Following a high-profile ICE raid in Newark last week, Paterson’s mayor and others are warning residents of that largely immigrant city to know their rights following unconfirmed reports that two raids occurred there on Sunday.
“There are people in Paterson who are panicking,” Mayor Andre Sayegh told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday. “A very prominent priest called me yesterday to tell me there were parishioners crying.”
Sayegh held a press conference at City Hall on Monday, joined by immigrant rights advocates who criticized what they called fear tactics used by ICE, the chilling acronym of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within the federal Department of Homeland Security.
Representatives of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice who joined Sayegh and City Council members urged immigrants to know their rights and not be intimidated by aggressive, heavily armed ICE agents who appear at their homes or workplaces demanding immigration documents.
“If ICE says ‘Show us your papers,’ we say, ‘Show us your warrant,’” Amy Torres, the alliance’s executive director, said during the event, which was livestreamed and posted on Facebook.
If agents say they have a warrant, Torres urged immigrants to make them slide it under the door and then check it carefully to ensure it is directed to a person at that address and signed by a judge. Torres said immigrants should say nothing to ICE agents and should not sign any documents.
Another advocacy group, Make the Road New Jersey, has urged immigrants to download and print a wallet-sized “Know Your Rights” card they should carry at all times.
Sayegh and the immigration alliance group said they were responding to reports of two ICE raids in Paterson on Sunday, one involving a barbershop on Wayne Street, and the other a building on Madison Avenue that houses a pharmacy on its ground floor.
At the press conference, the mayor referred to the reports as “rumors” after city officials could not confirm with ICE that the raids had occurred. Sayegh and other Paterson officials said Tuesday that the city still had not received a response from ICE to confirm or deny the raids.
A spokesperson for ICE did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Nabil Nathla, a pharmacist at Farmacias Del Pueblo at Madison and 21st avenues, said a security camera captured what he said were ICE agents arriving outside the building on Sunday.
The raid didn’t target the store, he said,” because the store is closed on Sunday.”
Instead, Nathla said the surveillance footage showed several agents getting out of a vehicle and heading toward a door on the side of the building that leads to apartments above the pharmacy. The door itself is not in view of the camera, though Nathla said the agents reappeared in the frame a short time later, walking from the direction of the door and escorting at least one individual they placed in the vehicle before driving away.
“I didn’t see them go in or out, but they came out with some people,” Nathla said.
Paterson is at least the third New Jersey city where ICE raids have been reported since President Donald Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20, after regaining the White House on a platform that included a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.
On Thursday, Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka brought attention to the raid of a local business, Ocean Seafood Depot, with a statement denouncing ICE for failing to produce a warrant.
ICE confirmed that the raid occurred and that three individuals were targeted, including two who were given notices to appear, or NTA’s, in immigration court, while a third was “placed in removal proceedings.” Members of his family said this week that he was being held at an ICE detention facility in Elizabeth in lieu of a $10,000 bond.
ICE has not said whether agents had a warrant for the Newark raid.
In Asbury Park, a man was arrested and taken into custody by ICE agents on Friday when he arrived home after dropping his child off at school, according to Asbury Park Board of Education President Tracy Rogers. ICE has not confirmed the incident.
The Washington Post on Sunday quoted four unnamed sources saying that the Trump Administration had imposed a quota of 75 arrests per day on each of ICE’s 25 regional offices around the country, well above previous levels.
The agency’s New Jersey regional office is in downtown Newark, in the Peter Rodino Federal Building on Mayor Kenneth A. Gibson Boulevard, formerly Broad Street.
ICE wants to hold more immigration detainees in New Jersey, with plans for a new detention center in Newark, near the city’s international airport, and to expand capacity at the existing Elizabeth facility, efforts opposed by many of the state’s Democratic elected officials.
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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com