In Barrio Obrero, a predominantly Dominican neighborhood in Puerto Rico, the chilling effect of unprecedented immigration raids in the U.S. territory has been paralyzing.

With homes and businesses desolate, a truck with speakers has been cruising through the streets of the working-class neighborhood with a message.

“Suddenly, in that darkness, they heard: ‘Immigrants, you have rights,’” Ariadna Godreau, a human rights lawyer in Puerto Rico, told NBC News.

The legal nonprofit she leads, Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, hired the truck, known as a “tumba coco,” to make people aware of their rights and announce the launch of a new hotline, the first in Puerto Rico providing legal support to immigrants, Godreau said.

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Residents in Puerto Rico now fear that President Donald Trump’s efforts to carry out mass deportations will fundamentally change how immigration policies are enforced in a U.S. territory that had long been perceived as a sanctuary for immigrants.

That perception was first shattered on Jan. 27, the same week Trump took office. Immigration authorities raided Barrio Obrero and arrested more than 40 people. Witnesses told Telemundo Puerto Rico, NBC’s sister station on the island, that they saw agents break down the doors of several homes and businesses. Detainees were handcuffed, placed in vans and taken away, they said.

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Complicating matters for immigrants in Puerto Rico, those detained are transferred to the mainland U.S. — an ocean away from their families and attorneys managing their immigration cases — because there are no permanent detention centers on the island that can hold detainees for prolonged periods, according to Rebecca González-Ramos, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Juan.

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Yet the big raid on Jan. 27 came as a surprise to most people. Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón had reassured immigrants in an interview with Telemundo Puerto Rico that same week that Trump was only “focused on what’s happening in Mexico and in the United States, on that border.”

It helped create a “​​false sense of security,” Godreau said. “These consecutive raids then begin in areas historically inhabited by the Dominican population.”

As immigration authorities escalate their efforts in Puerto Rico by raiding hotels, construction sites and neighborhoods, more than 500 of the immigrants arrested so far are from the Dominican Republic.

Dominicans make up the biggest share of Puerto Rico’s immigrant population. Over 100,000 Dominicans are estimated to live in Puerto Rico. About a third are thought to be undocumented. Many of them are business owners or work hospitality, construction and elder care jobs, the last two being industries grappling with labor shortages, Godreau and Martínez said.

González-Ramos had said her office would be detaining people illegally present in Puerto Rico, “specifically those whose criminal records pose a threat to our communities and national security.”

But only 13% of the 732 immigrants arrested this year have a criminal record, according to data from Homeland Security Investigations in San Juan.

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