The Pres­i­den­t’s lat­est cab­i­net shuf­fle may seem chaot­ic, but even if exec­u­tive agen­cies are par­a­lyzed, immi­gra­tion author­i­ties’ ruth­less assaults on com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ues apace. Gen­er­al John Kel­ly’s tenure at Home­land Secu­ri­ty last­ed long enough to crank up U.S. Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforcement’s (ICE) depor­ta­tion machine, scrap the few safe­guards for due process grant­ed under the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion and pave the way for even harsh­er crack­downs under his successor.

The crackdowns have galvanized grassroots organizations to launch community-defense efforts: Know-Your-Rights training workshops, emergency legal aid for families without attorneys and court challenges pressuring officials to protest Trump's policies.

Nowhere seems safe from a fed­er­al sweep. Legal advo­cates have shift­ed from reform advo­ca­cy to full-fledged defen­sive mode, as Trump appears to be fast track­ing depor­ta­tion pro­ceed­ings even for aspir­ing col­lege stu­dents, domes­tic vio­lence vic­tims and fam­i­ly breadwinners.

Mem­phis and sev­er­al oth­er south­ern cities saw scores of arrests dur­ing July, as ICE forces descend­ed for sev­er­al days in mass roundups tar­get­ing pre­dom­i­nant­ly Lati­no areas. Accord­ing to Casey Bryant of the advo­ca­cy group Lati­no Mem­phis, ICE sought to appre­hend res­i­dents with­out pre­sent­ing judi­cial war­rants. ICE agents are ​“sur­round­ing peo­ple’s vehi­cles and demand­ing that they get out of the car…They’re rolling up in these big SUVs, three or four at a time, and just catch­ing who­ev­er they see,” she says. Some­times they fin­ished up a day of raids by bang­ing on the doors of Lati­no neigh­bor­hoods, says Bryant, observ­ing: ​“It seems like it moves from one place to another.”

Fol­low­ing a racial­ly incen­di­ary speech in Long Island, Trump has set the stage for dra­mat­ic raids aimed at ​‘get­ting tough’ on sup­posed gang crime in the sub­urbs. In real­i­ty, advo­cates across Los Ange­les, Col­orado Springs and oth­er cities have con­demned the recent pat­tern of bru­tal ICE sweeps, which seem to neglect even the min­i­mal pro­tec­tions the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion had applied to its enforce­ment efforts, which sup­pos­ed­ly pri­or­i­tized migrants with seri­ous crim­i­nal con­vic­tions. Under Trump, ICE has report­ed­ly even tar­get­ed local home­less shel­ters and cour­t­house hall­ways.

Still, ICE claims to be tar­get­ing young men who alleged­ly fit the stereo­type of Cen­tral Amer­i­can gang mem­bers, and has announced an inten­si­fi­ca­tion of a nation­wide depor­ta­tion dri­ve going after peo­ple who sup­pos­ed­ly ​“pose a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty.” Mem­phis has seen sev­er­al old­er migrants detained in the recent roundups, many of them long-set­tled blue-col­lar work­ers with fam­i­lies and no crim­i­nal records. Many have lived in the Unit­ed States for years and are just encoun­ter­ing ICE for the first time.

The crack­downs have gal­va­nized grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions to launch com­mu­ni­ty-defense efforts: Know-Your-Rights train­ing work­shops, emer­gency legal aid for fam­i­lies with­out attor­neys and court chal­lenges pres­sur­ing offi­cials to protest Trump’s poli­cies. Accord­ing to the Immi­grant Defense Project, which just rolled out a toolk­it to help com­mu­ni­ties cope with ICE raids and deten­tion, immi­grants should be wary that they’re vul­ner­a­ble to being appre­hend­ed in any pub­lic space. Yet, the orga­ni­za­tion argues that suc­cumb­ing to fear is not the answer, not­ing indi­vid­u­als are free to refuse entry to an offi­cer try­ing to enter their home with­out a war­rant. The group warns of the decep­tive tac­tics ICE is said to reg­u­lar­ly employ — includ­ing pre­tend­ing to be local police instead of fed­er­al agents, or bran­dish­ing their weapons to intim­i­date families.

