On Sunday October 7, members of the Greenport Long Island community including the Mayor turned out to rally against a recent raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the village of 2500 people.
WPKN’s Hazel Kahan reports:
The raid on September 29 was conducted with the aid of local police and was one of many across Long Island.
At the rally, organizer Margaret Duggan described what happened and the reaction of villagers.
"We did not like having Greenport raided by the ICE people using our own police as a cover. Coming at 4:30 in the morning or earlier, breaking into people's houses, shining flashlights into kid's faces, and pulling men out of the house away from their families and haullng them off without giving them much of a chance to get legal representation...all because supposedly there are gangs in Greenport and the'yre looking for gang members...We don't have any gang members here"
A recent census puts the Hispanic population of Greenport at 17% or about 100 households.
Sister Margaret Smyth of the North Fork Hispanic Apostolate says that at least 12 men were arrested and taken away, a significant number of the bread winners in the Latino community.
Mayor David Nyce of Greenport is concerned with the effect on the wives and children of the men taken away during the raid:
Rally organizers are calling for people to tell their Congressman that the ICE raids should stop.
"They're now left without visible means of support and as a community, that's going to cause a strain. It's going to cause a financial hardship on everybody, not just them."
For WPKN's East End News Team, this is Hazel Kahan reporting from Long Island.
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