HOLYOKE — “When we organize, we take our power back.”

That message has guided Ariana Keigan and the Pioneer Valley Workers Center (PVWC) as immigrant advocacy groups across western Massachusetts respond to increased immigration enforcement activity during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Speaking Wednesday at Holyoke Community College’s annual Fair Housing & Civil Rights Conference, Keigan and other advocates described how local organizations have expanded efforts to educate immigrants about their rights, verify reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and connect residents with legal and community support amid what they say are more aggressive federal enforcement tactics.

“Our theory of change, what it is that we do, is that we organize people, we build people power,” said Keigan, PVWC’s associate director. “We empower people to understand their rights and get connected to our community — folks who are in similar situations — to fight back and think about the biggest issues that we’re facing and what are the solutions that we develop together.”

The 20th annual, two-day conference at HCC brought together elected officials and community leaders from across the region to discuss a wide range of topics, from immigration and housing injustice to the environment and education.

Keigan said there were multiple surges of ICE activity in Massachusetts last year, explaining that surges are time spans when agents are deployed to a specific area to arrest as many people as possible. Two of the surges were in March and September last year. The other took place in June, which Keigan said brought the most ICE activity to western Massachusetts out of the three.

During these surges, Keigan said ICE sometimes brings in officers from other federal law enforcement agencies to support enforcement efforts, increasing the agency’s capacity to carry out arrests and other operations.

The Springfield-based PVWC, which has ties throughout the Valley, responded by collaborating with similar organizations across Massachusetts to establish LUCE at the beginning of last year. LUCE is a statewide hotline and resource center for reporting ICE activity.

PVWC Executive Director Claudia Rosales also spoke at Wednesday’s event, discussing how LUCE helps verify reports of ICE activity and connect immigrants with resources and support. A Spanish-speaking immigrant from El Salvador, Rosales had a translator interpret her speech.

“We work very closely with our community, with all kinds of people in the community, and we’re very grateful for that support and that connection,” Rosales said. “As we say, people united will never be defeated.”

Javier Luengo-Garrido, the ACLU of Massachusetts’ deputy field director for regional engagement, said the Trump administration has used several tactics to expand immigration detentions, including rolling back restrictions that previously limited ICE operations in “sensitive locations” such as churches and courts.

Another example, Luengo-Garrido said, is that immigrants with pending immigration cases have traditionally been less likely to be detained — but that has changed under the current administration.

“It used to be that if you had an open immigration case, the possibilities of you being detained were really, really low — not anymore,” Luengo-Garrido said. “There are different ways how this administration is working.”

While the Trump administration has changed how immigration enforcement operates, Luengo-Garrido said many problems within the U.S. immigration court system are longstanding and predate the recent surges in ICE detentions.

“The due process system, being that I have the right to an attorney as long as I can pay for one, that existed way before Trump,” said Luengo-Garrido, discussing how immigration courts disadvantage immigrants in cases involving legal status and wage compensation.

For instance, Luengo-Garrido clarified that unlike in criminal courts, immigrants are not automatically given a federal attorney when they cannot pay for one. He said there is a dynamic between private attorneys and federal judges, who want to maintain a relationship with one another.

“If I’m an immigration attorney fighting a case I want to be really careful probably because I don’t want to jeopardize my relationship with the judge,” Luengo-Garrido said. “And that attorney may be a future judge. It’s complicated.”

While ICE surges have slowed in recent months, Keigan and Luengo-Garrido said their work remains focused on helping immigrants understand the immigration system and the resources available to them so they can make informed decisions. Both emphasized that meaningful change often comes gradually through local and state-level action.

“Things are really hard right now for immigrants in Massachusetts,” Luengo-Garrido said. “The Legislature, the governor and communities have shown that when we go local, we can protect our community … when the federal government targets our community, going state and local is the key, and that’s what Massachusetts is showing us right now.”