A view into NJ's DIRE hotline: The ‘911’ for immigrants in deportation trouble

The volunteer-run Deportation & Immigration Response Equipo immigration hotline in Central New Jersey received the frantic call one week into President Donald Trump’s second term.

The caller told a volunteer dispatcher for the hotline that their family member, a “grandmother” from Mexico who had lived in the United States for 30 years without permanent legal status, had just been picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside her home in New Brunswick.

“It felt like they had just ripped her out of this family,” said Amanda Dominguez, a DIRE “rapid response” team member who was quickly dispatched to the home. The New Jersey ICE field office would not discuss the case and no one else was at the home when she was taken into custody. Dominguez said the woman had no criminal record and had been placed into deportation proceedings, according to family members who were at the home when Dominguez arrived.

"Unfortunately the grandmother is still in detention and they moved her out of state," Dominguez said on Friday. "The family was hoping to visit her."

The DIRE hotline was created in 2017, in the early days of Trump’s first term, which also featured a crackdown on immigration. Its purpose is to support New Jerseyans “experiencing family separation or other immigration issues,” according to DIRE's website. And while there was a relative lull during the Biden administration, hotline leaders said, activity has surged since Trump’s return to office.

Hotline volunteers fielded 99 calls, or about six a day, between Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 and Wednesday, according to DIRE. That compares to 580 calls, or around 1.5 calls a day, during the 12-month period that ended Jan. 14.

“Ours is like a 911 for immigration,” said the Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale, a  pastor at the Reform Church of Highland Park who helped launch the service. He added that fears and worries spurred by Trump’s promise of “mass deportation,” embodied in a series of executive orders signed in the first days of his new term, are driving the increased call volume.

Less clear is whether ICE activity in New Jersey matches the rise in call volume. The agency hasn’t divulged arrest totals for individual states, and as a matter of routine the New Jersey ICE field office responds to media inquiries about specific ICE activity with terse emails stating it does not comment on “ongoing investigations.”

In social media posts, however, the agency claims it makes around 1,000 daily arrests nationwide, up from about 300 in 2024. Publicity around those encounters, including ICE arrests in Newark and New York City in January, have not gone unnoticed among the state’s 475,000 undocumented residents.

Volunteers serve as the dispatchers for the hotline, with eight team members always at the ready in case their cellphones ring. The work is assisted with a $50,000 grant through the United Way. In addition to New Jerseyans reporting ICE sightings or encounters, callers have sought help on the particulars of deportation, the risks associated with going to hospitals, and even about self-deportation – that is, leaving the country on their own.

DIRE also hosts know-your-rights information sessions. On three consecutive Sunday evenings, between 125 and 250 people turned out for recent information sessions.

Although the service was born in Central Jersey, Kaper-Dale said rapid response teams tasked with showing up in-person to assist immigrants had formed throughout the state, including in Jersey City, New Brunswick, and in Union, Ocean and Mercer counties. Hackettstown, located in the state's northwest corner, is preparing to come on board. In all, he said “there are hundreds” of volunteers tied to the operation, including the eight dispatchers and 25 in rapid response functions. Some volunteers assist with filing asylum applications, purchasing groceries or visiting detention centers.

Notwithstanding the DIRE network's growth, 57% of New Jersey voters in an October 2024 survey by the Stockton Polling Institute say they supported a national effort to deport immigrants living illegally in the United States, including 33% of registered Democrats.

Kaper-Dale, however, said he sees the work of serving the state’s immigrant communities as religiously inspired. He used his Feb. 2 sermon at Reformed Church of Highland Park to tell congregants “immigrants are a blessing” and included this warning: “ICE, get your hands off our families.”

On its website, the church states “its commitment to providing physical sanctuary to brothers and sisters at risk of being separated from their families and communities as a result of our nation’s current immigration policies.”

A home visit in New Brunswick

Dominguez, the volunteer dispatched to the home in New Brunswick, said she reviewed camera footage from the house herself. She watched as the woman arrived home with groceries and encountered ICE agents, “ and it seemed to move pretty quickly,” she said.

Family members told Dominguez the woman had an attorney and had regular immigration check-ins while attempting to adjust her status.

They were concerned because the woman, who Dominguez said was born in the 1950s, had high blood pressure and didn’t have her medicine on hand when she was taken into custody. With help from Dominguez, the woman's family used a find-my-phone app and initially traced her location to a building in Newark.

“The family asked me, ‘Well, how long do you think she has before deportation?’ I said, ‘I don't know.’ Because with this administration, things have changed so much and they change daily.”

Outside of ICE encounters, the volunteers said they confront a number of other concerns. Some immigrants have questions related to their housing situation or express fear about traveling to the supermarket and wonder if someone can pick up groceries for them.

Others, said Dominguez, have concerns related to health care, stemming from a recent Department of Homeland Security memo rescinding a Biden-era policy that largely barred immigration officers from conducting enforcement actions in sensitive locations, including schools and hospitals, though there has been little evidence so far that enforcement actions in such locations are common.

“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” wrote then-acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman in a Jan. 21 statement.

Dominguez said she’d spoken to community members who are pregnant or have family members who are. They are considering giving birth at home because they are “afraid of being taken from their children” in a hospital, Dominguez said.

One pregnant woman said her lawyer had advised her husband against attending the birth, in the event that ICE officers “come for him.”

“I think we're going to see a lot of emergencies,” she said.

‘All the rules are off the table’

Lindy Stork, a retired teacher who volunteers for the hotline, said fear among immigrants had grown compared to what it was during the first Trump administration and that people were now more likely to contemplate “drastic decisions.”

She said one family she’d worked with for several years had recently asked her to provide her personal information “so that they could make me the guardian of their children in case they get picked up while their children are at school.”

Stork said they had openly discussed moving back to their native country of Mexico.

The fear, she said, increasingly extended to immigrants who don’t have criminal records, and has been amplified by statements from Trump officials.

These include “border czar” Tom Homan, who said in December that while criminals and gang members were the primary targets of enforcement, he also expected “collateral arrests” to take place.

“ That's a big difference between last time and this time,” Stork said. “ All the rules are off the table.”

Another team member, Carlos Castaneda, said that volunteers who are deployed to the site of a potential encounter closely follow a set of guidelines.

“Do not get in the way of the operation,” he said. “Do record. Pull out your cameras, record, get badges. And try to tell community members around not to get close and to leave the area.”

Dominguez said that volunteers can help calm immigrant families in crisis, remind them of their rights and, in certain situations, “be witness to the terror” in communities.

“ Because sometimes if you're living alone and they come, you disappear and no one knows where you went,” she said.

Kathy Scarborough, the newest member of the DIRE rapid response force, said that for years she hadn’t even owned a cellphone but she now waited for her first deployment to the site of an ICE encounter, feeling “scared but determined.”

Anticipating her nervousness, she held up a DIRE leaflet she keeps on hand, “My Role at an ICE Action.”

“Step 4: Demand ICE identify themselves,” it read. “Ask for a warrant.”

Scarborough said she was moved to get involved with DIRE because she viewed the federal government’s efforts to remove immigrants from the country as “morally wrong.”

“ Taking law-abiding people who just want to have a little bit of what all the rest of us have, you know, a decent job, place to live, food for the kids,” said Scarborough. “Taking people like that away, I mean, it's just wrong.”

This story has been updated with additional details about the "rapid response" call Amanda Dominguez responded to.