Around 70 residents gathered outside an office building in Woodbury to protest the leasing of space for 40 attorneys representing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its agents.
Aresco Management, which owns the office spaces at 88 Froehlich Farm Blvd., said that ICE is renting offices in the four-story Woodbury building for the attorneys.
The protest was organized by Long Island’s United Voices for Freedom, in partnership with Assemble, a grassroots organization advocating for social reform. Organizers led chants and handed out information packets and whistles to educate community members on responses to ICE operations.
“Our community is stronger together,” Assemble co-founder Courtney Belanger said. “We try to get out there to help the underserved and underprivileged.”
She said Assemble holds workshops, protests and community events. According to Belanger, the organization is beginning to build a mutual aid network through which community members can access food, legal aid and financial assistance if needed.
Many residents who came to the protest brought non-perishable food to donate for mutual aid.
The Immigration Research Initiative said there are about 550,000 immigrants living in Long Island, accounting for about 21% of the local economy. The organization estimates that about 65,000 of those migrants lack documentation.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in January that ICE now has about 22,000 agents nationwide. Recent NBC polls show that public support for the White House’s immigration approach has fallen.
Karen Higgins, an attorney for 35 years from Massapequa Park, was at the protest. She said the 287(g) agreement made by County Executive Bruce Blakeman allowing Nassau police to join in ICE operations is “horrific.”
“Bruce Blakeman thinks that the Nassau County taxpayers should help fund this,” she said. “I can’t stay quiet, because silence is complicity. I’m not going to stand by while people are assaulted, murdered, deported, detained for indefinite periods and separated from their families. They’re even doing this to people who are legally here and people who are citizens.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul has introduced legislation that would make 287(g) agreements illegal in New York State.
“Over the last year, federal immigration agents have carried out unspeakable acts of violence against Americans under the guise of public safety,” Hochul said in a statement. “These abuses – and the weaponization of local police officers for civil immigration enforcement – will not stand in New York.”
“Police should protect all of us, and working with this unhinged, unregulated and violent group is not good,” an organizer from United Voices for Freedom said.
John Risickelli, who spent his career in the defence industry making aircraft, said he’s as patriotic as they come, but that the lack of attention to the Rule of Law by President Donald Trump has been unacceptable.
“I believe in being strong and righteous, I want [the U.S.] to be the north star,” he said. “I don’t believe in authoritarianism, I don’t believe in tyranny, I don’t believe in corruption.
Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York’s 3rd District wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security requesting transparency.
“Transparency and good-faith engagement between federal, state and local officials are essential to building trust and preventing the chaos and uncertainty we’ve seen elsewhere in this country,” he wrote.
