Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, of the Diocese of Providence, participates in an immigration rally in Providence in May 2006. Two weeks ago, the bishop said a “toxic atmos- phere” is casting a “pall of fear” over immigrant communities. Photo courtesy of the Providence Diocese

Several weeks ago, the Rev. Jaime Garcia, pastor of St. Michael Church in South Providence, received a call for help: a man had died at home of a heart attack and the family wanted a priest there for support.

When Father Garcia arrived at the rented home off Hartford Avenue, he found the yard filling with about 35 grieving relatives and friends of the deceased Guatemalan, a husband and father and a legal immigrant whose son was preparing to join the Army. Father Garcia tried to shepherd the anguished mourners into the house so they could pray together.

“But they wouldn’t go inside,” Father Garcia says. Several in the group were illegal immigrants. “They were afraid Immigration would find them. They said, ‘We’re staying out here. In case the police come, we’ll have a chance to run.’ ”

For unity’s sake the entire group remained outside. “I prayed with them in the backyard,” Father Garcia says.

“It was so sad. They were afraid to pray together in the home.”

On this holiday weekend, the unofficial end of summer, the seasons teeter on a threshold of change. But in Rhode Island, many people have already sensed a sharp, and increasingly tempestuous, shift in the political climate. Two weeks ago, the state’s Roman Catholic bishop referred to this “toxic atmosphere” as having cast a “pall of fear” over immigrant communities.

Immigrants, and particularly Hispanics, whether here illegally or legally, say they are feeling hunted in the wake of Governor Carcieri’s crackdown on illegal immigration, which has coincided with several raids by federal immigration agents.

At St. Michael Church, Father Garcia says, new parishioners won’t register their addresses with church officials for fear that immigration agents may enter the religious sanctuaries and demand records. Mass attendance is down in several Hispanic parishes.

Hispanic businesses report a drastic drop in business, in part they say, because of their customers’ fear of leaving their homes.

Doctors report many Hispanic patients not showing up for appointments.

Fears are driving illegal immigrants further underground, or even causing some to leave the state.

“Everybody,” says Father Garcia, “is afraid to live.”

GOVERNOR CARCIERI’S March executive order requires companies doing business with the state to verify the status of their employees and calls on state police troopers and prison guards to be trained to enforce immigration laws.

Many people applaud Carcieri’s order and the federal raids. And, they say, if it forces illegal immigrants to leave Rhode Island, all the better.

Travis Rowley, vice chairman of the Rhode Island Young Republicans and author of Out of Ivy, a book about finding his conservative leanings, says concern about fear in the Hispanic community is really an “annoying” talking point liberals use to generate sympathy.

“Illegal aliens should be afraid of the law,” says Rowley. “That’s kind of the whole idea behind the governor’s executive order. Nobody seems to want to recognize the degree of arrogance on illegal aliens’ part whenever they fearlessly evade the law to enter the country, and live off of the backs of tax-paying Rhode Islanders.”

Rowley says if this climate of fear has extended to the entire Hispanic community “then the legal Hispanic citizens should be the most outraged at those who are entering the country illegally. Yet, we never seem to find any ‘Hispanic Citizens Against Illegal Immigration’ group out there. Nor do we find outrage from union leadership, even though businesses are undercutting the wages of Rhode Island workers [by hiring illegal immigrants]. I wonder why that is.”

Terry Gorman, executive director of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement (RIILE), says, “The governor’s executive order is doing more than the governor ever expected it [to do]. It’s doing a lot of good. Illegal aliens are leaving the state, on their own.”

Amy Kempe, spokeswoman for Carcieri, said that in the absence of comprehensive federal immigration reform, the governor “has an obligation to enforce the laws in the purview he is allowed.”

“The executive order is very narrow in focus. It deals primarily with state police, the Department of Corrections and state contractors. That’s it,” said Kempe.

After Carcieri’s order sparked numerous public protests, the governor appointed a 27-member advisory panel “to study and report back to him for any unintended consequences for legal immigrants,” Kempe said. The group has met twice and will continue to do so, she said.

Kempe added that the recent federal immigration raids “are completely separate from the governor’s executive order, but it certainly does underscore that Rhode Island does have an issue with illegal immigration. There are illegal immigrants that are here breaking the law.”

Community and civil-rights activists, however, remain incensed by the governor’s actions. Some are still calling for Carcieri to rescind his order.

The Most Rev. Thomas J. Tobin, Rhode Island’s Roman Catholic bishop, called for a moratorium on immigration raids and suggested that immigration agents excuse themselves from participating if they cannot do so “in good conscience.”

It seems a long way from that spring day in 2006 when thousands of immigrants and their supporters –– some put the number at almost 20,000 –– marched through Providence without fear as part of a nationwide demonstration meant to underline the economic and social benefits immigrants offer the United States.

AFTER A PROPOSED overhaul of immigration laws died in Congress last year, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began increasing its high-profile, mass round-ups of suspected illegal immigrants at factories, meat-processing plants, malls and other locations around the country. The effort began as “Operation Return to Sender” in 2006.

Locally there have been many flashpoints.

