This story was produced by El Tímpano, a civic media organization serving and covering the Bay Area’s Latino and Mayan immigrant communities. The original version of the story can be found here.
In 2024, Guadalupe Maribel Aguilar Martín became a U.S. citizen, nearly two decades after fleeing an abusive ex-boyfriend in her native Guatemala. The 42-year-old Maya-Mam immigrant, originally from Santiago Chimaltenango, a small town in the country’s western highlands, recalled how she felt the moment she learned her citizenship had been granted, years after enduring severe domestic violence in Guatemala and a long, uncertain path to remain in the United States.
“Very happy and proud,” she said in Spanish, “because not everyone has the opportunity to get papers here.”
These days, however, that pride is laced with fear.
Over the past 18 months, Martín has watched ICE agents fan out across the country, arresting thousands of people, including, in places like Los Angeles, U.S. citizens. Alongside those stories, she has followed reports of the Trump administration’s unprecedented push to denaturalize U.S. citizens, an effort that this week sought to strip 17 naturalized Americans of their citizenship. These developments have left Martín with a growing sense of unease about her own status.
“I’m afraid,” she said, “that they’ll take away my citizenship, because they said they will take it away from people who were not born here.”
Martín lives in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood with her 12-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter. The trio are U.S. citizens; her two children were born in the United States. Nonetheless, the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has left the boy visibly distressed, Martín says. He has become fearful of going to school, concerned that, despite his citizenship status, he could be detained by ICE because his mother is an immigrant. Whenever Martín picks him up from class, he expresses his relief: “Mom, thank God you’re with me now.”
“I’m worried about you,” he often says. “What if they catch you?”
So, on an evening this spring, two years after becoming a citizen and nearly a decade after winning her asylum case, Martín found herself sitting in a room in Berkeley, confronting the worst-case scenario.
Bent over a 10-page workbook, Martín spent the evening developing a contingency plan for her children should her fears of immigration enforcement materialize. The activity was led by the Multicultural Institute, an East Bay nonprofit that supports day laborers and has begun offering periodic workshops to help immigrant families produce backup caregiving plans in case they are targeted by ICE enforcement.
Such arrangements, often referred to as family preparedness plans, have become increasingly common among immigrant families under the Trump administration. Mass deportations, workplace raids, and the erosion of protections for various categories of humanitarian immigrants have reshaped everyday life for communities across the Bay Area, injecting fear into routines as ordinary as the walk to school.
In response, parents are making detailed plans for their children in anticipation of the most disruptive scenarios: detention, deportation, and, in some cases, even death.
Across the Bay Area, organizations such as the Multicultural Institute and legal aid groups are offering workshops that guide parents through different caregiving options for their children if they are swept up in immigration enforcement. These activities involve the production of detailed scenarios laying out who would take care of their children if they are targeted by ICE, as well as files containing key documents for back-up caregivers, such as copies of passports, birth certificates, social security cards, vaccination records, health insurance information, and emergency contact information in the event that parents are arrested and unable to get them from school.
Some parents, meanwhile, are undertaking the grim task of preparing for the possibility that they could die in ICE custody.
“We have had people asked to be referred to will and trust attorneys,” said Madeline Hernandez, the North Bay regional directing attorney with the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area.
These precautions are often driven by fears about conditions in detention facilities and aggression during immigration enforcement sweeps. Since January 2025, a record 33 people have died in ICE custody. “What happened in Minnesota really heightened the fear because it was like, ‘Oh, this is what’s possible,’” Hernandez said, referring to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis. The operation resulted in the arrests of thousands of immigrants and a violent crackdown on anti-ICE protestors, during which federal immigration agents shot and killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
These fears have even prompted people like Martín, whose immigration status is secure, to scenario-plan for some of the most troubling possibilities. Veronica Garcia, a senior staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a national nonprofit that developed a comprehensive family preparedness toolkit, said Martín’s decision to prepare a backup caregiving plan in case she is targeted by immigration enforcement is not unique.
“There’s so much concern right now around people being denaturalized even after they are U.S. citizens,” Garcia said. “And generally, there’s also an increased fear of racial profiling. So the community is fearful of being detained, even if they already have status.”
After all, she added, “we’re seeing a lot of things that people didn’t imagine would happen.”
New California law broadens caregiver options
In Martín’s case, the plan she developed at the Multicultural Institute workshop laid out what would happen to her kids if she were detained or otherwise separated from them. Her 19-year-old daughter would assume responsibility for her 12-year-old son’s care.
