Federal immigration authorities arrested at least one U.S. citizen and a military veteran during a raid inside a New Jersey fish market, according to city and state officials.
Roughly one dozen Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived unannounced at Ocean Seafood Depot on Thursday, without a warrant, demanding to see documents for employees.
Agents made “no prior announcement” when they stormed into the market, “blocking entrances, scrambling up delivery ramps” and “banging on bathroom doors,” Amy Torres with New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice told reporters Friday.
The arrests followed Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-immigration actions in his first week in office, including rescinding long-standing policy that prohibits arrests in places like schools and churches, and threatening to prosecute officials in so-called “sanctuary” cities like Newark that limit cooperation.
“I feel like we have to be a country of law, but we have to go after bad people, not working people,” business owner Luis Janota told local news network ABC7. “These are family people. These are people who show up to work every day.”
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said the “egregious” arrests were “in plain violation” of the Fourth and 14th Amendments.
“Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized,” he said.
A spokesperson for ICE told CBS News that officers “may encounter U.S. citizens while conducting field work and may request identification to establish an individual’s identity as was the case during a targeted enforcement operation” in Newark.
A Newark field office declined to comment to The Independent citing policy against commenting on “ongoing investigations.”
Mayor Baraka criticized what he called ICE’s “cavalier” language, suggesting that “these things happen” and “there are going to be citizens who we stop and question.
“How do you determine who is undocumented and who is a criminal just by looking at them?” he said.
“This type of sterile language suggests there was deep intel … there wasn’t supposed to be collateral damage,” Torres said. “Why was a U.S. citizen interrogated? Why was a military veteran’s credential and honor called into question? … ICE lies. … They use fear and racism to justify their presence, their profile and their power grabs.”
In operations across the country on Thursday, ICE arrested 538 people and lodged 373 detainers, which are requests to law enforcement agencies to notify ICE before releasing anyone in custody who could be in the country without legal permission.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said those 538 people are all “illegal immigrant criminals, including a suspected terrorist, four members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and several illegals convicted of sex crimes against minors.”
But the numbers are not all that remarkable compared to immigration enforcement actions over the last year during Joe Biden’s administration, when average daily ICE arrests reached more than 300, and average daily detainers issued reached roughly 400.
Similar ICE operations were reported this week in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Philadelphia, Seattle, Miami, New York City, and Washington, DC.
Immigration advocacy groups and Democratic officials fear the Trump’s administration’s latest salvo in his “mass deportation” agenda “is the reality of Trump’s reign of terror, but it’s not the America generations have fought for,” according to New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman.
She called the arrests in Newark a “disgrace” and “what we expect from two-bit dictators in banana republics.”
“Warrantless searches, jackbooted thugs, veterans detained,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen who served our country in uniform, you too can be stopped without a warning or a warrant and shaken down for your papers. You too can be detained indefinitely and without cause. You too can be rounded up and whisked away.”
A joint statement from New Jersey’s Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim said warrantless searches and targeted arrests in private businesses “sow fear in all of our communities — and our broken immigration system requires solutions, not fear tactics.”
Trump’s administration has also reinstated “expedited removal” procedures, allowing immigration authorities to swiftly deport any undocumented person arrested within the United States who cannot prove they have been living in the country for more than two years.
The president also is gutting legal immigration pathways, including shutting down processing centers throughout Latin America, closing an app that facilitated asylum claims, and effectively shutting the U.S. Mexico border to anyone seeking asylum in the United States despite obligations under international law.
On Thursday, a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s “blatantly constitutional” executive order to redefine the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause, while 22 states, civil groups groups and pregnent woman launch legal battles across the country to overturn the order.
