A mother and three children who were dragged out of their beds by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and detained for 11 days were released Monday following an outpouring of community anger — including protests outside the upstate New York home of Donald Trump’s border czar.
The unnamed family was taken from their home on March 27 in the village of Sackets Harbor, where the acting head of ICE, Tom Homan, also lives.
Despite Sackets Harbor having a population of just 1,300, on Saturday afternoon around 1,000 people marched to Homan’s house in the village, calling for the family to be returned from the Texas detention facility where they were being held. The protesters reportedly held signs of slogans including“Bring our Kids Back,” and “Tom Homan Took Our Kids,” and chanted “bring them home” as they gathered outside Homan’s house.
Teachers of the school attended by the children — a third-grader, a tenth-grader and an eleventh-grader — had called publicly on Homan to intervene.
“My colleagues and I are relieved and grateful to share that, after eleven days of uncertainty, our students and their mother are returning home,” Jennifer Gaffney, the Superintendent of Sackets Harbor Central School District, said in a statement Monday.
“We remain committed to providing the care, understanding, and sensitivity necessary for all students and staff as we begin the healing process from this traumatic experience,” she added.
The saga began when ICE officers detained eight people, including the mother and her three children, during a targeted raid at a dairy farm. ICE said the agents had been looking for a South African national who was charged with possession of child pornography by the US Attorney’s office last Friday. Homan told local news that the family’s house was searched as part of that same warrant, and they were deemed to have “entered the country illegally.”
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in a statement that the children were “snatched from their home and disappeared.”
“This egregious action in Tom Homan’s backyard is an affront to American values, and to humanity in general,” he said.
Homan grew up in West Carthage, less than 30 miles away, and is a regular presence in Sackets Harbor. The incident led him to appear on local news outlets to defend the agency he now leads.
Homan told local 7 News that the family was taken away for an “investigation” to decide if any of the children could be a “material witness” in the case against the South African national, and to ensure the “safety and security of the children.”
Homan’s claim that the family had been moved for their own safety drew skepticism from teachers, including from Jaime Cook, the principal of Sackets Harbor Central School, where the three kids are students.
“Anybody who has worked in trauma-informed teaching or trauma-informed counseling knows that that doesn’t make any sense,” she told The Independent shortly before news of their release.
She said the rally on Saturday had brought out people from across the county.
“Within this community there are people who I never would have expected to get involved, on all sides of the political spectrum, including people who have voted for the president,” she said.
Cook said that the third-grader’s classmates have been preparing for their return, making the student a giant welcome home banner, and piling up their desk with letters of support to their friend.
The detention is one of many thousands taking place across the country as part of Trump’s mass deportation effort in his second term. This one drew national attention because of the young age of one of the children involved, because they were not the target of the raid, and because it took place on Homan’s home turf.
