"We are a primary target, whether we like it or not," said 87-year-old Monsignor James Kelly about his work helping immigrants, as the Trump administration vows mass deportations.
We met at District 3 Immigration Services - a small office on a lively Brooklyn high street from where the Manhattan skyline was just visible in the distance.
An Irish-speaker from Adare, Co Limerick, Fr Kelly first went to Rome and learnt Italian. When he moved to New York in 1960, he was assigned to a mostly Italian-speaking parish.
He then trained - somewhat reluctantly, he said - as a lawyer.
"If you didn't have a law degree, no one would listen to you," he said, gesturing to his framed certificate hanging behind his desk above a picture of the Sacred Heart.
He saw waves of new arrivals from different parts of the world - first from Germany, then Italy, Ireland, Poland and now Latin America - and helped thousands of them become US citizens, picking up multiple languages along the way.
"We teach them English and I would go to court with them," he told RTÉ News, "and help them adjust their status, if they can do it legally," adding, "we won’t do phony papers".
The centre provides legal services at heavily discounted prices. Most of their funding comes from another property leased to the US Department of Education.
Now as President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown sweeps across America, Father Kelly - known locally as Padre Kelly - said services like his could be in the firing line.
"We haven’t been bothered by Trump, thanks be to God," he said, crossing his fingers, "this office has not been raided".
But inside the centre, which sees around 60-70 immigrants every day, many of them undocumented, there was palpable fear it could happen at any moment.
A variety of Catholic posters, photographs of Fr Kelly meeting the Pope and an American flag adorned the yellow painted walls of the waiting area, where half a dozen people sat in a line, some anxiously clutching papers.
Others paced the floor looking out the window onto the busy high street.
Most shrank away from the camera, turning their faces.
Only one agreed to talk - a US citizen who had come to get advice on her father’s expiring green card.
"People are scared," Father Kelly said.
They would still come in for advice, he explained, but had stopped telling him the story of how they got into the United States. The administration said it would deport anyone found to have crossed the border illegally.
"Before Trump we were getting all this information but now, we’re not getting any," he said.
"They don’t know if we’re hooked up with immigration - we’re not, we’re independent - but they are afraid they will lose their jobs, first of all, and secondly that they’ll be deported," he said.
Fr Kelly agreed there wasn’t enough control on immigration in the first few years of the Biden administration which is why, he said, Mr Trump’s policies gained popular support.
"It's better for us if they’re controlling it because we work within the legal system - we have no problems with that," he said.
People sit in a line, some anxiously clutching papers, in Fr Kelly's waiting room
The problem is the uncertainty.
He didn’t know how to advise clients, he said, many of whom had been living and working here for years. Several have cases pending in the immigration courts.
"What’s Trump going to do with all these people?" he said.
Although officially retired, Fr Kelly is still a regular fixture in the office. He now walks with a cane, following a health scare and brief hospitalisation last year.
But the day-to-day operation is carried out by 26-year-old Princess Reinoso - someone with an excellent "legal mind," according to Fr Kelly.
Born in the United States, Ms Reinoso grew up in an Ecuadorian community in Brooklyn.
There have been positive aspects to Mr Trump’s stricter policies on immigration, she told RTÉ News.
While most people came to America in search of a better life, others brought "guns and violence," she said and her local community began to feel less safe.
"I’ve been to Ecuador, and I’ve seen what happens there," she said, "and I was like - uh-oh, is this becoming Ecuador too?"
The fear of being deported forced some people to "fix up their act," she said.
But fear gripped everyone else too.
The administration has publicised deportations of immigrants charged with or convicted of crimes, but people without criminal records have also been swept up.
Many people stopped going to church or sending their kids to school, Ms Reinoso said, for fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
Others chose to leave the US altogether.
Images of criminals often "have a Latino face" to them, she said, which led to a certain demonisation of Latin American immigrants by the government and in the media. People even began to see her differently.
"Because I’m not white and blonde, they don’t look at me as a US citizen," she said.
The best hope for the undocumented, who are already integrated into US society with jobs and children in schools, was some kind of amnesty, she said - but that wasn’t going to happen in the current climate.
The Trump administration has moved to revoke the birthright citizenship enshrined in the US Constitution and last month invoked the wartime Alien Enemies Act in an attempt to speed up deportations.
In his 65 years in the job, Fr Kelly said this is the worst atmosphere he had known for undocumented immigrants.
"When the Italians come in 1968, they were very benign to them," he said, "because they were victims of an earthquake".
It was easy to adjust their status he said, as it was with the Irish.
Following the recent publication of an article about him in the New York Times, Fr Kelly said he was contacted by several people he had helped naturalise years ago, who had gone on to be "very successful" in law or medicine.
"I didn’t know you were still doing this work," he said they told him. Some sent cheque donations.
His alma mater - St John’s University in New York - also called to offer him an honour.
"I’ve been here since 1960 don’t forget," he said, "I’ve known all these kids and their fathers and grandfathers before them".
Fr Kelly enjoys celebrity status in the neighbourhood, Ms Reinoso said.
"It’s funny because if you walk down the street with him, people call out: Padre Kelly!" she said.
As he looked back on his long experience working with immigrants in New York City, what did he think the future held?
"Only God knows," he said. "God," he added, "and Mr Trump".
