A woman in New Mexico in court for a routine appearance hid in a bathroom after seeing immigration agents and was arrested in a stall. Immigrants who showed up for community service in Fort Worth were picked up for deportation. And in Houston, some are so afraid of being detained they're taking Uber or carpooling with American friends instead of driving themselves.

Across the country incidents like these are increasing due to President Donald Trump's expanding dragnet to catch and deport any immigrant here illegally, even some with a type of permission to stay, immigration advocates and lawyers say.

Many are now afraid to show up for routine court hearings or probation appointments. They're reluctant to pay tickets or get behind the wheel following a series of publicized arrests at courthouses and after interactions with police.

It has all fueled the perception that they are at risk anytime they engage with law enforcement, which was only exacerbated after the Texas Legislature approved a bill last week allowing police to question anyone, even children, about their immigration status. The policy was opposed by all the state's major police chiefs, though smaller agencies applauded the change.

Officials here and elsewhere have sought to reassure immigrants, holding town halls and police-sponsored community events such as soccer games, but the number of violent crimes reported by Hispanics have plummeted.

Advocates say it appears immigration agents are combing public documents to find anyone eligible for deportation, a practice praised by Trump's supporters who say those here illegally should be removed, no matter their situation. For too long, they argue, agents were hamstrung.

This week immigration officials arrested a man with two prior misdemeanor convictions who was out on bail and appearing at a regular misdemeanor hearing in Harris County Court 3, according to a lawyer and court coordinator.

A man out on bail for a drunken driving arrest was detained at a Pasadena municipal court in March after he arrived to settle a traffic citation, said Carlos Manzano of America's Bail Bonds who handled his bond. The man, who had a previous deportation order, has already been removed to Mexico, Manzano said.

Immigration agents have also arrested at least three people attending misdemeanor court hearings in San Antonio and Austin. They picked up a transgender woman in El Paso in February who had an outstanding deportation order and previous criminal history and was seeking a protective order from her boyfriend. It sparked outrage from domestic violence advocates who said her alleged abuser had tipped off immigration.

Critics argue such a practice endangers public safety.

"It can be something that discourages people from coming to court," said Eric Davis, trial chief at the Harris County Public Defender's office.

Joanne Lin, senior immigration policy counsel at the ACLU, said the uptick of immigrant arrests at courthouses and even the mere presence of agents there has a "chilling effect," deterring defendants, victims and witnesses alike from appearing.

She said it's occurring across the nation from Michigan, where a father was detained at a custody hearing, to New York, where another was picked up at a child support hearing. In Colorado, four women dropped their assault cases fearing they'd be arrested at the courthouse and deported.

"(Immigration) is emboldened in a way I have never seen. They are not concerned at all about the impact and fear they have created," said Dan Satterberg, the top prosecutor for Seattle's King County. "In just a couple of months they have undone decades of work we have done to build up this trust."

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and chief state judges in California, Washington and New Jersey have expressed concern about the practice, saying it dissuades people from pursuing cases.

"Stationing (immigration) agents in local courthouses instills needless additional fear and anxiety within immigrant communities, discourages interacting with the judicial system, and endangers the safety of entire communities," the commission said in a letter last month, urging Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to reconsider the practice.

The two have defended the policy, asserting that immigration agents can arrest even witnesses and victims if they deem it necessary. ICE said in a statement it typically only targets courthouses after they have "exhausted other options."

"A courthouse may afford the most likely opportunity to locate a target and take him or her into custody," it said.

The agency said most such arrests are of immigrants with prior criminal convictions who previously would have been held by local authorities on so-called immigration detainers that prevent their release on bail.

However, constitutional concerns about violating the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable seizure have spurred five states and more than 500 counties - though only Travis County in Texas - to scale back on cooperating with the federal government on the issue. The law Texas passed this week would mandate such compliance, with police chiefs and sheriffs facing criminal charges if they don't.

Angie Junck, a supervising attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a national advocacy group in San Francisco, said the ramped-up deportation push by the federal government turns all local law enforcement partners into de-facto immigration outposts.

