District 34 State Assembly nominee Brian Romero speaks at an anti-ICE rally in Corona Monday, next to State Assemblymembers Catalina Cruz (right) and Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas.
Elected officials and local activists are sounding the alarm as ICE arrests spike in the World’s Borough.
BY COLE SINANIAN | cole@queensledger.com
CORONA — Speaking to Fox News in June, White House Border Czar Tom Homan made clear his promise to bring “more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen” to New York City in retaliation to local sanctuary laws.
Two months later, his promise seems to have come to fruition in the World’s Borough. Queens has seen a major spike in ICE activity in recent weeks — particularly in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods like East Elmhurst, Corona and College Point — with more than two dozen arrests documented throughout the borough since July 27, according to information provided by Hands Off NYC. The recent local spike comes on the heels of a record-breaking month for ICE arrests nationwide, with some 51,000 individuals detained in July alone, and has prompted local elected officials and activists to renew calls to abolish the agency and support local efforts to organize against it.
“Every single day, we get text messages from ICE watchers saying that ICE is in our communities,” said State Assemblymember Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas at a rally in Corona Plaza on Mon- day. “They are acting with impunity, and we need to stop them.”
On the morning of August 9 at 123rd Street and 14th Avenue in College Point, neighbors reported that several masked agents had detained two people from a vehicle. Two days prior, neighbors reported seeing ICE agents in tactical vests stop and detain a man from a black sedan on 31st Road, also in College Point. According to sources from Hands Off NYC — a citywide coalition that tracks ICE activity — the stretch of Fifth Avenue from 114th to 124th has seen the most recent ICE activity, while in East Elmhurst, Northern Boulevard between Grand Central Parkway and Roosevelt Avenue has become the neighborhood’s ICE hotspot.
“It is our community that’s being targeted,” said State Assemblymember and former undocumented immigrant Catalina Cruz at Monday’s Corona Rally, which was convened by Hands Off NYC, Make the Road NY, the New York Immigrant Coalition, and the Queens Democratic Socialists of America and saw speeches Cruz and Gonzalez-Rojas, as well as City council- member Tiffany Caban and likely State Assemblymember-to-be Brian Romero.
“Many of them have applied for asylum or other forms of relief, and they’re the ones being targeted because it’s about cleansing,” Cruz continued. “It is about cleansing our communities of the immigrant power and love that they’re so afraid of. Shame on them, and we’re not going anywhere.”
In Brooklyn, meanwhile, ICE agents were seen outside the Crescent Street J train stop in Cypress Hills Monday morning, stopping commuters to check their IDs. Airports, too, are seeing upticks in ICE activity, with The New York Times reporting July 28 that the Trump Administration had begun arresting travelers at airports with expired US visas, in an apparent collaboration with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Recently, an individual was detained at LaGuardia airport on August 5 in an apparent targeted arrest, a Hands Off NYC spokesperson said, before being taken to 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan.
Former congressional candidate Chuck Park at the Bulova Corporate Center, which houses several unmarked federal vehicles.
At the Bulova Corporate Center in East Elmhurst — a building that hous- es TSA offices — multiple social media users identified a parking lot filled with federal vehicles that some initially specified could be used by ICE. After a video of the lot posted by local activist and organizer Japneet Singh began circulating on Instagram, former US Foreign Service worker and progressive Congressional candidate Chuck Park toured it and filmed his own video. Park said most of the vehicles appeared to be standard-issue government cars likely used by TSA, though identified several unmarked vehicles with civilian plates that seemed to lack explanation.
“They’re clearly federal vehicles,” Park told the Queens Ledger. They’re clearly law enforcement vehicles. They got the steel rims, donut wheels that are bomb-proof, and they’re unmarked. I don’t know why TSA would need vehicles like that.”
“I know some folks who are undocumented workers,” Park continued. “There’s a whisper network. A lot of local parents and neighbors are anxious.”
According to Hands Off NYC, the parking lot has been a known staging ground, or location where ICE agents gather in preparation for an enforcement action.
In an email statement, a spokesperson for Bulova Corporate Center clarified that TSA, as well as the EPA and other federal agencies working throughout the NYC metro area, store their vehicles there.
“While none of our tenants have any obligation to discuss with the building owner who visits, their respective responsibilities or their business models, ICE does not have an office at the Bulova Corporate Center,” the spokesperson wrote.
