ICE agents conducted roundups in New York City, and a day later, local authorities announced their own gang takedown. In immigrant neighborhoods, fear was palpable.
ICE agents conducted roundups in New York City, and a day later, local authorities announced their own gang takedown. In immigrant neighborhoods, fear was palpable.
ICE agents conducted roundups in New York City, and a day later, local authorities announced their own gang takedown. In immigrant neighborhoods, fear was palpable.
At around 3 a.m. on Tuesday, dozens of Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers gathered at their Lower Manhattan headquarters for an early-morning briefing on the immigration arrests they were soon to conduct in New York City.
The ICE officers routinely target undocumented immigrants with criminal records in their homes or workplaces, but this operation, the first and most visible display of force by ICE in New York since President Trump returned to office, was clearly different.
This time, ICE agents teamed up with dozens of officers from other federal agencies as part of Mr. Trump’s growing immigration crackdown. This time, Mr. Trump’s top immigration official, Kristi Noem, who was confirmed as Homeland Security secretary three days before, showed up to give agents a pep talk. She then joined them in body armor as agents arrested a Venezuelan man in the Bronx suspected of being a gang member.
The public show of force — 29 teams with officers from several federal agencies — resulted in the arrests of 39 people, mostly in New York City and some on Long Island, according to Frank Tarentino, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in New York, one of the federal agencies involved in the raids.
Mr. Tarentino said that the teams worked off a target list developed by the Department of Homeland Security, which ICE is a part of. He said that agents prioritized people charged with violent crimes, believed to be connected to gangs or involved in drug trafficking, and then worked through a tiered list of less serious offenders.
The 39 arrests on Tuesday were higher than ICE’s average number of daily arrests over the past two years in the New York City area, but it remains to be seen if the agency will be able to maintain or significantly accelerate that pace. Mr. Tarentino said the multiagency collaboration in New York would continue.