Confronting uncertain immigration policies is everyone’s job.

Adele Fresé says she didn’t realize until last week just how scared people are.

The newish police chief of Salinas stands in the parking lot behind the station. She’s in the middle of serving a “thank you for your hard work” breakfast – pancakes, sausage, fruit and juice – to her troops and employees of the city’s public works department, and pauses to tell me the facts.

First there was a conversation she had with immigration attorney Blanca Zarazua, who’s started instructing clients to have a plan in place in case they are swept up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and deported. Then there was the distress of her 12-year-old son, who came home from school sad for a friend who is convinced his parents are going to get deported. Then there was the recent news that ICE had conducted immigration raids across the country.

Then there was the immigration town hall meeting put on by Congressman Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, at Hartnell College on Feb. 12, where about 500 people packed into the school’s student hall on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon to express their fears, and hear what California’s federal electeds are doing about Donald Trump’s ban on accepting immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries.

And, they want to know, what are local officials doing to protect the immigrant population.

“I didn’t fully appreciate the level of fear people have, but there’s a lot of anxiety right now, especially among children,” says Fresé, who spoke at the forum to reassure people that it’s not the job of local law enforcement to do the job of policing federal immigration policy. “I need to look at this as an opportunity to reassure the community that local police are not the federal police.”

Word of this palpable fear among local immigrants comes to me in a few other ways. I ask a local defense attorney how her workload is these days and she tells me, “Things are really quiet. I think a lot of people are just going into hiding.” Another acquaintance tells me a few people have papered over their windows in East Salinas and aren’t answering unexpected knocks on their doors. A friend whose daughter-in-law has a green card says the young woman has become too afraid to leave their home. And Salinas City Councilwoman Gloria de La Rosa, a public health nurse, worries about the day when immigrant clients refuse to answer their doors to her even amid an outbreak of a communicable disease.

At the forum, Panetta, along with U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, laid out the facts as they know them: There haven’t been any raids on the Central Coast and ICE currently has no plans to conduct any here. Currently. In terms of ICE presence on the Central Coast, they have a dedicated desk at the Monterey County Jail and access to records, which they cull to find people in the country illegally and deport them. And while ICE has an administration office in Morgan Hill, Lofgren says the city government there recently refused to grant ICE a permit to construct and operate detention cells at the facility.

Lofgren, along with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other congressmembers, sent a letter to the head of ICE demanding to meet with him this week.

“We need to know what their intentions are,” Lofgren says. “ICE agents can and do come into communities. The Obama administration had certain no-go sites. You couldn’t send an ICE agent to a school or a clinic or a church… we don’t know whether the current administration is going to adhere to that.”

The takeaway for the immigrant community? Panetta says it’s “be prepared.” That means knowing where the nearest consulate is, talking to immigrant advocacy groups, knowing your rights, signing up for emails and text alerts, going to meetings on immigration planned by organizations such as Building Healthy Communities and having emergency plans in place for families.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen coming up, so prepare for the worst,” Panetta says.

And if you’re a legal citizen or born here? Don’t bury your head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening to our friends and neighbors.

MARY DUAN writes The Local Spin for the Weekly. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com