‘Whom Shall I Fear?’ In South Texas, Two Bakers Face Trump’s Immigration Wrath.

Most mornings, Leonardo Baez, a father of seven, wakes up hours before sunrise to mix bread dough in the border city of Los Fresnos, Texas. Punishing and laborious work, yes, but owning a beloved bakery has been a lifelong dream of his, he said.

It is now in jeopardy.

In February, federal agents swooped down on his shop, Abby’s Bakery, detained workers they said were in the country illegally and pressed charges against the owners, Mr. Baez and his wife, Nora Alicia Avila.

As their July trial nears, many in this Latino-majority community of 8,500 close to Brownsville, Texas, are learning what life will be like under President Trump and his immigration crackdown. More than 52 percent of Los Fresnos’s once-bright-blue Cameron County voted for Mr. Trump in November, but his aggressive policies are dividing families and rattling local business where undocumented residents are indistinguishable from the larger border population.

If found guilty of the most serious charge, conspiring to transport and harbor undocumented migrants, both Mr. Baez, 56, and Ms. Avila, 46, face sentences of up to 10 years in prison.

The Justice Department has framed the case as open-and-shut: Law enforcement officers found a room in the shopping plaza that includes the bakery with six mattresses on the floor housing employees unauthorized to work in the country. The raid, the government said, found two migrants “unlawfully present in the United States” and six visa holders “who did not have the right to work.”

The Baez family agreed to discuss their lives, but at the suggestion of their lawyers, they would not talk about the case. But one of those lawyers, Jaime Diez, did speak on the case and said the federal indictment is a break from how “harboring” charges are typically used.