The following story was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with Utah News Dispatch

Carlos Trujillo couldn’t sleep despite it being well past midnight.

As both an immigrant and an immigration lawyer, Trujillo has been acutely tuned into the volatile nature of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. That night, in the early hours of April 11, as has often been the case lately, Trujillo’s mind drifted to worries about how the changes will impact his clients and what he can do to assist them.

Those thoughts weren’t helped by an email that arrived in his inbox at 1 a.m. The opening line got straight to the point.

“It is time for you to leave the United States,” reads the email from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It ends with a promise: “The federal government will find you.”

Trujillo initially assumed the email was for one of his clients. Then he realized the only name on the email was his own.

“I was in a little bit of a shock,” said Trujillo, who became a citizen over a decade ago. “I was like, why is this happening?”

Trujillo is one of several U.S. citizens on the receiving end of what appears to have been a mass email campaign. The emails stated that the recipients’ parole had been terminated. But Trujillo has never had immigration parole, which allows immigrants to temporarily remain and, in some cases, work in the country. It is separate from the kind of parole used in a criminal justice context.

Immigration lawyers in Massachusetts, Ohio, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well as a doctor in Connecticut — all of whom are also citizens — reported receiving the same email as Trujillo.

Customs and Border Patrol said in a statement that it used the “known email addresses” of immigrants to send the notices, which it acknowledged could have included immigration attorneys’ emails.

“If a non-personal email — such as an American citizen contact — was provided by the alien, notices may have been sent to unintended recipients,” the statement reads. “CBP is monitoring communications and will address any issues on a case-by-case basis.”

A broader strategy

To Trujillo, the motivation behind the emails is clear.

“This is part of a new practice, and the practice is to instill fear in the Latino or the minority communities,” Trujillo said. “Why am I a part of the email? Was it a mistake? Was it that I am born and raised in Venezuela? I don’t know. It could be, because I know there have been mistaken communications by DHS, but because I don’t know — that unknown makes you worry.”

Maria Montes with Comunidades Unidas said the administration’s constantly changing policies have made it difficult for the nonprofit and other organizations to effectively respond within their communities.

“The federal administration has organized a strategy to create chaos, confusion and fear all in the hopes that immigrants will choose to self deport,” Montes said.

Trujillo has been an outspoken advocate for Utah’s immigrant community. He said he refuses to accept that his advocacy was linked to the email, although it did cross his mind.

“To think that there could be consequences for that in a country like the United States, I just can’t believe it,” he said. “It probably was a mistake, and I love this country so much that I think my first inclination is just to believe that and leave it at that. But if it is something else. Well, here I am. I know who I am and what I stand for. And I understand what this country stands for and I am staying put.”

The emails are part of a broader immigration strategy aimed at revoking visas, asylum, parole and temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. A specialized immigration task force within the Department of Government Efficiency is providing the technical infrastructure to make that strategy a reality, according to reporting by Politico.

Like other DOGE mass email campaigns, the emails Trujillo and others received incited panic and confusion, especially since immigration notices have historically been sent through U.S. mail and online government portals. Before DHS publicly acknowledged the emails many online wrote them off as a scam.

The switch to email is a recent one, Trujillo said. But his case and that of other citizens who mistakenly received the email call into question the reliability of using email.

Trujillo’s email — which he shared with The Utah Investigative Journalism Project — lists the sender as “automatedmessage@cbp.dhs.gov.” Because the message came from an unrecognized address, it triggered an anti-phishing warning from his Outlook email service.

CBP did not respond to questions about how it is ensuring the notices get to the correct recipients and how many emails it accidentally sent to citizens. Instead, the agency said in a statement that it had issued notices terminating parole for individuals who do not have lawful status to remain in the country.

The statement clarified that those notices were not limited to just individuals who had used CBP One and that the notices do not currently apply to Ukrainian and Afghan immigrants with parole.

“To be clear: If you are an alien, being in the United States is a privilege — not a right,” the statement reads. “We are acting in the best interest of the country and enforcing the law accordingly.”

‘It’s heartbreaking’

Trujillo has written off the email as a mistake. But many aren’t so lucky.

Jesus — who The Utah Investigative Journalism Project is referring to by only his first name because he fears speaking out may impact his immigration case — received a letter late last month that terminated his parole and authorization to work in the U.S. Unlike Trujillo, Jesus is not a citizen.

“It literally destroyed me,” Jesus said in Spanish, “Because I’ve tried to do things legally in the U.S.”

The letter, which was shared with The Utah Investigative Journalism Project, directed Jesus, a BYU computer science student, to leave the U.S. by April 24 or face “adverse immigration consequences.”

Jesus applied for asylum in the U.S. after fleeing political persecution in Venezuela. He entered the country legally in November 2023 through the humanitarian parole program. The Trump administration recently ended the program, which had benefited 532,000 people from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua. That decision is currently being challenged in court.

“The phones blew up here,” Trujillo said, adding that over 50 of his clients have gotten letters telling them to leave the country. They range from newly arrived immigrants to individuals who have been in the U.S. for close to a decade.

“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “You know, these people came the right way, applied the right way, lawfully and orderly, and they’re leaving.”

Trujillo and Montes encouraged immigrants to pursue their case with an immigration attorney, get informed of their rights and be brave about standing up for themselves and their communities.

“There’s never been a scarier time to step up and to push back against such a powerful entity like our federal administration, but there’s also never been a more important time to do so,” Montes said.

Jesus is currently working with his immigration lawyers to stay in the country, but he worries daily of both the consequences of returning to Venezuela as well as the possibility of being detained by U.S. immigration officers.

“My worry is that I go back and the persecution against me starts again,” he said in Spanish. “They could literally kill me.”

All of these developments hit close to home for Trujillo. When he became a citizen, he remembers finally feeling like he had made it, like he didn’t need to worry anymore.

“As an immigrant, you always feel unstable,” he said. “Here I am, 15 years later, and I’m worried about it again.”

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