A Queens community railed Monday evening against what residents and immigration advocates described as a surge in ICE sightings
Photo by Ramy Mahmoud
The immigration system in this country is broken; no one disputes that. People come to this country illegally; no one disputes that, either.
Do not tell us, however, there is no better way to enforce the immigration laws of this country than to have masked agents in body armor taking people, including children, during raids at immigration courts, schools, hospitals, neighborhoods and homes.
And yet that is what ICE has done for more than a year now across New York City. Their brazen enforcement efforts at Federal Plaza’s immigration court, ambushing people who were merely abiding by court orders to attend hearings there, have evolved into street operations scattered around the city, at the Trump administration’s behest.
ICE agents have made arrests in primarily Hispanic neighborhoods across the city, from Inwood in Manhattan, to Corona, Jackson Heights and Elmhurst in Queens, to Bushwick in Brooklyn, and elsewhere.
The administration claims it targets only “the worst of the worst,” but it’s amazing how many of the operations reported about in the last year have involved ICE agents taking away people without criminal records over clerical errors or paperwork mistakes. It’s amazing how they can say they’re taking “the worst of the worst” while simultaneously apprehending children without criminal records.
The operations have only fueled the already anxious environment in immigrant communities of this city, and residents and activists are begging for someone to do something by legal means to bring this to a halt.
On Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced an effort to strengthen the capacity of immigrant advocates and families to secure proper representation in court. It includes a $7.25 million allocation to ensure that every child detained by ICE in the Empire State has legal representation, giving them a fighting chance of being freed from custody and allowed to remain in New York.
The Hochul administration has also made a concerted effort in recent months to reduce cooperation between ICE and law enforcement operations around the state, and to mandate that ICE agents take their masks off while on the streets. Unfortunately, the masks remain on both due to a court challenge and ICE’s refusal to act with any courtesy for state law.
Aside from that, there is not much else the state can do when faced with such federal policy. It is clear that it will take a change of heart, law and/or leadership in Washington for ICE to change its ways.
If New York wants to resist ICE here, it must continue to do so in a legal and nonviolent way — through funding the defense of the detained; through support of advocacy groups supporting families impacted by detention; through political pressure via nonviolent protest; through voting in November for elected officials who will support real immigration reform that protects civil rights while ensuring that actual criminals who are here illegally are sent away.
Lest we forget: New York is a city of immigrants in a nation of immigrants. We must not let our guard or our nation down in the face of injustice.