A mass federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants did not materialize Sunday in San Francisco or the other nine cities expected to be targeted. There were only a few reports of actions in Florida, Chicago and New York City, and none in the Bay Area.

Federal officials altered their plans for sweeping nationwide raids targeting people who have been ordered deported after news reports alerted immigrant communities on what to expect, current and former Department of Homeland Security officials told the New York Times.

But the absence of reported raids Sunday did not allow immigrant advocates to lower their guards. The Rev. Deborah Lee, executive director of Oakland’s Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, said leaders at dozens of Bay Area churches were informing their congregations about resources such as immigration hotlines.

“In a way, I feel like we’ve been preparing for a raid as soon as the president was elected,” Lee said. “These threats from the president are designed to create panic and fear. If you’re going to raid people, why tell them three weeks in advance? He’s obviously doing this as a strategy to instill fear and put people back into the shadows. It’s a form of repression.”

Immigration policy scholars agreed, saying that while the raid announcements can give advocates time to prepare, they also stoke fear within immigrant communities and households with mixed immigration status.

It’s “extremely unusual” for federal officials to say exactly when raids will take place, said Terri Givens, a Menlo Park political scientist and CEO of the Center for Higher Education Leadership. Givens said it’s possible that authorities are using it as a strategy to increase fear in those communities.

“If you read on Twitter, ‘We’re going to go out and deport a million immigrants,’ and Customs and Border Protection comes back and says 2,000 — well, no one hears that second point,” she said.

The crackdown is supposed to remove “millions” of people in the country illegally, President Trump said previously. That number is closer to 2,000 people with deportation orders, said Mark Morgan, who took over as acting chief of Customs and Border Protection on June 27 after serving as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

On Twitter, Trump managed to make waves without ICE raids by assailing a group of Democratic congresswomen as foreign-born troublemakers who should go back to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came,” ignoring the fact that the women are U.S. citizens and all but one were born in the United States.

Trump was almost certainly referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and her allies in what’s known as the Squad. The others are Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

Meanwhile, local immigration attorneys were monitoring ICE movements “24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Edwin Carmona-Cruz, a spokesman for Pangea Legal Services, which represents immigrants in court proceedings.

Pangea Legal Services, along with the ACLU of Northern California, filed a preemptive lawsuit Thursday with the Northern District Court of California in San Francisco seeking a temporary order to ensure that ICE provides detainees with access to legal services.

U.S. District Judge James Donato denied the order, but noted that he expects immigration officials not to deport individuals until they have had time to speak with an attorney.

“The decision puts ICE on clear notice that it has an obligation to ensure due process and access to counsel, and should be prepared to document their compliance with this duty,” said Hamid Yazdan Panah, an immigration attorney and regional director of the Northern California Rapid Response and Immigrant Defense Network.

Blocking access to legal counsel could be a violation of due process rights, he said.

“This agency should already have rigorous policies in place to ensure access to counsel, but we have seen in practice that it does not,” added Yazdan Panah.

Paul Prince, a spokesman for the San Francisco ICE office, said officers make arrests “every day” and declined to give details about enforcement operations.

“ICE prioritizes the arrest and removal of unlawfully present aliens who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security,” Prince wrote in an emailed statement. “However, all of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and — if found removable by final order — removal from the United States.”

Police agencies around the Bay Area said they had not heard of any raids.

“We’re just as in the dark as everyone else,” said Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.

The raids are supposed to target only those with final deportation orders, but advocates said they believe there could be “collateral arrests” of other undocumented immigrants, even those without final notices, if they’re found with the original targets.

“They’re not what the administration is saying they’re going to be picking up,” said Carmona-Cruz.

Pratheepan Gulasekaram, an immigration law professor at Santa Clara University, said the lack of raids so far “shows you that the real point was never about enforcement of the law or public safety.”

“He gets to talk tough on immigration and manages to sow fear and confusion in the immigration community,” Gulasekaram said. “It gets people scattering and playing defense.”

Adam Probolsky, a California pollster, said that while most Americans support deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, the planned raids would have mostly targeted employed immigrants who don’t have criminal records.

“Even among some Trump supporters, there is compassion toward people who are not criminal and are working and supporting their families,” Probolsky said. “They like the concept of extracting 11 million people and putting them back in their own countries. But when you get down to the functional level of who you are taking out of the country and what their role is — a father of five who is not a criminal — public support declines even among his base.”

Jose, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who has lived in San Francisco since 2007, said raids are intended to scare people.

“It’s working pretty well,” he said. “One of my friends didn’t go to work today.”

Edgar Velarde, who sells snacks from his homeland of Peru every Sunday in the Mission, noticed fewer people on the streets than usual.

“I’d say everyone’s scared to go out today,” he said.

Gregory Kepferle, CEO of Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, said the raids create a climate of fear and anxiety with families.

“People are afraid to come in for services — health care and other things. They’re just afraid.”

Gwendolyn Wu, Dominic Fracassa, J.K. Dineen and Eduardo Medina are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: gwendolyn.wu@sfchronicle.com, dfracassa@sfchronicle.com, jdineen@sfchronicle.com, eduardo.medina@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @gwendolynawu, @DominicFracassa, SFjkdineen, @byEduardoMedina