"(The federal government) doesn't have the full scope in the way that local cops, sheriffs, and prosecutors do who every day are in contact with immigrants," she said.

A similar approach helped President Barack Obama remove a record 434,015 immigrants in 2013, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C.

But Obama drastically constrained the strategy in 2014 to focus only on violent offenders and recent arrivals after efforts at immigration reform failed. Deportations from inside the country subsequently fell dramatically.

Involving local law enforcement in immigration policy has a negative impact, Junck said, citing a 2013 University of Illinois at Chicago study that found Latinos were half as likely to report crime if they suspect police will try to determine their legal status.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said the simple appearance that police function as immigration agents leads to fear and miscommunication, calling it "treacherous new territory."

In the first three months of 2017, the number of rapes reported by Hispanics in Houston were down 43 percent from the same period last year to only 32 offenses, according to the police department. Comparatively, those recorded by non-Hispanics rose 8 percent to 223 incidents. Reporting of aggravated assaults was also down 12 percent to 343 offenses, compared to a 14 percent increase to 2,297 among non-Hispanic complainants.

Similarly, Teresa Uribe, a volunteer with the Houston Area Women's Center, said roughly two out of every three domestic abuse victims she has counseled this year have said they are afraid to report the crime to police, specifically citing the administration's new immigration policies.

Samantha Del Bosque, a senior staff attorney at Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit providing services to women and children fleeing violence, said even clients with a type of legal status are scared. One with a pending visa for crime victims called frantically after receiving a ticket for driving without a license.

"She didn't know if she should go to court," Del Bosque said.

An increased focus on even the most minor offenders is also changing the way criminal lawyers think about their strategy, said Kenneth Wincorn, a lawyer in Dallas. He said he now recommends his immigrant clients complete courses and community service before entering a plea so that they can avoid reporting to probation officers if at all possible.

In Fort Worth, immigration agents recently arrested 26 immigrants here illegally who turned up for community service at the sheriff's office, complying with sentences for low-level crimes.

Mana Yegani, a Houston immigration attorney, said at least six clients appeared at regular probation appointments only to find immigration officers waiting to take them into custody. None of them had previous deportation orders, she said. Some have already been removed and some are out on bond awaiting an immigration hearing.

In New York some lawyers are asking for jail time rather than releasing their clients on bail to immigration agents waiting in the courthouse. The city doesn't honor federal requests to hold immigrants for deportation who are otherwise eligible for release.

In Baltimore, the state's attorney's office has instructed prosecutors to consider possible deportation consequences before charging immigrants here illegally with minor, non-violent crimes. And in Denver, city officials are moving to reduce the sentences of most municipal offenses to less than a year in jail to help immigrants avoid deportation.

Increasingly, advocates say such immigrants are withdrawing from public life to the extent that they can. Even Houston's Department of Health and Human Services has seen a downturn in use of services, its director, Stephen Williams, said at a panel last month.

Luis Ruiz, an immigration attorney in Baytown, said he has clients who now refuse to drive, saying they fear they'll be arrested for not having a license, thrown into jail, and deported. Instead they use Uber, or carpool with American citizen friends or relatives.

"They won't leave the house," Ruiz said.

Even people with a type of legal status are being detained, at least temporarily, once they are booked into jail.

Wincorn, the Dallas attorney, said several clients with work permits under Obama's program for young adults here illegally have had immigration holds placed on them until the agency can prove that they are still eligible for the provisional status and haven't been convicted of a crime.

Sometimes the system snags people on legal visas with pending applications.

This week, a 20-year-old woman from Eastern Europe who was in Galveston on an exchange program was booked into jail after police stopped her and found that she didn't have a Texas driver's license.

Immigration agents detained her after determining that her visitor's visa expired in March. But Charles Foster, whose Houston immigration law firm represents her, said she has a pending application for a student visa, which has been stuck for months in a government backlog. Previously, he said proof of that would have been enough to allow her to stay until she was either approved or denied.

"That just really shows how bad things have become," he said, calling it a "climate where it is safe to be tougher than to exercise any common sense discretion."