Protesters gathered in Great Neck Plaza and East Meadow in opposition to ICE’s immigration crackdown on Thursday, Jan. 8.
Both protests attracted community groups from across Long Island and also acted as vigils for Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three who was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis this week.
Nina Gordon and Ron Gross have held protests against the Trump administration at the same intersection of Great Neck Plaza since May 2025, but Thursday had their biggest turnout so far.
In East Meadow, over 200 people turned up outside of a Nassau County jail that is being used to hold ICE detainees.
Karen Higgins, a member of Engage Long Island, protested outside the jail Thursday night and said, “We actually tried to shout loud enough last night with the hopes that they can hear us and know that there are a lot of people outside the jail, outside the immigrant community, who are standing up for them to give them some hope.”
Tomas Orellana, a Great Neck resident, was arrested on Monday, Jan. 5, and is currently being held in the facility where protestors gathered.
“I broke down,” Tomas’s wife Claudia Orellana said when she heard the news of his arrest. “Who expects this to happen to someone?”
In Tomas’ home of Great Neck, Gordon played guitar in memory of Good. “I was so depressed by what happened yesterday,” Gordon said.
But she also said that making music gave her hope. Gordon reminisced about when she was 10 years old and her mother mailed her the lyrics to “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Bob Dylan.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman responded to the death of Good in a post on X that read, “The tragedy in Minneapolis was not an accident. It was the predictable result of radical local elected officials who encouraged lawlessness and hostility toward law enforcement.”
“Enough is enough,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said about the killing. “Let’s start holding these people accountable.”
Gross, who is still active in the Great Neck community at 90 years old, spoke on the need to not give up hope as Gordon strummed her guitar.
Gross handed out flyers marking 12 “Achievements of the Resistance Movement” that he said were important to remember, lest they be “overshadowed by the demon of despondency.”
After weeks of protesting at the same intersection, Gross noticed a memorial stone to former Great Neck Plaza Deputy Mayor Roger Weiss that said, “He gave, when most would have given up.”
“That’s what we’re doing,” Gross said. “When other people gave up, he kept pushing. He kept working.”
Gordon was inspired to organize by Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, one of the first openly lesbian rabbis and the leader of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the largest LGBTQ synagogue in the world.
Kleinbaum started the Beacon in January 2025 as a way to organize hyperlocal protest movements after Donald Trump’s re-election.
Gordon held the protest in conjunction with the Beacon, but other organizations came to support as well.
Members from community groups like Engage Long Island, the Bellmore Merrick Democratic Club, and Veterans for Peace all came out to the protest on Thursday.
The East Meadow protest brought out groups from all over Long Island and beyond. Democratic Socialists of America, Islip Forward Organization, Engage Long Island, and many more organizations joined together outside the county jail.
Rachel Klein, a founding member of Engage Long Island, went to both protests.
Klein said that she helped create the social justice and political activism group because “everything [she] cared about was under assault.”
Great Neck resident Martha Hirsch told the Long Island Press, “We have a commandment to love the stranger … my Jewish soul knows what it is to be an immigrant.”
Gordon is a lifelong resident of Great Neck and grew up in a progressive family that brought her along to civil rights marches when she was just 8 years old.
“This was a very liberal and progressive town in the 1960s,” Gordon said.
But politics in the peninsula have changed.
In the 2024 presidential election, most precincts in Great Neck voted for Trump by over 15 percentage points with 90% of some precincts voting Trump.
Gordon said that some of this was because of demographic change, saying that the Iranian community in Great Neck is more conservative.
“It puzzles me,” Gordon said, “because they came here fleeing oppression from a reactionary dictator and yet they all support Trump.”
In this partisanly Republican peninsula, the protesters received some pushback on Thursday.
One passerby shouted “Assholes!” as he drove by.
Gordon recalled a time at a previous protest when a man driving by in a cybertruck shouted “Trump 2028” and gave them the middle finger.
“There’s no winning,” Gordon said. “You just have to kind of meet it with kindness and love … Even if people don’t come and stand with us, they see us, and they see that there is resistance to authoritarianism.”
