Fear Lingers Among NYC Immigrants As ICE Stays Quiet

NEW YORK — The threat of immigration raids has planted seeds of fear in New York City immigrant communities even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents did not descend on their homes over the weekend.

"A lot of people are scared, which is sad to see because this country was built on immigrants," said Starlina Polanco, a 32-year-old resident of Sunset Park, where ICE agents tried unsuccessfully to make arrests Saturday. "People are just trying to work and take care of their families."

City officials and immigrant-rights advocates were on high alert going into the weekend amid reports that ICE would arrest about 2,000 people in targeted raids in 10 major cities. President Donald Trump had said the raids would target criminals, though they also reportedly threatened immigrants who had previously been ordered deported.

But the mass enforcement arrests did not materialize. Agents made unsuccessful attempts at raids in Sunset Park and East Harlem on Saturday, but the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs said it had confirmed no other reports of ICE activity as of Monday afternoon.

Immigrants and advocates are still keeping their guards up. Make the Road New York, a prominent immigrant-rights group, said it was still distributing know-your-rights materials and staying "vigilant" in the face of raids.

The Legal Aid Society said its hotline offering immigrants legal help would remain open after getting a steady number of calls over the weekend.

"We are thankful that the ICE raids this weekend were unsuccessful, due in part to the remarkable efforts of advocates across New York City to educate individuals on their rights during encounters with ICE," Hasan Shafiqullah, the attorney-in-charge of Legal Aid's Immigration Law Unit, said in a statement Monday. "However, we remain on high alert as we know that this Administration will stop at nothing to carry out their xenophobic deportation agenda."

The threat of the raids appeared to quiet the streets in some of the city's immigrant communities even though no one was carted away in handcuffs.

Sonia Castillo, who owns Sunset Park's Novedades Sonih-Mex store with her husband, said she has friends in the neighborhood who stayed home over the weekend because they were nervous. Know-your-rights flyers in multiple languages were seen posted at an entrance to Sunset Park on Monday.

"It’s just better to keep in the house," said Castillo, who is from Mexico. "(The neighborhood) is scared."

Nearly half of Sunset Park's population is made up of immigrants, according to data from Community Board 7, which oversees the neighborhood and Windsor Terrace. Just above 41 percent of residents in the neighborhoods identified as Hispanic on the 2010 census.

Jackson Heights, a hub of South Asian New Yorkers, was unusually quiet on a day that would usually spent shopping or worshipping, indicating the Trump administration's threat of raids had people afraid, said Jagpreet Singh, an organizer with Chhaya CDC, a housing advocacy group.

"On a Sunday where our communities are normally out doing their shopping, going to their religious institutions, enjoying the one day off during the week they might have, there was hardly anybody in the streets," Singh said Monday at a protest in Manhattan.

Even immigrants who are in the United States legally were feeling the heat. Castillo said some carry their documents with them just to be safe when they go out.

Raymond Rivera, who lives down the block from Sunset Park's Fifth Avenue entrance, said the fear is worse for those that are undocumented, but all immigrants are "very afraid" right now.

"We feel discriminated against," Rivera, a documented immigrant from Mexico, said. "We are human beings."

The city's immigrants may not yet be in the clear. ICE made a small number of arrests in a few cities over the weekend and has plans to continue them over the course of about a week, a change that came after news reports alerted the public to the planned mass raids, The New York Times reported. An ICE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on its plans.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said his administration was prepared for the raids over the weekend. His immigrant affairs commissioner, Bitta Mostofi, said Sunday that her office was working on the ground to monitor ICE activity and educate immigrants about their rights.

"We had no clue whether anything was going to happen today but we had a very aggressive plan in place," de Blasio, a Democrat, said at an unrelated Sunday news conference. "All our agencies have been preparing all week."

But many immigrants, even those who are documented, often keep to themselves or avoid reporting any problems they’re facing to authorities or city agencies because they are afraid, said Polanco, whose family is from the Dominican Republic.

Rivera said he wishes city agencies would spend more time actually in the immigrant communities. So far, religious organizations have been the best at helping people know their rights, he said.

Both the city and advocacy groups said they were continuing their efforts to connect with immigrant communities. The Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs tweeted photos Monday of staffers distributing know-your-rights materials in The Bronx.

"We will continue to fervently prepare and defend New Yorkers to help ensure that ICE’s relentless and hateful effort to forcibly separate families does not succeed," Shafiqullah said.

Patch editor Anna Quinn co-reported and co-wrote this story.