By DIANA MONTANO

The immigration agents, too many to count, burst into several apartment buildings in Homestead, Fla., shattering windows and rummaging through bags and drawers. They confiscated identification cards, money and a laptop. Outside, Mexican and Guatemalan men sat in unmarked vans, silent and confused, waiting to be taken away.

As word of the Nov. 19 raid spread, the undocumented immigrants who work the fields and tend to the plants in this agricultural community retreated from sight. Some fled their apartments. “There was complete panic,” said Ramon Cortada, a landlord whose property was raided and who said that four of his apartments were vacated within days.

The raid had little to do with cracking down on illegal immigration. Agents for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had set out to raid suspected “stash houses” and “places of prostitution” as part of a sex trafficking investigation, according to federal court documents.

Raids were executed throughout Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties as part of the same operation. Of the 84 people arrested that day, ICE reports that only seven were charged with crimes connected to sex trafficking. The remaining 77 were so-called collateral arrests, people in the wrong place at the wrong time picked up for violating immigration laws. Friends and neighbors say that some were deported only days later.

It is a pattern that troubles immigration advocates across the country.

“It’s like trying to kill an ant with a bomb,” said Susana Barciela, policy director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, one of the organizations representing Homestead residents affected by the raids. “We have a limited amount of resources to keep the country secure. Why are they getting people who aren’t doing anything?”

In December, ICE reported that 349,041 undocumented immigrants were deported in 2008 — a 20 percent increase from 2007. Buried within the numbers are immigrants who’ve been caught in situations similar to the one that played out in Homestead in November.

A coalition of immigrant groups in Florida accused agents last month of using excessive force during the Homestead raids. One woman told advocates her husband was hit in front of his 4-year-old daughter. An 18-year-old girl said agents put a gun to her head. Lawyers on the case also say agents seized property with questionable search warrants.

“There is no doubt that collateral arrests have been increasing nationally,” said Francisco Ugarte, a lawyer with the San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network, which has dealt with similar raids in California.

Ugarte said ICE does not track statistics for collateral arrests. “It’s a huge concern,” he said. “This is where you have them going into homes Gestapo-style and separating families.”

Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman for ICE in Florida, said accusations that excessive force was used in the Homestead operation are unfounded. The complaints of abuse are being reviewed internally by the agency, Navas said. As for the raid, immigration agents were upholding the law in arresting undocumented immigrants at the scene, she said.

“If during the course of an investigative action ICE encounters individuals in violation of U.S. immigration law,” Navas said in an e-mail message, “they too may be subject to arrest.”

While immigrants generally applaud the apprehension of criminals in their midst, the arrests sometimes exert too high a price. Immigrants in Homestead, afraid of being swept up in raids, say they are now thinking twice about speaking up to the police about crime. Some said they are not willing to risk deportation, even if it affects their own safety.

“If they want to get criminals, good,” said Levis Torres, a resident of Homestead who is originally from Colombia. “But if I do something wrong, they shouldn’t punish someone else. That’s what they’re doing to the community.”

In the weeks after the arrests, residents said the sense of fear in this rural area was pervasive. Immigration agents seemed to lurk behind every corner. Sightings of “la migra,” as immigration agents are known in Spanish slang, abounded.

“Everyone said, ‘Oh, they’re in this place, or in this place,’ but they weren’t there,” Torres said. “After a raid people live in suspense. They don’t know if tonight it’ll happen to them, or tomorrow.”

Myriam Crissien, a worker at the Open Door Health Clinic, said the day after the raid, no one showed up for appointments. Sick people didn’t come by to pick up their medicine, Crissien said. The community made itself invisible.

Jonathan Fried, executive director of WeCount!, a social justice organization based in Homestead, said it is not only undocumented immigrants who have been affected. “There are many mixed families in Homestead,” he said, referring to families in which some members are legal residents and others are not.

The raids have spooked even the legal residents of Homestead.

“If I’m in the street and see a white van, I get scared,” said Crissien, who is friends with some undocumented immigrants. “I stop the car to see what is happening.”

The abrupt deportations of those rounded up in the November raid have hurt women and children most of all, residents said.

Serafin Duran, a Homestead resident, said three of his co-workers were arrested in the raid and deported shortly afterward. Ever since, their families have been “suffering from hunger” and living without enough money for food or clothes, he said.

Women with American-born children can apply for food stamps and Medicaid on their behalf. But since these women are often undocumented, they are ineligible for public rent assistance.

“This is the biggest problem,” Crissien said. “The women can’t pay the rent and get kicked out, so they go live with friends or family, and then there are eight people living in one apartment.”

The children bear the burden of the deportations as well. Adriana Duran, a high school student from Mexico, said a few of her friends had dropped out of school to work and help their mothers pay bills after their fathers were taken away.

“It’s a question of priorities,” said David Leopold, vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, adding that these arrests happen “all the time” nationwide.

“For every arrest and deportation, it costs taxpayers money,” Leopold said. “We shouldn’t be wasting it on someone who is working in a factory to feed their family when the bad guy is running around.”