U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are conducting raids and detaining undocumented immigrants in Alabama at higher rates than elsewhere in the Deep South, according to an attorney who specializes in defending immigrants detained in southern states.

ICE agents are detaining undocumented immigrants without criminal records across Alabama in a break with agency practice under President Barack Obama.

ICE is also making so-called "collateral arrests," in which they check the papers of people they encounter during raids targeting other individuals and detain any who are undocumented. And they are arresting people at their homes and workplaces, according to Alabama immigration advocates and Baton Rouge, La., defense attorney Paul "Woody" Scott.

"It's blown up over the past two weeks," Scott said Friday. "We can't even attend our phones because so many people are calling with these kinds of detentions."

Thomas Byrd, a spokesman for ICE's New Orleans field office, which oversees immigration enforcement for multiple states in the Southeast including Alabama, said he does not have state-by-state detainment statistics. He provided a short statement via email.

"ICE conducts targeted immigration enforcement in compliance with federal law and agency policy," Byrd wrote. "ICE does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately."

'A lot of raids out of Alabama'

Defense lawyers and immigration advocacy groups say they are experiencing a spike in calls from undocumented immigrants who have been detained by ICE in Alabama.

"I don't think I've always had a higher amount from Alabama; it's been kind of neutral. But over the last week-and-a-half, most of our bond hearings are from Alabama," Scott, who defends immigrants from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, said.

"Definitely the executive order is mobilizing ICE everywhere, and maybe the field office in Alabama is a little more motivated."

Detaining undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of crimes has been a stated priority of ICE for years. But now, in keeping with the Trump administration's broader approach, the agency is also detaining undocumented immigrants with clean records. The impacts of the new enforcement paradigm are already being felt in immigrant communities across Alabama.

"Even if you've just gotten a ticket, if you haven't shown up yet for your court date, thanks to the new executive order, that makes you a priority for deportation now," Victoria Siciliano Zucco, spokeswoman for the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ACIJ), said.

Scott said that though the Obama administration aggressively deported undocumented criminals, he has not personally seen widespread ICE raids of undocumented immigrants without criminal histories since President George W. Bush was in the White House.

"I'm seeing a lot of raids out of Alabama, where they pick up multiple people, whether or not they have criminal records," he said. "Under Obama, if the person didn't have a criminal record, that person wouldn't have been taken into custody."

'Collateral arrests'

Many Alabama immigrants are concerned about what Scott calls "collateral arrests," in which ICE agents arrest undocumented people who they come into contact with in the course of raids targeting other individuals.

Yerlyn Castro, a legal assistant at Katja Hedding Law Firm in Murfreesboro, Tenn., said the firm is in conversations with three undocumented immigrants without criminal records who were detained Feb. 22 in their Birmingham apartment. They were arrested after ICE agents failed to find an undocumented immigrant who they were searching for because he was in trouble with the law.

"ICE officers showed up at the apartment complex and asked for the person's name," Castro said. "They said the person they were looking for didn't live there anymore, so they arrested three undocumented people who were living there instead."

She added that she has not heard of the agency making any such "collateral arrests" in Tennessee. Nearly unheard of under Obama, these types of incidents have become commonplace for ICE over the past couple of weeks in Alabama, Scott said.

"They show up at their homes and they either have information about a person or they show up looking for a specific person who maybe has a prior order for deportation and then they make what we call 'collateral arrests,'" Scott explained.

"If they find the person they were looking for, and even if they don't, they'll ask other people at the house [for their papers] and they'll arrest them if they're undocumented."

'Afraid to leave the house'

Many of the immigrants detained in Alabama recently were picked up by ICE at their workplaces and homes, according to Scott and advocates across the state including Judith Zambrano, a member of Somos Tuskaloosa (the group deliberately uses the Native spelling of the word Tuscaloosa), a Tuscaloosa-area immigrant advocacy organization.

On Feb. 17, ICE agents detained three undocumented Guatemalan immigrants after knocking unannounced on the door of their Northport home, Zambrano said. Two of the men have since been released, while the third remains in custody.

These types of immigration enforcement actions are generating widespread fear among the state's immigrant communities, Zambrano said.

"Regarding the fear in the community, the biggest doubt right now is whether or not to send your children to school after something like this happens," she said through a Spanish-language translator.

"Those three men were picked up in a trailer park and all the kids in that trailer park didn't go to school the next day after that. It's really just the parents being afraid to leave the house at that point."

Zambrano said that the question of whether to go to work or send their children to school in the days following ICE actions has become "a major problem" for parents in the Tuscaloosa area. It's a question that immigrant communities are facing in other parts of the state as well.

Victor Spezzini, a former ACIJ coordinator, said that ICE raids are common near the Gulf Coast, while Scott said that a high percentage of the calls he has received from Alabama immigrants detained by ICE were from residents of the Auburn and Opelika areas.

Adriana Ortega, a former resident of a Mexican immigrant neighborhood in Irondale who now lives in Center Point, said Saturday that there is a deep fear of ICE among members of the Irondale immigrant community, especially now that Trump is president.

"A lot of people are scared to go to work and find out ICE is there or that police officers for Alabama or Irondale are going to cooperate with ICE and get them," she said.