DALTON, Ga. — On Sunday, about 85 Hispanic residents called the Coalition of Latino Leaders’ office, asking its president, America Gruner, if they should stay at home from work this week to avoid immigration raids.

Hispanic residents began calling again at 6 a.m. on Monday.

“It was out of control,” Ms. Gruner of the spreading rumors.

It was not hard to figure out what might have started the rumors.

About 200 Homeland Security agents are staying in Dalton for training, according to Steve Peluso with the city’s office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He didn’t release details on the exercise, where agents are staying or why the training is being staged in Dalton.

Mr. Peluso stressed, however, that the agents aren’t here this week to round up illegal immigrants. He was not surprised that rumors took off.

“People are naturally worried,” he said. Fear of raids has spread in Dalton before.

In May 2007, ICE deported three illegal immigrants from Dalton causing a “big furor,” Mr. Peluso said.

Carlos Calderin, an immigration lawyer here, remembers the climate of fear in the city after those deportations. Many immigrants didn’t go to work or take their children to school.

“One day kind of froze a little bit in Dalton,” he said.

These rumors spread periodically, Mr. Calderin said, when agents deport one or two illegal immigrants. But immigration agents usually conduct large-scale raids only when employers flagrantly are violating the law, he said.

The last large-scale deportation in Dalton that Mr. Peluso recalls was in the 1990s, when agents rounded up about 100 carpet-plant workers who were in the country illegally.

“They were hiring illegals. We would go in and find the illegals,” he said.

A decade later, anxiety persists. Grocery store owner Francisco Palacios said that many Hispanic immigrants — especially undocumented immigrants — fear being harassed by immigration agents.

“They feel like (immigration agents) are always persecuting them,” he said.

For his part, anti-illegal immigration activist D.A. King hopes the fears are realized.

“I hope there are raids all over town,” he said, noting that ICE agents in Dalton should not concern documented immigrants who obey the law.