As President Donald Trump's first full week in office nears an end, his executive orders and presidential actions are already affecting communities in upstate New York and beyond.

One is a change allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to detain people while in places of worship and schools.

For some, that raises the spectre of ICE agents making arrests in churches.

Meg Ksander is a pastoral associate for Ministry at All Saints Church in Syracuse. She said there are people with many different backgrounds who are part of the church family.

Ksander said the people she knows, including newcomers, do not match the negative descriptions she is hearing. 

“We experience both our immigrant and refugee sisters and brothers as neighbors and friends and faithful community members, and all the narratives about being thugs and rapists just simply are not consistent with the reality of the people that we know and live with in our community," said Ksander.

But as new immigration policies take hold, church buildings often referred to as “sanctuaries,” might not feel that way for those who came to the U.S. illegally.

“While the notion of sanctuary has been very strong, it's never been legalized. It's been in some ways a matter of courtesy and a matter of good moral sense. But that is changing now with administrative directives allowing authorities to actually come into churches and schools and hospitals," Ksander said.

A Syracuse immigration attorney told Spectrum News 1 this week that ICE agents were confiscating migrants' passports and making other tactical changes in the area.

All Saints Parish is now teaching parishioners about what rights they have, and what they can do if approached by members of ICE.

Spectrum News is still waiting to hear a response from ICE.