Arrests Prompt Rally Against ICE's 'Targeting' Of Activists

NEW YORK, NY — Immigrant-rights groups and elected officials will rally at Federal Plaza Saturday to condemn what they call immigration authorities' "targeting" of vocal activists.

Since Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested leading immigrant-activist Ravi Ragbir two weeks ago, advocates have argued ICE is cracking down on immigrants who work to protect other immigrants and fight deportations.

At the Saturday morning rally outside the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service headquarters in Manhattan, U.S. Reps. Joe Crowley of Queens and Nydia Velazquez of Brooklyn will call on ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to end the practice, which ICE denies.

More than 1,800 activists and advocacy groups published an open letter Wednesday to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen this week with the same demand. The letter cites the cases of Ragbir and Jean Montrevil, the co-founders of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City who were arrested a week apart. Two other well-known activists, Eliseo Jurado of Colorado and Maru Mora-Villalpando of Tacoma, Wash., have also been detained or threatened with deportation recently, advocates say.

"DHS’s effort to silence political opposition through coercive government power sadly echoes some of the most shameful periods in our nation’s history," the letter reads. "Our Constitution holds most dear the right of the people to come together and raise their voices in dissent."

Activists have raised concerns about ICE targeting them since Ragbir's Jan. 11 arrest at a routine check-in with ICE sparked chaotic protests near Foley Square. Montrevil had been arrested at his Queens home just eight days earlier. He was deported to Haiti on Jan. 16.

Advocates argue ICE is trying to snuff out opponents of its ramped-up enforcement efforts under President Donald Trump. But the agency says it's only targeting immigrants it classifies as criminal.

Some 73.7 percent of the 143,470 people ICE arrested in the 2017 fiscal year were "criminal aliens," the agency's executive associte director for enforcement and removal operations, Matthew Albence, said in a statement Thursday. The Trump administration expanded the government's deportation priorities last year to include anyone convicted of or charged with any crime.

"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not target unlawfully present aliens for arrest based on advocacy positions they hold or in retaliation for critical comments they make," Albence said in a statement. "Any suggestion to the contrary is irresponsible, speculative and inaccurate."

Ragbir came to the U.S. from Trinidad in 1991 and got a green card in 1994. He lost permanent resident status after a 2001 conviction for wire fraud, for which he served prison time. A judge ordered him deported in 2006, but ICE officials put the order on hold several times until this month.

Ragbir's lawyers are fighting ICE's move to detain him. He is also challenging his criminal conviction. He's currently being held in the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, about a 90-minute drive from Manhattan.

Ragbir and his supporters aren't giving up hope that he'll be freed. The open letter calls for his and Jurado's release, the return of Montrevil from Haiti and a halt to deportation proceedings against Mora-Villalpando. Lawyers for Ragbir and ICE are set to face off over his detention on Jan. 29 in Manhattan federal court.

"The powerful community response has inspired me," Ragbir said in a statement Wednesday. "It is clear that this energy is not going to go away — we are going to grow and get stronger and continue fighting for fairness and humanity in our immigration policy and we will see a world in which all people are treated with dignity and respect."

Saturday's rally starts at 10 a.m. at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. Ragbir's wife, Amy Gottlieb, will be in the crowd.

(Lead image: Ravi Ragbir appears at a March 2017 rally near Federal Plaza in Manhattan. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)