For the first time in her 15-year career, immigration attorney Joy Green is seeing clients deliberately avoid the legal system, even passing up opportunities for U.S. citizenship and other legal aid, to protect their loved ones from being detained or deported.
“When the first reports came out about people being detained at immigration court, a lot of our clients disappeared,” said Green, executive director of the nonprofit Justice For All Immigrants.
“They don’t want to come forward for their immigration hearings, to the point where they don't even stay in contact with us. Whether they’ve gone into hiding or departed the country, a lot of times we don’t even know.”
The uneasy environment reflects the mounting impact of the federal mass deportation campaign, which is reaching deeper into communities each month.
A new Kinder Institute for Urban Research survey shows that 1 in 7 residents know someone who was detained and potentially deported, with the rate rising to more than 1 in 4 in some neighborhoods. The survey collected responses from over 9,000 residents during October and November 2025. Connections to people impacted by immigration were not limited to Houston.
Researchers also tracked how local attitudes changed throughout the year, comparing responses from that same time frame against responses from January and February 2025. About 8,400 respondents participated in both rounds of the survey, and over 80% of Houstonians said the immigration system is not working well in both rounds.
Personal connections are closely tied to neighborhood, nativity and economic status. Residents reported the highest rates of knowing someone affected in Alief, northern and eastern Harris County, Rosenberg in Fort Bend County and eastern Montgomery County.
“We’re talking about upwards of 750,000 people in the Houston region knowing someone affected by this policy,” said Dan Potter, director of the Kinder Institute’s Houston Population Research Center. “This is a huge number of people whose lives may have been upended, while for millions of others their lives were seemingly untouched.
“Still, given the human scale of this policy shift, even those not directly affected so far may begin to feel the effects as the consequences of these actions ripple through the local economy and other facets of our local community.”
Foreign-born residents are more likely to know an impacted individual, with 21% reporting a personal connection compared to just 13% of U.S.-born residents. Lower-income households also bear the brunt of this proximity. The weight of the immigration crackdown falls heaviest on Hispanic communities, with 1 in 4 residents indicating they personally know someone impacted, a significantly higher rate than their Black (1 in 11), White (1 in 12), and Asian (1 in 17) neighbors.
Sudden loss of stability
Behind these statistics lies a hidden, human toll that detention or deportation places on families, according to Jose Luis Martinez, legal director at Justice For All Immigrants.
“There’s always the issue of suddenly losing one of the breadwinners or the primary breadwinner in the family,” he said. “There's always a struggle. How are they going to pay bills? Then, families are also losing someone who provided emotional support. We see it affect the children quite a bit, because they're essentially losing a parent.”
Martinez said this trauma is compounded by the logistical difficulties of navigating the detention system. Since arrests may happen without warning, like during routine traffic stops, families are often unaware of a detainee’s whereabouts.
If an individual is located in a facility, staying in touch is fraught with obstacles. Detainees must use a costly commissary system to make outbound phone calls. If detainees do not have funds in their account, they are unable to call home.
For family members who are undocumented themselves, the simple act of trying to reach a loved one is risky.
“Family members who are undocumented are very afraid to make contact,” Green said. “Families have to think about which specific family member can contact the facility, because there’s a fear that a connection will be made that can lead to their own detention.”
Changing attitudes across the aisle
As personal accounts of separated families multiply across Houston, public sentiment is quietly shifting in the opposite direction of federal policy.
Kinder Institute data shows that as deportation enforcement increased throughout 2025, local support for alternative solutions grew. By late 2025, 75% of Houston-area residents expressed support for increasing pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, up from 70% at the beginning of the year.
Notable changes occurred across political lines. Support for mass deportation among “extremely conservative” residents fell from a majority at the start of the year to 49% by late 2025.
This movement was also evident among those who previously opposed any government intervention. Fifty-five percent of conservatives and 73% of moderates who initially preferred “no action” now favor increased pathways to citizenship. Among residents who once supported mass deportation, 20% of conservatives and 33% of moderates shifted their preference toward legal pathways by the end of the year.
