ORLANDO — Two weeks ago, Elizeth Villabos got a frantic call in the middle of the day from her teen daughter at high school in Orange County.

“She was at school and saw ICE out side and she was crying and so afraid,” Villalobos said. “She asked me if they were there to return us to Venezuela and if we would be killed if we went back.”

Villalobos calmed her daughter down and said their pending asylum case would allow them to stay in the U.S. — but after their temporary protected status had been revoked by the Trump administration, she knew it likely would not. It was at this moment she realized she needed to protect her daughter in case Elizeth was detained and deported but the daughter was not.

So after living in the U.S. for nine years, Elizeth Villalobos made a heart-wrenching choice. She signed over parental rights for her 15-year-old daughter to her 37-year-old eldest daughter, who has four children of her own.

“My eldest daughter was 21 when she was born so she’s always been like a second mom to her,” Villalobos said in Spanish. “She was the natural choice, but it’s sad … that this is the reality of what we are living.”

She’s not alone. An increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in Central Florida has rattled many in the immigrant community, as the number of detainees at Orange County Jail held only for their immigration status increased fourfold in January. Immigrants, even those who are here legally, are contemplating the possibility of being snatched by authorities without warning, and preparing for the worst.

As a result, Central Florida immigration attorneys have seen a major uptick in parents giving parental rights over their children to trusted friends or family members, a step they now recommend to all of their clients without permanent legal status.

The legal document Villalobos used, granting power of attorney, allows parents to temporarily transfer their parental rights and decision-making abilities to another person. Parents technically still retain full custody of their child and can revoke the legal document at any time.

Cristina Navarro Motta, an immigration attorney based in Kissimmee said the legal process is best done before anyone is arrested. Without it, a court would appoint someone to take care of children.

“When someone gets detained they are very limited as to what they can do,” Motta said.

In Villalobos’ case, power of attorney allows her daughter to live in the U.S. without her parents and grants her sister the authority to take her to school and make financial and medical decisions on her behalf.

Motta said the power of attorney also can grant a single spouse the ability to take legal actions that would otherwise require both parents’ consent, such as applying for children’s passports or making certain medical decisions. The document can be written so that the power is triggered only if parents are detained and it allows parents to revoke it afterward.

Without it, children may not be able to travel out of the U.S. to see deported parents until they’re adults, and no one would have the authority to handle any bank accounts, homes or cars left behind.

“Even if [immigrants] do have family that can take over, they may not have all the necessary authority to make choices for the children,” Motta said about the power of attorney. “It gives families a sense of having some degree of control in a situation where they have no control at all.”

The legal step is more common now than in all of her years of practicing immigration law, Motta said. Ingrid Morfa, another Kissimmee-based immigration attorney, said just last week 15 clients asked her to help them draft a power of attorney for their children.

“Parents have broken down crying,” Morfa said. “They feel like they can’t control their future and they can’t protect their children. They were being persecuted in their countries and now they’re being persecuted here.”

Advocates are also gearing up to host legal clinics and front the cost for more families to access attorneys.

Felipe Sousa Lazaballet, the executive director of Hope Community Center in Apopka, said the organization had such a large volume of interest in the legal step over the last few months that it’s created its own comprehensive power-of-attorney template document to keep up with demand.

“This is an emergency plan that also helps them think about, who are the people in their family they can trust?” Sousa-Lazaballet said. “There is the moment of detention and even deportation, but there’s the worse consequence of your family being separated forever or a child being sent to adoption.”

Family separation has long been contentious, and the children of undocumented immigrants who are detained or deported it have sometimes faced permanent separation.

A 2011 report from the Applied Research Centre found there were at least 5,100 children in foster care with detained or deported parents. That was well before immigration enforcement ramped up to its current levels under President Donald Trump.

Villalobos’ teen daughter, whom she asked not to name, has only known life in the U.S. after being brought here at 5 years old. Her eldest daughter also signed a power of attorney for her four children to another family member.

Despite the legal recourse, Villalobos is tired of being stuck in limbo.

“I want to know what is going to happen to us,” she said. “Is this going to continue forever? I don’t get an interview for my (asylum) case for nearly 10 years but now they want to do everything so rough.”

During the day she works at a law firm as a receptionist and at night she used to drive for Uber daily. But as ICE continues ramping up arrests in Orlando, she said she’s afraid of being pulled over.

“I used to [drive for Uber] everyday, but now I’m only doing it twice a week because it’s dangerous and you feel nervous,” Villalobos said. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m taking the precautions of not going out and diminishing my income so much that my bank account is low. If this continues my finances are going to be upside down.”

Another Orange County woman, who asked not to use her name because of her immigration status, was left alone to care for four children — all of them U.S. citizens born in this country — after her husband was detained by immigration officers on Christmas Eve on the way to a construction job.

Just 12 hours after her husband was taken, he told her he couldn’t handle the horrible treatment in detention and had agreed to his immediate deportation.

“I felt my world shatter in front of me, and all the dreams we had,” she said in Spanish through her tears. “The dreams my children had are gone.”

She has lived in the U.S. for more than 16 years, paying taxes, building a home and never having so much as a parking ticket. But not knowing what might happen to her, she signed the power of attorney over her children to their godmother.

“The moment you sign you have an ugly feeling,” she said. “But at the same time it gives you a sense of security that my kids will be okay.”

Her 18-year-old son was a freshman at a college in New York studying graphic design, but now has to take a gap year to work in order to afford school.

Her 6-year-old son is struggling to adjust to life without his dad and is getting letters sent home about his behavior and lack of focus in first grade. Her youngest, 4, keeps asking when she will see her dad again.

Her 14-year-old daughter cancelled her own quinceañera, a traditional coming-of-age party to celebrate a girl’s 15th birthday, her childhood dream now reduced to a dress collecting dust in the back of her closet.

“She cries, ‘Promise me you’ll be back when I get home from school’,” she said about her teen daughter. “But I can’t make her that promise… and it breaks my heart. But I have to be honest with her.”

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