U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained four people on Wednesday, June 11, near the Long Island Railroad station in Glen Cove, one of four reported actions taken in Nassau County this past week.
Glen Cove City police officers learned of the people being detained after responding to a report of an assault near the LIRR train station at 8:30 a.m. on Cedar Swamp Road, according to Det. Lt. John Nagle.
Nagle said that ICE has operated in Glen Cove before and that sometimes the police department is made aware, and other times they are not.
“Sometimes they will work with us on cases, but yesterday, they came in on their own,” he said.
Glen Cove Mayor Pamela Panzenbeck said the people detained had been targeted by ICE.
“They were looking for specific people who are very bad people,” Glen Cove Mayor Pamela Panzenbeck said. “They are not going into schools. It was not a raid roundup. They are looking for violent criminals.”
Nagle said the department was not aware of who ICE agents detained or what their criminal history was.
Panzenbeck said that residents shouldn’t be worried.
“The community shouldn’t be alarmed,” she said.
Kelly Guerra, a board member for La Fuerza Unida, a nonprofit organization that helps the social, literary, educational, cultural, and economic conditions of Hispanic-Americans in Glen Cove and its neighboring communities, said what took place in Glen Cove was “unsettling.” She called on local leaders to stand with the organization in rejecting hate and division.
“Undocumented workers, the backbone of our local economy and culture, are going into hiding,” Guerra said. “The sense of safety that once defined our city has been replaced with uncertainty, suspicion, and silence. This is not the Glen Cove we know.”
On Tuesday, Nassau County Police confirmed that an ICE agent was involved in a car accident at the corner of Prospect Avenue and Sylvester Street, a block away from Westbury’s Park Avenue Elementary School in Westbury.
Nearly 100 people protested the presence of the agent at the scene.
A spokesperson for ICE said that personnel were conducting an operation associated with an ongoing federal investigation.
“During the operation, special agents were confronted by multiple anti-law enforcement agitators, which prohibited the enforcement action,” the spokesperson said. “The involved parties were subsequently surrounded by these agitators before the law enforcement officer was removed from the scene.”
The spokesperson also said the operation did not involve the nearby school and did not involve a vehicle pursuit.
Nassau County legislator Debra Mule said ICE had also recently been in Freeport and Roosevelt. Mule said she was “dismayed” by the recent raids in the area.
Los Angeles has been the spotlight of recent ICE raids, which have resulted in protests that President Trump responded to by deploying federalized National Guard troops to quell protestors. California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked a federal court to put a stop to the military agents aiding immigration officers in Los Angeles.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and Nassau County Police Chief Patrick Ryder said in a press conference in East Meadow on Wednesday that ICE would not be allowed to enter schools or houses of worship, unless there is a threat to safety or officials.
In February, President Trump revoked the 2011 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “sensitive locations” policy, which restricts enforcement actions at places like schools, churches and hospitals.
“Raids on schools are not something we do unless there’s an emergency or a threat, and if there’s an emergency or threat, we’re coming in regardless of the situation,” Blakeman said, according to published reports. “So the bottom line is, there is no program to raid schools here in Nassau County.”
Blakeman announced in February that local Nassau County police officers would work directly with immigration officials and even act as ICE agents themselves, which would allow them to arrest people for federal immigration offenses, pursuant to a federal judge’s warrant.
ICE’s actions in Nassau County drew opposition from Democratic officials.
U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, also a former mayor of Glen Cove, said he was concerned about how ICE operations have been handled.
“I fully support the deportation of violent criminals. But I’m increasingly concerned about rising fear in the community,” he said. “Innocent families should not be swept up in poorly coordinated raids. We can’t allow well-intentioned efforts to address immigration challenges to turn into a chaotic process that harms families and bypasses proper procedures.”
State Assembly Member Charles Lavine, who represents Glen Cove and Westbury, said people would feel “disgusted” if this were going on in their neighborhoods.
“Trump and ICE’s ham-handed approach, purportedly designed to rid us of criminals, has instead turned into an unjustified show of brute force,” he said. “The resulting intimidation and threat to the peace and safety of our communities and the resultant frightening of our children is crudely un-American.”
Mule echoed Lavine’s comments.
“Rounding up people without judicial warrants because they ‘look’ undocumented is racial profiling,” Mule said. “It makes us less safe and dangerously erodes the bedrock democratic principle of due process, which everyone in America is entitled to, regardless of immigration status.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly 34% of residents in Glen Cove identify as Hispanic or Latino. The Bureau also reports that Westbury has roughly 37% of its residents who are Hispanic or Latino. The county average is 19%.