Among them, a federal raid last year on a New Bedford factory that swept more than 320 people into detention, and the death last August of a Brazilian national in ICE custody in Providence. In January, ICE agents arrested the father of Rhode Island’s first New Year’s Baby of 2008; hours later, his roommate — an illegal immigrant — was found hanging, dead from an apparent suicide.

In early March, a Providence storeowner made national headlines after demanding to see the Social Security cards of two men — both U.S. citizens –– who were speaking Spanish in his store, then threatening to call immigration authorities.

Later that month, Carcieri issued his executive order. In June, immigration agents swept through stores, apartments and other locations on Aquidneck Island, arresting 42 suspected illegal immigrants. On July 15, agents entered the state’s courthouses, arresting 31 others, working as janitors.

“A lot of these tensions and hostility against immigrants were in the air before,” says Michael Doyle, an immigration lawyer in Pawtucket. “But since March, we are seeing them now manifest much more publicly…. Latino people have become more fearful and isolated and they don’t trust anyone outside of their community.”

Doyle says several of his clients who are in the process of receiving residency status or becoming U.S. citizens are worried they could be arrested, detained or deported. He is telling all his clients to carry copies of their green cards whenever they leave their homes.

“These are people who are not undocumented — they have applications in process, and yet because they look Hispanic and don’t have a great grasp of the English language, they are very nervous,” Doyle says.

Some of his clients, Doyle says “are moving out of state, to Massachusetts or down South, where the cost of living is cheaper and the atmosphere is more welcoming.”

Even Hispanics who are in this country legally or have become U.S. citizens say they feel tension in recent months and have in some cases been discriminated against or harassed.

“I’m legal and I’ve been here since I was 5 years old, but people look at you and see you are Spanish and think you are illegal,” says Veronica Cano, 25, who came here from Colombia with her mother. “People hear you speaking Spanish and they look at you like there is something wrong, like you don’t belong here.” Cano graduated from Central Falls High School and now works as a teller at Bank of America.

About three months ago, she began receiving hostile text messages on her cell phone from an unrecognized out-of-state number.

“The messages said, ‘I want you to go back to your country, you wetback,’ and ‘we don’t want you guys here,’ things like that,” Cano said. “I got about 20 of those messages and finally I texted back that I would report them to the police and they stopped.”

Cano doesn’t know why she was targeted.

HISPANIC BUSINESS owners in Providence’s Olneyville section say they have seen a severe decline in business this year, which they attribute to the state’s ailing economy and a growing fear among immigrants.

Edgar Vasquez, owner of a car-repair shop, says he has lost about 70 percent of his customers this year and will probably lose his home to foreclosure.

“People have left the state or been deported,” Vasquez says. “I don’t even go out of the house — just here and to church. If the police see a Hispanic face, they stop the car.”

Jose Marquez, owner of El Quetzal bakery on Hartford Avenue, reports his business is down about 25 percent.

“People are afraid to go out and shop,” Marquez says. “The green grocer down the street says it’s the same for him. A lot of people who used to come all the time now aren’t here.”

Marta Sime says sales are down at her small grocery store because a lot of Hispanic immigrants are out of work.

“Many people have changed the way they live their lives and are afraid to go out, even to the supermarket,” said Juan Garcia, a community organizer at St. Teresa’s Church. “They think Immigration is at Price Rite, waiting to arrest people. That’s not true, but it shows just how afraid people are to go out. … And it’s the children who suffer because now they are cooped up in the house all the time.”

A Pawtucket business owner who came here illegally from Mexico in 1989, said, “We’re watching to see who is knocking on the door.” He keeps his car in working order, to avoid a breakdown that could draw attention, and instructions in his wallet that tell him what to do if he is detained by ICE: give your name and ask for a lawyer; have someone in mind to care for your children if you’re picked up at work.

“I’m not saying bad things at all about this country,” he says. “I’m very grateful. But these are difficult times. My children keep telling me this is the only place, the only country they know…. I’m praying things will get better.”

DR. PABLO RODRIGUEZ is a prominent obstetrician and Latino political leader who says in the month following Carcieri’s executive order, his patients skipped appointments in large numbers. “We had no-shows of as much as 40 percent,” he said. “It was unbelievable.”

“People were very, very afraid to come out of their houses.” That fear was confirmed, Rodriguez says, by callers to his Saturday morning radio show. “I literally had people calling the show to ask if it is safe to go to the doctor, and had another lady call to ask whether it was safe to take the kids to school. And I had another lady ask if it was safe to go to Wal-Mart. These people were not being facetious.”

The executive order “is not just something that affects undocumented citizens or illegal aliens, however they want to call them,” Rodriguez says. “It affects anyone foreign in any way, shape or form –– all Latinos –– and that we’re not welcome in the State of Rhode Island and it’s this ‘us versus them’ mentality; the language the governor continues to use.”

Rhode Islanders once spoke proudly of their state’s diversity, says Rodriguez.

“And now we can’t say the same thing.”

Coming tomorrow: The politics surrounding Governor Carcieri’s tough stance on illegal immigration

kziner@projo.com