Life in a ‘persecuted’ migrant community in Texas: ‘For us, a police officer is an enemy’

Lidia and her family have become increasingly isolated at home as more neighbors are detained by local police or immigration agents. She used to walk for an hour every afternoon, going peacefully to the doctor, to do the shopping, or to take her mother-in-law to church. Not anymore. She doesn’t trust the police either: if she were in a car accident, she’d rather arrive home safely in the damaged vehicle. She lives in Colony Ridge, an immigrant neighborhood 40 minutes from Houston, which for years has been targeted by conservative politicians — including Texas Governor Greg Abbott — who consider it a magnet for undocumented immigration.

Since Donald Trump took office again in January 2025, for Lidia, those arrested in her community went from being someone’s acquaintance to being her own neighbors and friends. She recounts how the father of the family across the street was arrested and deported to El Salvador a few weeks ago; the house was abandoned as everyone subsequently left. Her neighbor on the corner was hit by a car on a nearby road and the police, instead of helping her, demanded her immigration papers and, since she didn’t have any, turned her over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Her 13- and 20-year-old children were left alone. A friend of her husband was also detained, and Lidia never found out if he got to try the goat meat she had just cooked for him.

“Now, when you see a police officer, you go around praying, ‘Lord, make me invisible to the enemy.’ We no longer see the police and think, ‘I’m safe.’ No. Now, for us, a police officer is an enemy,” says Lidia. That’s not her real name. She agreed to speak only under a pseudonym because she’s afraid of being recognized and detained by immigration authorities. Other residents of this community preferred not to share their stories for the same reason.

While she was talking, Lidia called a neighbor whose children were detained three days before Thanksgiving in 2025: one has already been deported to Mexico and the other has been held in an ICE facility ever since. “We had never felt like this: persecuted, harassed,” says the Honduran woman, who has lived in the United States for 13 years, 11 of them in Colony Ridge.

And she’s not just speaking for herself. Lidia says her six-year-old godson cries if his mother hasn’t arrived home by 4:15 p.m. “He’s heard the police are going to take his mom away. He starts asking where she is. It’s psychological trauma. This man [Trump] doesn’t see what he’s doing. Children have the right to feel safe.”

In January 2025, when Trump returned to the White House, Colony Ridge residents walked the streets or did their shopping without fear. They thought they couldn’t be arrested because they hadn’t committed any crimes. At that time, they believed Trump’s promises, the then-Republican candidate having stated during the 2024 election campaign that he would deport “the worst of the worst” — the criminals. They didn’t feel targeted.

However, as the months passed and they saw ICE agents, state police, and highway patrol officers stop them for any reason whatsoever — for having a burned-out taillight, for carrying tools in the trunk of the car, or simply for looking Hispanic — that feeling changed. Some families chose to keep their children at home, while others sent them to school in Ubers; American neighbors began buying for the undocumented immigrants; and some even sold their land or transferred it to relatives with legal immigration status so they wouldn’t lose it in case of deportation.

In June 2025, Alejandrina Morales, a resident of this community, summed up the neighborhood’s feelings: “We feel like we’re being hunted just for looking Hispanic.” Her husband was detained by ICE agents at his own tire shop, and after his release, she said he was never the same again.

The conservative view on Colony Ridge

The members of this community don’t call it Colony Ridge. That’s the name given to it by the media and the governor. Its residents — mostly families of mixed immigration status — refer to the six neighborhoods where they live, which have been developed by Colony Ridge Land LLC since 2013, individually: Grand San Jacinto, the first one built; Santa Fe, Camino Real, Rancho San Vicente, Montebello, and Bella Vista.

These are plots of land on the outskirts of Houston, in northeast Texas, cheaper than in the city, with access to basic services, and where owners can build homes — with restrictions — or park trailers. Lidia has lived in this community since 2015. She remembers that for years it was a safe place, where it was normal to see children playing in the street.

The fear now felt by this community — located in a county where 33% of the population is Hispanic, according to the 2024 Census — is well-founded. Along with Florida, Texas is one of the states most committed to Trump’s policy of mass detentions and deportations. According to ICE records, nearly 400 state police officers have cooperation agreements with the federal agency to hand over custody of those detained or arrested without legal immigration status. Three of these officers serve Liberty County, where Colony Ridge is located.

Governor Abbott himself has referred to this community as a “sanctuary” for undocumented immigrants, a concept he condemns. He has also taken direct action against them. In February 2025, he announced on social media that Colony Ridge would be “the target” of a joint operation between local and federal authorities to detain immigrants: 118 residents were arrested. Since then, the streets of this neighborhood look much like that day in February, some days with more officers and police, others with fewer, but they are always patrolling.

Furthermore, for the past three years, undocumented immigrants living in Texas, and in this community in particular, have felt the shadow of a law that would allow state authorities to arrest, detain, and deport them. This is the controversial SB 4. The implementation of this legislation — which has been described as one of the “most extreme” against immigration — has been blocked by the courts on several occasions. The latest setback came last week when a district judge in Austin blocked some of its provisions, ruling that they “conflict” with federal agencies, the only ones responsible for enforcing immigration law in the U.S. It remains to be seen what further legal action the state will take in its attempt to implement it.

This combination of realities is what makes Lidia and the Colony Ridge community continue to add restrictions to daily life: “We are tied hand and foot right now, hoping that God will take care of us.”

The ‘nightmare’ of deportation

Lidia says that in conversations with her neighbors there is a recurring theme: the deterioration of the mental and physical health of many of them as a result of stress.

She has high blood pressure. During a recent doctor’s visit, her doctor told her that her blood pressure was higher than normal. Lidia explained that it could be due to increased anxiety and fear that keeps her from sleeping at night.

“I have nightmares every day,” she says. “I’ve dreamt that we’re being chased and that later, when we’re in Honduras and want to go back, we can’t; that our relatives don’t answer the phone or that the phone doesn’t have our family’s numbers saved.” These dreams have taken her and her husband back to their childhood homes, which are no longer even owned by their families.

Lidia says the family doesn’t know what to do. Some days they wake up certain they must sell all their properties in the community and leave for Mexico or Honduras, where they are originally from. Other days they feel they should stay and wait for Trump’s remaining years in office to pass.

While they decide, she says she will continue to support her neighbors in any way she can. At the beginning of the year, she helped with a fundraising raffle to buy plane tickets for three children who were left alone after their parents were deported. She recalls donating about three more times, whenever she can.

Although they have lost a great deal over the past few months, Lidia is glad that this time has brought them one benefit: “A community that has learned to stick together more closely.”

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