Human Rights

And So It Begins: Trump’s ICE Goons Raid Business in Sanctuary City, Sweep Up Citizens and a Military Veteran

These stories are only going to get worse as time goes on.

Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka said that federal ICE agents “raided a local establishment” called Ocean Seafood Depot on Thursday in an effort to round up undocumented immigrants for deportation under Donald Trump’s new mass deportation orders.

In an official statement, Mayor Baraka said that multiple people were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that included non-citizens, but also US citizens and even a military veteran. He indicated that there was no warrant and no warning.

“Today, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a local establishment in the City of Newark, detaining undocumented residents as well as citizens, without producing a warrant. One of the detainees is a U.S. military veteran who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned,” the statement read.

“This egregious act is in plain violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees ‘the right of the people be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures….”

“Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized. I will be holding a press conference in alliance with partners ready and willing to defend and protect civil and human rights. Details to come.”

Well, the details did come. Mayor Baraka held his press conference earlier today, and we have some of the video from the event:

YouTube video

“They went in the back of the establishment. We believe that there were three people that they say were undocumented that they detained, but they also detained folks that were, in fact, citizens of this country. One person showed their military veteran identification, and was still questioned anyway. People were fingerprinted. Pictures of their IDs and face were taken there.”

So already we’ve seen two things: We’ve now been witness to the tactics that the Trump administration and ICE plan to use, which are apparently contrary to Constitutional rights under the 4th Amendment. And we’ve seen the only method by which “suspected” undocumented people may be rounded up — through racial profiling.

How else did they make their determinations as to who to detain, if half or more of the detentions were false and unnecessary? If ICE couldn’t claim that they had “reasonable” reason to believe that the detainees were illegally in the country, the warrantless raid would be even more blatantly unconstitutional. Arresting random white people is unthinkable.

That means their metric is “brown.”

ICE themselves released a statement confirming the action:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may encounter U.S. citizens while conducting field work and may request identification to establish an individual’s identity as was the case during a targeted enforcement operation at a worksite today in Newark, New Jersey. This is an active investigation and, per ICE policy, we cannot discuss ongoing investigations.

The owner of Ocean Seafood Deport said that the agents showed up around 11AM Eastern time without a warrant and unannounced. “A couple of the guys couldn’t show their identification,” the owner said. “Twenty-six years in business, I never seen anything like this.”

New Jersey’s two Democratic Senators reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees ICE. “Actions like this one sow fear in all of our communities — and our broken immigration system requires solutions, not fear tactics,” said Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim.

Mass deportations are, of course, only one prong of Donald Trump’s new plans to overhaul immigration in the United States. Other orders that Trump has signed include an effort to circumvent the 14th Amendment and overturn birthright citizenship, the 157-year-old law that says if you’re born on American soil, you have American citizenship

Trump has also vowed to send military troops to the US-Mexico border and to suspend longstanding laws on asylum-seekers. That latter one is necessary to quell the voices of those who argue that many people who are here undocumented came here legally through the asylum system in the US, already one of the strictest in the world.

ICE claims that it has already arrested 538 people since Trump signed the executive orders on January 20th, the day he was sworn in.

In his press conference, Mayor Baraka indicated that, since his office released their statement on the warrantless raid yesterday, he’s gotten numerous emails and phone calls “that were not very, uh, nice.”

“One of them says, ‘Oh, you’re not going to stand idly by? These are dangerous rapists and murderers that the libt*rds in this country have protected for far too long … F*ck around and find out what will happen, you little… whatever.'”

That sounds about like a Trumper.

meet the author

Andrew is a dark blue speck in deep red Central Washington, writing with the conviction of 18 years at the keyboard and too much politics to even stand. When not furiously stabbing the keys on breaking news stories, he writes poetry, prose, essays, haiku, lectures, stories for grief therapy, wedding ceremonies, detailed instructions on making doughnuts from canned biscuit dough (more sugar than cinnamon — duh), and equations to determine the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. A girlfriend, a dog, two cats, and two birds round out the equation, and in his spare time, Drewbear likes to imagine what it must be like to have spare time.

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