The morning after Donald Trump was re-elected, promising the largest deportation effort in US history, the phone at the Emerald Isle Immigration Center in Queens, New York, started ringing.
"Everybody is fearful," said John Stahl, Director of Immigration Legal Services at the centre - which is funded in part by the Irish Government.
"We are getting calls from legal and undocumented immigrants alike, just worried because of all the talk about how they're going to get stricter," he said.
Those without papers are a bit slower to come out of the shadows and ask for help, he said.
They are also highly vulnerable to scammers, who offer fictitious green cards, in exchange for large sums of money.
"We tell them to get legal advice to find out where they stand," Mr Stahl said, "and be prepared in the event that they are arrested and deported," he added.
Things to consider include what happens to their children - whether they have secured Irish passports for them if they plan to leave as a family or appointed legal guardians if the children are to stay behind in the US, he said.
One undocumented immigrant in a suburb of New York City, who wanted to keep his identity concealed - has lived in the US for more than 20 years. His children, born here, are US citizens.
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Despite having no legal status, Sean (not his real name) has never been out of work in New York's restaurants, bars or construction sites.
"Did I make a decent life in America? I have to say yes, I did," he told RTÉ News.
But to keep living their life in the US, Sean and his wife, also undocumented, cannot travel home to Ireland as they risk being refused entry to the US on their return.
Above all else, the memory of his mother’s passing is most painful.
"You want to be able to go to your own mother's funeral, carry her with my brothers, but I couldn't go. That was very tough," he said.
"It’s not unique to me at all, it’s happening to Irish guys and girls every day of the week in this country, because we can't go back," he added.
Reliable figures on the number of undocumented Irish in the US are hard to come by. Estimates vary wildly between 10,000 and 50,000.
Over the years, there have been a number of attempts by the Irish Government and US members of Congress to secure amnesty for illegal immigrants from Ireland or additional visas.
The last time a bill to allocate remaining visas from the E-3 scheme for Australia to Irish citizens, it was defeated by one vote, cast by Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a top Trump ally.
Now with Donald Trump preparing to re-enter the White House, the chances of the measure being revived are slim.
Some analysts have suggested that the new administration is likely to single out criminals for deportation.
But Fiona McEntee, managing attorney at McEntee Law Group in Chicago, does not buy it.
"There are a lot of commentators or spectators, who don't work in the field, who are opining on this saying, he's only going to go after the bad guys," she said.
"My response to that is: let's look at the executive orders that were signed last time."
When they say they intend on deporting all the undocumented immigrants, that is what they intend to do, she added.
"They ran on that campaign promise, and people voted for them with that promise in mind, so I don't think we should be surprised if we see chaos again come January," she said.
Mass deportations are nothing new in US politics. Former president Barack Obama was dubbed "deporter-in-chief" for sending some three million people home during his eight years in office.
Former president George W Bush deported around two million, in the wake of the 11 September attacks in 2001, while Mr Trump removed 1.5 million during his first presidential term.
This time, Mr Trump is planning to break all previous records.
But millions of undocumented immigrants are employed in several sectors of the US economy, especially food production, agriculture and manufacturing.
A recent study, carried out by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington DC found that undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022.
"Those tax dollars that undocumented immigrants contribute to our three big social safety net programmes - Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance - are ultimately used up by American citizens," Marco Guzman, one of the authors of the report, said.
"Immigrants are barred from accessing the benefits of these programmes because of their undocumented status," he added.
Sean believes many US employers deliberately turn a blind eye to the undocumented status of their workers.
"It’s a joke - that’s the whole hypocrisy of it," he said.
"You pay federal and state taxes and they know the money they are getting is from a guy who has no social security number and is not supposed to be here," he said, "but the treasury never says no to donations," he added.
As Mr Trump’s return to the White House approaches, is he getting anxious?
"I’m not worried about it too much," Sean said.
"What’s the worst they could do to us, send us back home?" he added.
