Agents from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), have been conducting raids of homes and businesses from California to Long Island lately.
This week a pack of ICE agents took up residence in a East Hampton
motel and staged pre-dawn raids at several houses in the Springs.
According to the Southampton Press 36 people were arrested. Ten of these are on their way out of the country. The others are scheduled for an immigration hearing.
Reports of similar events in Hempstead are being investigated by Nadia Marin-Molina of the Workplace Project and the Center for Labor Rights.
Ms. Marin says, about recent raids
"Supposedly ICE was looking for someone, the person was not there, and they then proceeded to ask everyone at the house for their papers. That is the tactic that immigration is using these days."
Members of OLA, the Latin American Organization of Eastern Long Island have been investigating and have connected some local legal immigrants with lawyers. Many report they were rousted out of their beds on Monday and Tuesday and when they objected to warantless searches were told to shut up.
Michael Wright of the Southampton Press reported:
"Jasmine Leon and other members of her family said six agents had been in their house on Tuesday morning. Ms. Leon and her family live in the six-bedroom house with her mother and five children between the ages of 4 and 14 and with other relatives. All but one, Jasmine, are naturalized U.S. citizens. Jasmine is a legal resident. Her husband has lived in the United States for 20 years. No one at their house was arrested, and the agents left after about 15 nerve-racking minutes, she said.
“My sister asked to see their warrant, and they told her to sit down and shut up,” she said. “The kids were very scared.”
All the members of the Leon family maintained that the agents were unnecessarily harsh with them.
“My daughter asked them to let her put some clothes on—she was just in her underwear—and they wouldn’t let her close the door,” said Norman Aguilar, who is married to Jasmine Leon’s sister, Adriana, and lives in the house, after returning to the house from filing a police report about the raid. “They wouldn’t let us call the police. They didn’t show us any badges. We don’t know if they are just wearing costumes. Even the police told us we had the right to call the police or a lawyer.”