In practical terms, this means that her daughter will live with him, make sure he is fed and supported, and oversee his day-to-day needs. Martín also filled out a detailed set of forms containing information about her son’s school, teacher, medications, medical information, and emergency contacts.
As part of the process, her daughter signed a document known as a Caregiver’s Authorization Affidavit, or CAA, which allows the relatives or designated caregivers of a minor in California to enroll the child in school, and consent to various forms of school-related medical care, such as immunizations and physical examinations.
The authorization, which is only valid in California, does not grant legal custody to caregivers. Instead, it allows a predetermined adult to act as the child’s caregiver for as long as the parent, who can cancel the categorization at any time, needs. Unlike guardianship, which is a formal arrangement established through probate court, the CAA does not require court approval.
The provision has been in effect in California for decades, but has become a prominent topic of conversation in legal clinics and workshops since January 2025 as immigrant families rush to put plans in place amid the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.
A new state law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October 2025 expanded who may serve as a child’s caretaker under the CAA. Previously, the designation was limited to a narrow list of close relatives, such as siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Under the new law, it has been broadened to nonrelatives with close ties to the child, including godparents, mentors, and close family friends.
Supporters argued that the changes give parents greater flexibility in identifying a trusted caregiver during an emergency. Critics, however, claimed that expanding eligibility beyond relatives could expose children to exploitation or trafficking.
Jessica Jenkins, an attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid, explained that the CAA is best understood as a proactive measure for parents that is meant to be used on a short-term, emergency basis.
“It doesn’t do everything that a parent might want it to do, but for some families that is sufficient,” Jenkins said. “The hope is that they are not separated long-term from their children, they just need somebody to step in if they do get detained so that by the time they come out of detention they can come back and pick up where they left off.”
However, when parents anticipate deportation and believe they may need a longer-term, permanent arrangement, formal guardianship may be an option. Court-appointed guardians are granted full custody of a child and assume legal responsibility for their care.
Because appointing a legal guardian is a more formal and binding process than designating a caregiver through a CAA, families may choose not to pursue guardianship unless they believe it is absolutely necessary. Interviews with California legal service providers suggest that while some families have expressed interest in formal guardianship arrangements, participation in family preparedness planning more broadly, including CAA designations, has risen sharply during the second Trump administration.
While the Immigrant Legal Resource Center’s family preparation guidance has been in place since Trump first took office in 2016, Garcia said the guidance has gained renewed urgency since the onset of the second administration.
The materials have “gotten more traction,” she said, “because the risk of enforcement has increased so much.” As ICE raids sweep through communities across the country, parents are becoming increasingly anxious about what will happen to their children if they are detained, she said. “Now people are trying to prepare sooner and make sure that they have something set in place.”
Parents navigate the toll of planning for the worst
Even as families seek greater clarity on the practical and legal questions that arise if they are targeted by ICE, summoning the will to confront the most upsetting possibilities can still be a challenge.
Some parents struggle to face what family separation could mean for themselves and their children and, as a coping mechanism, choose not to think about it, according to legal service providers.
“I see a huge avoidance,” Hernandez said. “It’s almost like if you don’t think about something, it doesn’t exist, then you don’t have to worry about it.”
In conversations with clients, Hernandez emphasizes the importance of preparing for emergencies of all kinds, not just immigration enforcement, “because we never know what’s going to happen in life.” She also recognizes the emotional weight of the exercise.
“I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s very hard and emotional and that it’s not easy to do,” she added. “This is different than just filling out paperwork. This is very emotionally charged. No one ever wants to think about themselves dying or being separated from their family.”
Yet for many families, including Martín’s, doing just that has become a necessary part of navigating an increasingly fraught political climate.
After arriving in the United States, Martín recalled telling her parents back in Guatemala that she was finally free from her abuser. She described her journey as a matter of survival. “Thank God I’m here,” she told her parents once she settled in: “I’ve been saved from death.”
These days, Martín is struck by where she finds herself: a strange liminal space in which her sense of security—the very thing that drew her to the United States—feels increasingly fragile as immigration enforcement ramps up.
“When I got here, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to be well-protected, it’s a safer place’” she explained. “But now that the panic has set in, now that there are so many raids, I said, ‘Oh my God, where can we be really safe?’”
So Martín, for her part, has taken solace in prepping for the worst. Despite the heaviness of the activity, she feels better positioned for whatever may unfold. She has a plan.
“I’m very grateful for the workshop because it opened our minds,” she said. “We have to be prepared.”
This story was produced in partnership with CatchLight as part of their three-year Mental Health Visual Reporting Initiative.
