Tatiana Cruz has had two of her close friends arrested by federal immigration authorities in the last few months. She has kept in touch with her detained friends, both of whom are Venezuelan immigrants, and has been speaking with one of them on an almost-daily basis and coordinating with his lawyers.
On Tuesday evening, Cruz was among the thousands of New Yorkers who hit the streets in one of the city’s largest anti-ICE demonstrations since Donald Trump was reelected and began ramping up efforts to arrest and deport immigrants. Thousands of protesters rallied across downtown Manhattan, decrying the recent actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After an hour of protesting at Foley Square, a venue close to ICE’s NYC field office, the protesters headed toward Washington Square Park. As the protest wound its way through the West Village, several residents stepped outside their homes to join.
Cruz marched with a sign that read, “Stop kidnapping our loved ones.” Speaking to Documented, she said, “I know it’s a long fight, but we won’t lay down.”
The protest took place amidst the Trump administration’s recent controversial efforts to arrest individuals attending immigration court check-ins and from workplaces such as Home Depot and the federal government’s decision to send in the National Guard and U.S. Marines to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. Several protesters said they came out in solidarity with their fellow demonstrators in L.A.
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“It’s not just L.A.” said Ninaj Raoul, a community organizer at Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees. “This [immigration crackdown] has been going on all over the country.”
Jorge Torres, a leader of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and one of the organizers of Tuesday’s protest, said several groups like theirs had joined forces to plan the demonstration. “ICE should stop terrorizing our communities,” Torres, an Ecuadorian American, told Documented. “They should stop being in our neighborhoods. We will not stop until they are out.”
Over the past week, protests in the city have intensified. On Saturday, June 7, anti-ICE protesters blocked immigration enforcement vans from leaving the premises of 26 Federal Plaza, where ICE’s NYC field office is located and where ICE has been arresting individuals showing up to their check-ins. The NYPD, which under New York’s sanctuary city laws is legally bound to limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, arrested at least nine protesters.
On Monday, as the protests continued, police officials arrested multiple individuals who were protesting peacefully, minutes after Jessica Tisch, the city’s police commissioner, had said the NYPD would protect every person’s right to do so. On Tuesday, more than 80 protesters were arrested by the NYPD.
‘Here for my students’
“Most of my students are immigrants so I’m coming out to advocate for them,” said a public school teacher, L., who has documented as well as undocumented immigrant children in her class. There’s a lot of fear and anxiety among her students, she said. To protect her and her students’ safety, she requested to be identified only by her first initial.
“A lot of them have been through hell already — they tell me about their journey through the Darien Gap,” L. said, referring to a roadless, risky stretch through a rainforest along the border of Panama and Colombia traversed by migrants seeking to cross northward into the United States.
Though their past hardships don’t make their present fears regarding arrests and deportations disappear, the teacher said the kids try to put on a brave face. “A lot of them will try to joke about it and brush it off.”
Carrie Monahan volunteers as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher to asylum seekers, mostly from Africa. “They come from places like Sudan, fleeing civil war; places like Guinea, fleeing ethnic cleansing,” she said.
Monahan said her students couldn’t be at the protest because it wouldn’t be safe for them, as their asylum proceedings are still ongoing. She added, “I’m here in solidarity with them and all the other immigrants who are vulnerable right now, especially in the past few months and weeks.”
Among the protesters, there was criticism directed at how the city administration had responded to Trump’s crackdown. “Eric Adams, ostensibly a Democrat, is not protecting New York as a sanctuary city,” said Monahan, of the incumbent mayor.
‘The bare minimum’
John, an American citizen born to Mexican and Ecuadorian parents, remembers his father getting deported from the U.S. years ago. His father is now back in the U.S. as a permanent resident, and both his parents are currently in the process of seeking U.S. citizenship. John asked to be identified by his first name out of concern for his parents’ immigration status.
He told Documented that participating in the protest was “the bare minimum” he could do as an American citizen. “I have to use my voice in order to advocate for their rights and for the people that have been oppressed and wrongfully incarcerated by ICE,” he said, as he held up a large Mexican flag in honor of his mother’s heritage.
Also Read: Across the U.S., Protesters Demand a Government That Upholds Dignity, Due Process, and Human Rights
Like John, many of the protesters were children of immigrant parents.
Denisse Gaucin, a 19-year-old undergrad student and daughter of Mexican immigrants, held a sign saying, “Ice eventually melts.” She said: “I’m here for the people that are too scared to come out.”
Seventy-year-old Bruce Adolphe, a renowned music composer and scholar, said he had made his way to the protest because he saw similarities between Trump’s America and Hitler’s Germany. Adolphe, who is Jewish, told Documented, “My parents’ generation were in the Holocaust. What ICE is doing is similar to what the Gestapo did in Germany. They don’t offer a warrant, they don’t give people a chance to defend themselves, they send them to foreign prisons — everything they’re doing is illegal.”
Nora Fried, a stand-up comedian, struck a similar note at the protest, holding up a placard featuring a quote by Anne Frank from 1943. Thirteen-year-old Frank had written in her diary, “Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes […] Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.” Fried, who is also Jewish, read out the quote on her placard and said, “Tell me the difference. Tell me what the difference is right now.”
At the protest, among large numbers of American and Mexican flags, were several Palestinian flags. A handful of counter-protesters who had shown up to register their dissent against the anti-ICE protest took issue. Standing at the edge of the protest venue at Foley Square, the counter-protesters held up Israel flags. One of them had a giant red flag with the words ‘MAGA Country’ wrapped around himself.
When the rally passed the Mexican restaurant Tacombi, one protester shouted to diners, “If you love our food, love our people!”
As the sun set, protesters wound their way to Washington Square Park, gathering for a final time around the fountain at the center of the park, where they broke into an impromptu dance. As the popular Mexican dance number “Payaso de Rodeo” played, protesters danced to the beat, waving flags in the air and cheering each other on.