The most dis­turb­ing trend may be the lack of any pat­tern at all. In recent months, some local law enforce­ment agen­cies say they have been frus­trat­ed by ICE’s brazen inter­ven­tions. Depend­ing on local pol­i­tics, some dis­tricts have agreed to active­ly work with ICE agents. But even in red states like Ari­zona, where sadis­ti­cal­ly xeno­pho­bic Sher­iff Joe Arpaio was recent­ly oust­ed, many agen­cies have refused to col­lab­o­rate on poli­cies that might stoke racial ten­sions or alien­ate communities.

The increas­ing­ly diver­gent approach­es that local author­i­ties are tak­ing to immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy — with many munic­i­pal­i­ties vow­ing to resist Home­land Security’s effort to coöpt local agen­cies — are divid­ing Wash­ing­ton. One stick­ing point is so-called ​“sanc­tu­ary cities,” which open­ly oppose col­lu­sion with fed­er­al immi­gra­tion enforce­ment actions. Trump, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions, con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans and — more recent­ly—state law­mak­ers in Texas, Geor­gia and Indi­ana, have tried to impose fund­ing restric­tions for dis­tricts that resist ICE poli­cies. But the most dra­con­ian pro­pos­als have been thwart­ed by con­sti­tu­tion­al lit­i­ga­tion and mas­sive local backlash.

But some local efforts to pro­tect migrants—for exam­ple, by refus­ing to hold arrestees in local jails on ICE’s behalf for pend­ing immi­gra­tion inves­ti­ga­tions—may be of lim­it­ed use amid the chaos of the flash raids. Bryant points out that, while police have vowed not to col­lude with ICE, local offi­cers have been entan­gled in raids when fed­er­al agents have called police for back up on the scene. And in some self-pro­claimed pro­gres­sive sanc­tu­ary cities like New York, ​“zero tol­er­ance” over-polic­ing has need­less­ly exposed immi­grants to ICE inter­ven­tions, because the rou­tine mass arrests in poor com­mu­ni­ties of col­or make migrants vul­ner­a­ble to being picked up by fed­er­al author­i­ties while in jail.

As more cities face fis­cal and polit­i­cal pres­sure, the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union has advised local author­i­ties to retain local con­trol, stat­ing: ​“The admin­is­tra­tion can­not force them to help round up immi­grants, and it can­not threat­en them by invent­ing new rules out of thin air.”

Of course, under Trump’s impro­vi­sa­tion­al approach to gov­ern­ing, it has become clear to immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties that his admin­is­tra­tion doesn’t need to rewrite rules to rule by fear.

While press­ing local offi­cials to con­demn ICE and resist col­lu­sion with Home­land Secu­ri­ty, Lati­no Mem­phis is try­ing to help com­mu­ni­ties sur­vive the trau­ma of the crack­down. The orga­ni­za­tion is pro­vid­ing legal advice and assis­tance with secur­ing bond, since many detainees are impris­oned far from their fam­i­lies at the La Salle Deten­tion Facil­i­ty in Louisiana, with vir­tu­al­ly no access to local attorneys.

Not even lawyers, how­ev­er, can gauge ICE’s next move. Day by day, Bryant says, Lati­no Mem­phis is ​“just try­ing to make sure that fam­i­lies can keep on liv­ing their lives with­out too much fear or anx­i­ety, and try­ing to allay that any­way we can, work­ing with fam­i­lies to not be afraid to enroll their chil­dren in school and…to take care of them­selves and their family.”

That may be the worst impact of these raids. Trump’s real tri­umph in his war on migrants is spread­ing the sheer ter­ror of know­ing that each new day they spend in their adopt­ed home­land may become their last.