Rally Thursday For 46 People Taken By ICE In Woodbridge Warehouse Raid

WOODBRIDGE, NJ — Immigration activists will rally Thursday morning for the 46 people taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a Woodbridge warehouse on Oct. 29.

The immigrant rights' groups will rally outside New Jersey Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin's office, located at 569 Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge, at 11 a.m. Thursday, to bring attention to the raid. They are also calling for those detained to be released.

Immigrants' rights groups said Coughlin has not done enough to condemn the raid, although Coughlin and other Middlesex County lawmakers criticized ICE's actions the night it happened.

On the afternoon of October 29, ICE agents entered the warehouse on Engelhard Avenue in Woodbridge's Avenel section, and took 46 workers into ICE custody. Those detained were approximately 22 percent of the facility's workforce.

The warehouse was identified in media reports as Savino Del Bene, which is a container freight company. The Avenel site serves as the U.S. headquarters for the company, which also has a location in Swedesboro in South Jersey.

Many of those who were detained that day have valid work permits or active cases in process for asylum and green cards, according to the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON, one of the organizers of Thursday's rally.

All 46 people are facing deportation, they said, which was confirmed by the Dept. of Homeland Security.

Multiple fathers were taken, and those men were the sole breadwinners for their families here in New Jersey, said the immigrant groups. The warehouse raid has left dozens of families with children under age five with no income, they said.

“My family has been torn apart. My kids are traumatized — they saw their dad for the first time yesterday at Delaney Hall," said one woman, identified only as Mery, in a quote supplied by NDLON. Her husband was one of the 46 taken in the Avenel raid. "My husband was the main provider."

She was working in the warehouse alongside him, but ICE officials only took him. She said the day ICE raided the warehouse, they barricaded all the doors, trapping people inside, brought dogs into the warehouse and flew drones outside.

"They could have taken us both, leaving our kids alone. All I could think about was not seeing my kids again," she said.

Amanda Dominguez of the worker activist group New Labor told CBS that several women were included in the 46, and they had children they were supposed to pick up after school.

Thursday's rally is being organized by groups including NDLON, Cosecha, DIRE (Deportation and Immigration Response Equipo), New Labor, Resistencia and a group called Families Affected by the Avenel Warehouse Raid.

“New Jersey leaders cannot stay silent while working families are torn apart in their own districts,” said Jorge Torres of NDLON. “What happened in Avenel is a moral and economic crisis — forty-six workers were taken without cause, leaving children hungry and parents missing."

This is the third time ICE has conducted a warehouse rain in Middlesex County since July.

Prior Patch reports on this raid: ICE Raid Takes 46 Shipping Facility Employees Into Custody, Reports Say (Oct. 31)

ICE Does Raid At Woodbridge Warehouse Wednesday (Oct. 29)