Above photo: ICE Watch Staten Island: Residents started an ICE Watch group after immigration agents detained a recent Port Richmond high school graduate at her warehouse job. @LACOLMEN.
Many New Yorkers now carry a whistle to sound the alarm when they see teams of armed masked agents in fatigues and tactical gear who have started to menace the city, from Washington Heights to East Elmhurst.
Others are texting each other in groups they created on the encrypted messaging app Signal. “I was getting notifications in our chat that ICE was knocking on doors, so we rushed over here to see what was happening,” said a Bensonhurst resident, who told AMNY they saw agents abduct a woman described as a young mother with an 8-month old baby.
“ICE is a rogue agency that is lawlessly terrorizing New Yorkers,” said Murad Awawdeh, President of the New York Immigration Coalition, which alerted the media when agents raided a basement apartment in Queens without a warrant, and pointed guns at a mother and her four children – all to search for a cousin who moved away years ago.
“Even the neighbors thought a burglary was in progress, and called the NYPD to investigate,” Awawdeh added. “No child should ever have to be a victim of such unlawful and ruthless behavior.” Security camera footage shows NYPD offiers stopped by briefly, spoke to agents on the sidewalk outside and soon left.
At his first press conference as Mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani was asked by Democracy Now! for his message to ICE agents grabbing people around the city and in the hallway after immigration court hearings at 26 Federal Plaza.
“Everyone will be held to the same standard of the law. If you violate the law, you must be held accountable,” Mamdani responded, decrying the “sense that is growing across this country that certain people are allowed to violate that law, whether they be the president or whether they be the agents themselves. What New Yorkers are looking for is an era of consistency, an era of clarity, an era of conviction.”
Following in the footsteps of residents outraged by the antics of federal agents deployed to Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Charlotte, New Yorkers have turned out by the hundreds for workshops on how to document and potentially turn away ICE and Border Patrol agents who raid their home, neighborhood, workplace, school or place of worship.
“We are already there now, but we will increase the enforcement presence in New York City again because they are a sanctuary city,” Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan recently told Fox News, building on right-wing paranoia about the incoming mayor. Waiting for the promised hordes of agents will be New Yorkers in all fi ve boroughs who are organizing through websites like handsoffnyc.com.
“Today we ran an ICE Watch in Port Richmond,” wrote La Colmena (The Beehive), a Staten Island community group recently shared on social media. “We were present at the same early hours ICE operates. We are training more volunteers to keep watch, as we grow, our goal is to do this daily.”
