Hyattsville, MARYLAND — A sign hangs on the brick front of the St. Matthew's Episcopal Church about a 20-minute drive from Washington D.C.
"Hyattsville Welcomes Diversity and Respects All People," it reads.
Inside, the church serves that diverse community. It offers sermons in Spanish and English for its congregation of people that hail from African, Caribbean, North, Central and South American backgrounds.
But a sense of fear is now spreading among congregants as President Trump works to carry out his bold promise from the campaign trail: mass deportations. In response, some parents here are seeking ways to secure their families, including planning to leave their children in the care of someone else in case they are deported.
The administration is proudly releasing sleek images and videos of splashy raids. In one posted on X, chains are unfurled to shackle people being put on deportation flights. It was captioned, "ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight."
ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, refers to popular videos posted online with sounds that evoke a calming and pleasant experience in some.
Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, is a regular on TV news shows, saying they're going after "bad guys" but if others are there they may be swept up as well.
A mother makes choices to protect her children
In the main meeting hall at the church, picnic tables and folding chairs are set up for community meals and food drives. Inside a woman named Ana has her four-year-old grandson's head cradled in her lap.
She asked NPR to only use her first name because she doesn't have legal status to be in the United States and she's afraid that her family may get swept up and separated.
She wears a T-shirt that says "Blessed Grandma." She made the dangerous trek overland 21 years ago to get to the U.S. from El Salvador and escape violence.
Today her life is here. She has three American children and an American grandchild, and she and her husband are the family breadwinners.
"We come here because we want to have a better life," she said. "We want to advance the lives of our children. We don't want to hurt or do any harm to anyone."
The threat of deportation and the possibility of their family being ripped apart has been the topic of a difficult question at home. 'What do we do if that separation becomes a reality?'
She and her husband sat her two adult children and their seven-year-old down and explained that Ana and her husband could be detained and deported back to El Salvador.
Her seven-year-old didn't understand.
"What? El Salvador?" she recalled him saying. "Our home is here."
Then they made the decision to appoint a standby guardian for their children in case immigration agents came for them.
"It's very difficult to give custody, or to think about giving custody, to someone else. It's not easy to sign a document that would do that," she said. "However, I understand that the standby guardianship tool is something that can be used if we were deported."
Maryland has long had a law for parents to choose a standby guardian in case they were physically or mentally incapacitated. When families were separated under the last Trump administration, immigrant advocates fought to expand that law in 2018 to include immigrants who may find themselves suddenly detained or deported. An estimated 225,000 undocumented people live in the state according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Ana heard about standby guardianship at church.
"It's something we needed to do. For anyone who is undocumented, this is just a very, very difficult situation, and we are really living in fear," she said.
She pauses frequently to hold back tears.
"Of course, the decision still remains, if something did happen, would our child stay here in the United States more permanently?" she asked. "Or would we have that standby guardian actually ensure that our son made his way back to El Salvador with us."
Her two other children are old enough to make their own decisions on whether to stay or go.
Many Americans support stricter immigration restrictions
Many Americans are supportive of stricter immigration restrictions, but they're divided on the harsher measures Trump has enacted. And the sweeping crackdown has created an atmosphere of fear in communities with mixed-status families like Ana's.
She said she wishes people understood that her family isn't trying to harm anyone. They aren't living off the government. They want to seek a legal path to stay but haven't found one. She said they work hard and are sometimes taken advantage of as people without documents or legal recourse. And they've never committed a crime.
"You know, in our countries, there's really no future. There's no work." Ana said. "We come here and the work that we do, you know, we're able to survive. What people need to understand is that we do the most difficult and heavy, weighty type of work."
Her husband works in construction but he's only doing small jobs now, afraid a large project would attract the attention of immigration agents. He has to go outside the house to work to make sure they can pay their rent.
Ana does remote work and these days only leaves for medical appointments and church. Even a trip to the market feels dangerous, so she hands a list to her 18-year-old daughter to go in her place.
"There are nights when I can't sleep," she said. "I've never really suffered from migraines or headaches, but literally I wake up every morning and I have a headache and my head is just hurting all the time. I pray every day. I have a lot of faith, and I try not to be too worried, but I can't avoid it."
"People are being terrorized"
The senior priest at this church, Father Vidal Rivas, never asks the status of people in his church community.
"It's difficult to really put into words, but my heart is broken and hurt and I feel that I just can't make a change," he said. "But I really felt that I couldn't just sit back and do nothing. I made a commitment to ensure that people know their rights."
That includes the standby guardianship program.
"We encourage our members to do something that will protect them and safeguard their children," he said.
He tells congregants who choose to fill out the form to make sure they pick permanent residents or U.S. citizens as guardians. He worries that President Trump "with the stroke of a pen" could revoke other currently legal ways to be in the country like Temporary Protected Status for those from countries that the U.S. has deemed too unsafe for their return.
The church doesn't keep track of who fills out this form, they don't want the data used against their community, he said. He estimates five to seven families a week are choosing guardians for their children.
"I've never seen a situation similar to this in terms of this new administration," he said. "Our people are full of fear. They're not sleeping at night. They're moving from place to place every day. The sense of persecution is real, and I might use the word terror. People are feeling terrorized. People are being terrorized."
The priest has already signed on to be the standby guardian for 15 kids. The parents had no one else they trusted. Rivas says if the worst happens and he needs to care for them, he knows it will change his life. But he's following his Christian faith - treat your neighbor as you would yourself.
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