, click here.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”
Because illegal aliens who come into our country in spite of our laws, should be treated the same as those who immigrated legally. Yeah, that is so fair, so equitable. Of course, we the taxpayers are stuck with the bill, paying for the illegal aliens. Biden and the Democrats made sure of that.
And no, illegal aliens are NOT the same as legal immigrants. Are they afraid of deportation? Good, they should be. They violated our laws and are demanding that we provide for them.