New Jersey officials and defenders of immigrants criticized the federal immigration authorities for making a raid in the workplace of a small business in the city of Newark without a court order.
At a press conference on Friday morning, the mayor of Newark, Ras Barak They questioned employees who are US citizens.
“People were taken the fingerprints. There were photographs of their identifications and faces,” said the Democratic Mayor. “I felt dismayed, annoying and angry that this happened here in this state, in this country, that this was allowed.”
While ICE confirmed that he carried out “an operation of application of the specific law in a workplace” in Newark, he did not say how many people were arrested after the raid and said: “This is an active investigation and, according to politics ICE, we can’t talk about ongoing actions. ” research”.
Baraka’s comments occurred one day after ICE arrests increased on Thursday, indicating that the energetic measures against immigration of President Donald Trump and his promises to carry out “the largest deportation program in history of the United States ”are beginning to materialize.
ICE confirmed to NBC News that the agency arrested 538 people throughout the country only on Thursday, doubling its daily average of arrests. The news comes when reports of alleged immigration raids have emerged in cities such as Boston.
Newark’s raid occurred in Ocean Seafood Depot, a city wholesaler from the city. A witness who spoke with WNJU, Telemundo’s television station in New Jersey, said he saw armed agents and dresses with uniforms with the ICE initials shortly before noon on Thursday.
In general, immigration agents are allowed to enter the public areas of a company, even in Sanctuary states such as New Jersey, but require a valid court order or permission of the owner to access non -public areas. The Sanctuary cities and states have local policies that limit their cooperation with the immigration authorities for the purpose of application of the law.
An employee who was in Ocean Seafood Depot when the raid occurred told NBC New York that the three colleagues arrested for ICE had been working there for some years.
“Everyone is afraid because we don’t know if this is normal,” said the employee, who only identified by her first name, Eugenia.
Baraka also accused ICE of stopping both undocumented residents and US citizens.
One of the detainees was a veteran American military “who suffered the indignity that the legitimacy of his military documentation was questioned,” Baraka said in a statement. “Newark will not be left with crossed ones while illegally terrified people.”
In response, ICE said: “The US immigration and customs service can meet US citizens while doing field work and can request identification to establish the identity of an individual.” The agency added that this was the case during Newark’s raid.
This raid marks a change in the application of the Immigration Law in the United States, since the previous administration, of President Joe Biden, was largely refrained from making raids in workplaces.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump promised to prioritize the deportations of immigrants who have committed serious crimes. However, those in the workplaces mostly result in arrests of workers who turn out to be undocumented.
“None of these people were rapists, murderers or criminals,” Baraka said about the people arrested in Newark’s raid.
New Jersey Attorney, Matthew J. Platkin, reacted to the raid in a statement saying that his office works regularly with the federal government “to eliminate the violent criminals from our communities and continue to do so. However, the declared desire of the President Trump to deport millions of people clearly goes beyond eliminating dangerous criminals. “
“Some of the tactics could make us less safe, for example, by making the people of our communities afraid of presenting and denouncing crimes,” Pathin said. According to his office, no agent of the local or state order was involved in Newark’s raid.
Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrants Justice, said the members of their organization arrived in the small business after ICE officers had already left.
They arrived with lawyers, bilingual documents and performers to help affected workers, Torres said during the press conference. He said that most employees did not return to work that day.
According to employees who stayed, ICE agents were “strongly armed” and entered the business without prior notice, blocking entries, exits and delivery ramps, Torres said. “They were knocking down the doors of the bathrooms to make sure there was no one hidden inside. And most importantly, as the mayor said, they did all this without being able to present a single name or a single court order.”
Torres added: “ICE has overreach beyond what should be allowed constitutionally. That allows them to profile our communities and at the same time make everyone else guilty by association.”
The White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in an X post on Thursday night that the 538 people arrested for ICE so far throughout the country are “illegal immigrant criminals, including an alleged terrorist, four members of the train gang of Aragua and several illegal convicted of sexual crimes. ” Crimes against minors. “
Leavitt also said that the Trump administration “also deported hundreds of illegal immigrant criminals through military planes.”
“The greatest mass deportation operation in history is underway,” he added.
At least one deportation flight landed in Guatemala on Thursday morning, according to the Office of the Vice President of Guatemala, who published a video in his Instagram history. The video plane transported migrants who were deported from the United States.
“Accompanying the compatriots returned with the humanitarian support and assistance they need, by the National Migration Authority,” reads in the photo of Instagram in Spanish.
The Guatemalan Institute of Migration, government agency of the Central American Nation, wrote in a press release that 80 Guatemalans returned, all of them adults, including 31 women, 48 men and an unaccompanied minor.
