PROVIDENCE — Speaking out for the first time since Governor Carcieri issued his executive order cracking down on illegal immigration, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said yesterday that their focus is on criminal investigations, not arbitrary sweeps.

But the ICE agents stopped short of making any promises to the advisory panel that’s monitoring the effects of the order.

“Hopefully, we are allaying some fears about what our priorities are and what we do,” said Bruce M. Foucart, special agent in charge of investigations in Boston.

But panel members, including Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, were unconvinced, pressing the ICE team for better answers: Who in the immigrant community are they targeting and why.

For several weeks now, commission members have fanned out to immigrant communities to document firsthand accounts of how Carcieri’s order affects people’s daily lives.

What they’ve found is fear.

In some circles, they said, immigrants are afraid to go about their daily lives because they are scared of being stopped by ICE officials.

“If I am undocumented –– I am not a criminal, I have no other problems –– I’m just undocumented, should I fear taking my child to a medical facility or a church?” the panel’s chairman, retired Rear Adm. Joseph Strasser asked yesterday.

David P. Riccio, the resident agent in charge of ICE operations in Providence, reiterated that the agency has only so many resources.

“We do not stand on street corners and look for folks,” he told the panel. “We don’t occupy a certain spot in Olneyville and wait for folks to walk by and racially profile and grab [them]. We are looking for certain individuals –– someone who had an outstanding immigration warrant or whatever the circumstances.”

But when prodded to put that pledge in writing, Riccio and Foucart reversed course saying they couldn’t do so.

“Every circumstance is different, you cannot pigeonhole us. You cannot have me say, ‘Here, I’m not going to uphold a law of the United States that I’ve been tasked with enforcing,’ ” Foucart said. “I am not going to say that. Every situation is different. I’m telling you what our priorities are.”

Despite the sometimes-contentious repartee, many members who attended yesterday’s session spoke positively of the meeting.

“The hope was that we would have a good discussion, that we would share information and try to help each other understand various points of view and I think we accomplished that,” Tobin said. “I think it is one step of an ongoing process of communication and discussion that has to continue for the community.”

Carcieri’s executive order, issued in March, calls in part for empowering state troopers and corrections officers with immigration enforcement duties. It also requires executive branch agencies and state contracts to use the federal E-verify program, a computerized database that screens new hires for work eligibility; and it calls for swifter deportation of prisoners found to be in this country illegally.

While many in Rhode Island applauded the governor’s willingness to take action where the federal government did not, community leaders, advocacy groups and several of the state’s top clergy people criticized the plan, prompting Carcieri to convene a panel monitoring any “unintended consequences.”

But some questioned the group’s relevance when a courthouse immigration raid in July happened at the same time as the commission’s first meeting.

Three months later, several members said yesterday that they’re still feeling pressure from their constituencies to resign from the group, which some believe holds little sway.

The Rev. Donald C. Anderson, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, said resigning means cutting off valuable communication with the state and federal government.

“My feeling is as long as we can sit at a table and have meaningful conversation and people are listening –– and my sense is that people are listening –– then we can try to move forward,” Anderson said. “It’s far better to be sitting around a table than standing on opposite side of the State House through megaphones talking at each other, all that does is enflame emotions, reinforce negative stereotypes and creates more intolerance.”

cneedham@projo.com