The news of deportations arrived as a trickle. A member of the Bhutanese community in Texas was taken away. Another picked up in Idaho. Then, one in Georgia.

“People started calling us in a panic to let us know ICE arrests have started,” said Robin Gurung, a community leader in Harrisburg, Pa., a major center of life for Bhutanese refugees in America.

Given the limited information from immigration officials and a cultural reluctance within the Bhutanese community to discuss the loss of loved ones, Mr. Gurung could only estimate the number of people detained and deported from his area and the rest of the state.

“At least 12 from here,” he said during a recent interview at a dumpling house near the Pennsylvania State Capitol. He paused, emphasizing the uncertainty, before continuing. A dozen “that we know of.”

As the Trump administration accelerated its controversial deportation program, primarily targeting undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America, confusion became a common theme. What is happening in the community from Bhutan, a sliver of a country near India and Nepal, has a similar opaque uncertainty, and its own set of vexing circumstances.

“The community was not prepared for this,” said Robin Gurung, a co-director of the local nonprofit Asian Refugees United.Credit…Hannah Yoon for The New York Times