SAN JUAN — In response to a nationwide effort by immigration officials to deport hundreds of Central American families, local immigrant advocacy group, La Union del Pueblo Entero, or LUPE, held a Know your Rights presentation Friday night for people living in the Rio Grande Valley.

Department of Homeland Security officials announced Dec. 24 it would begin conducting raids to deport immigrant families, specifically those from Central America who had entered the country illegally in the past year and a half and have been ordered to leave by a judge.

Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement took into custody 121 people Jan. 2, primarily from Texas, Georgia and North Carolina as part of roundups aimed at increasing the number of deportation of adults who entered the country illegally with children after Jan. 1, 2014, according to a news release from DHS Secretary Jeh C. Johnson.

The meeting, held at LUPE’s headquarters in San Juan, mirrored the meetings held across the country in areas with large immigrant communities.

More than 100 people packed into the group’s building, some standing throughout the more than two-hour presentation that included warnings from LUPE leaders, immigration lawyers, and other advocates about the raids being conducted throughout the country and how they could avoid incriminating themselves if they were to be detained.

Evelyn Garcia was among those who attended Friday night and asked questions after an educational video about basic rights was shown to the packed room.

The 44-year-old Edinburg woman said she’s glad LUPE put the event together. She’s undocumented and has lived in the Valley for more than 20 years.

“First off, it’s very good to have this presentation today, so that we don’t go through what’s happened in other states with the raids,” Garcia said in Spanish.

Garcia, the mother of two U.S. citizens, said her youngest son fears she’ll be deported while he’s in school.

“He’s nervous I’ll get picked up while he’s in class,” she said.

Garcia, who is originally from Puebla, said the fear of deportation never really leaves her and she is disheartened by the latest round of raids reported in parts of the country.

“I know they said those who entered the country in 2014 or those from Central America are the ones who will be deported, but when it comes to ICE, they don’t care who they pick up. It’s not just Hondurans or the ones from Central America, it’s everyone,” Garcia said. “What hurts me the most is their lack of consideration for our children. They don’t think who will watch over them, or will they be placed in a stranger’s home, and it’s wrong. They’re violating basic human rights — it’s very sad.”

John Michael Torres, a spokesman for LUPE, said these types of presentations help community members understand their basic rights as it pertains to immigration enforcement.

“Oftentimes people think because they’re from another country, or because they don’t have legal status here in this country and regardless of the amount of time they’ve lived here, regardless of their family, regardless of the home and life they’ve built here — think they don’t have rights here in this country, but these are rights that are constitutional rights,” Torres said. “When immigration is knocking on your door or they are coming into your workplace and asking questions, that presence oftentimes, (people) feel like they have to give up their rights, feel that they have to speak to an officer, have to sign papers, and just like anybody else they have the right to remain silent, and they also have the right not to sign anything.”

Over the past few years, increasing numbers of children and families have been fleeing violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — a region of Central America known as the “Northern Triangle.”

Most of the immigrants deported this weekend were part of a large wave of unaccompanied children that came across the southern border in the summer of 2014. In South Texas, nearly 69,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the border illegally that summer, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection numbers.

The largest number of children (27 percent of the total) came from Honduras, followed by Guatemala (25 percent), El Salvador (24 percent), and Mexico (23 percent), according to CBP statistics.

During fiscal year 2015, officials saw a constant decrease in the numbers of unaccompanied children and family units apprehended at the southern border, but at the end of 2015 the numbers once again spiked, prompting a visit from CBP Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske.

Between Oct. 1, 2015, and Nov. 30, 2015, more than 8,500 family units crossed the South Texas border through the Rio Grande Valley Sector, which stretches from the mouth of the Rio Grande in Cameron County to the Starr-Zapata county line.

During this same time, 6,465 unaccompanied minors were processed, a more than 101 percent increase compared to the same time last year, according to CBP statistics.

Friday, at a Hispanic Caucus news conference, U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D-McAllen, called on the Obama administration to halt the immigration raids.

“The current raids are causing fear, panic, and great sadness to people who have already endured tremendous danger and tumult in their lives,” Hinojosa said. “Our Administration – the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration & Customs Enforcement in particular – must halt these raids and take every precaution to protect these mothers and children from peril.”

LUPE will hold a Know Your Rights presentation in Brownsville tonight.

“We hope people leave with a little more sense of their dignity, an understanding of the rights that are afforded under the constitution and a little more agency to defend themselves in these situations, where immigration enforcement wants to rip them away from their families and their communities,” Torres said.

Local advocacy group holds 'know your rights' presentation amid nationwide immigration raids