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When news of a Jan. 23 Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Newark, New Jersey, broke, initial responses of outrage rippled through the community, with much attention paid to the fact that one of the employees picked up was a military veteran. As Daily Kos’ Oliver Willis reported:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided a Newark, New Jersey, business on Thursday. According to Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, “one of the detainees is a U.S. military veteran who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned.”
[…]
Baraka explained this “egregious act is in plain violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” referring to protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
“Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized,” he added.
New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman described the raid as “unconstitutional” and evidence of “the reality of Trump’s reign of terror.”
Though initial reports highlighted that a veteran had been picked up, a detail that followed was a shock to many: The warehouse manager wasn’t just a veteran, he was Puerto Rican—and thus a U.S. citizen.
New York’s PIX11 interviewed business owner Luis Janota, who was candid about who he saw ICE agents target.
“I was confused; they took three people who did not have any documentation on them,” Janota said. “I asked them [the agents] what documentation they were looking for, and they said it was a license or a passport. I thought, who walks around with a passport?”
[…]
“One of the guys was a military veteran, and the way he looked to me was because he was Hispanic. He is Puerto Rican and the manager of our warehouse. It looked to me like they were specifically going after certain kinds of people — not every kind, because they did not ask me for documentation for my American workers, Portuguese workers, or white workers,” Janota said.
The day after the raid, Baraka, other elected officials, and organizations serving immigrants held a joint press conference.
As more details emerged about the raid, and word went out that the vet was Puerto Rican, more outrage—and fear—followed My husband, who is both Puerto Rican and a vet, got on the phone immediately. First he called his godfather in Newark, and next his sisters, nieces, and cousins—while I was calling Puerto Rican friends and godchildren. The responses ranged from disbelief to anger—and then to worry and anxiety.
The instantaneous “but Puerto Ricans are Americans” reactions on social media should be food for thought. Puerto Ricans are still territorial (read: colonial) subjects, and face second-class status despite being dubbed “Americans” nearly two decades after the Spanish-American War. Given Donald Trump’s past demonstrations of disdain for the island and its people, we shouldn’t be surprised that ICE isn’t taking care to avoid making “mistakes.”
The next story in the Puerto Rican ICE saga revolved around a report from Milwaukee that quickly went viral.
However, the story cannot be verified, according to Snopes.
What We Know About Reports That Puerto Rican Family Was Detained After Speaking Spanish in Store
The rumor circulated at the same time as reports of ICE raids in Puerto Rican and Dominican communities in New Jersey.On Jan. 28, 2025, Telemundo Puerto Rico reported that a Puerto Rican woman, her child and the woman’s mother-in-law were detained by U.S. officials after the family was heard speaking Spanish in a store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The report centered around a journalist’s alleged phone interview with an anonymous source claiming to be the brother of the detained woman. According to the brother, the trio was detained then released by federal agents when the woman produced proof of their U.S. citizenship.
[…]
The claims spread at a time of fear in immigrant communities over the Trump administration’s promised deportation raids. Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 made the island a U.S. territory. At roughly the same time as the Milwaukee story, reports circulated from Newark, New Jersey, that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had carried out raids in neighborhoods and businesses in the city.
We reached out to ICE, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and local immigrant rights groups for confirmation of the story. Milwaukee Police Department said it was not aware of ICE activity in the city from Jan. 20 to Jan. 28 when Telemundo posted the story. Similarly, Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s office said it had heard the story but had no specific information about it. We reached out to Milly Méndez, who reported the story for Telemundo, for further details about how the news outlet confirmed the reported events. We could not locate Telemundo’s anonymous source to independently confirm the story.
Whether or not that story is true, this local ABC news report from Philadelphia isn’t reassuring anyone.
Owners of a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia’s Port Richmond section say ICE agents showed up at their door without a warrant.
“They came in here and they wanted to check our restaurant,” said Robert Acevedo, at Boricua 2. “They came in here and thought that we were undocumented because it’s a Puerto Rican restaurant.”
Watch the interview with Acevedo below.
According to the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love is home to the second-largest Puerto Rican community in the U.S.
By 2010, approximately 122,000 Puerto Ricans lived in Philadelphia and an additional 24,000 in Camden. Philadelphia’s population had grown sufficiently to overtake Chicago as the second-largest mainland concentration, behind only New York City. More recent economic troubles on the island spurred additional migration to the mid-Atlantic region.
The mainland isn’t the only place dealing with ICE detentions. It’s happening in Puerto Rico as well.
On Jan. 27, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus responded.
WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Representatives Adriano Espaillat (NY-13), Chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), and Pablo José Hernández (Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, called on U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director to address recent reported incidents of wrongful detention by ICE agents in Puerto Rico and New Jersey.
“We write to express our profound concern regarding recent operations carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New Jersey and Puerto Rico. Reports from media in both regions highlight reckless action by ICE Agents, which have caused considerable distress within communities. These actions have alarmingly sown fear among residents, disrupted businesses, and raised serious concerns about the behavior of federal agencies and the preservation of due process rights,” stated the Members in the letter.
Over the weekend, multiple media outlets reported that ICE agents detained at least three individuals of Dominican origin in the Barrio Obrero area of Santurce, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. According to media reports, eyewitnesses observed agents questioning individuals in neighborhoods with a significant Dominican population to verify their immigration status. In a separate incident on January 23, ICE agents raided a small business in Newark, N.J., and detained a Puerto Rican military veteran without a warrant even when showing a valid veterans identification card to authorities.
On Jan. 31, Valeria María Torres Nieves, writing for El Nuevo Día, told the story of a Haitian immigrant who was wrongly caught up in the same Barrio Obrero raid.
“If you’re going to send me to Haiti, you’d better kill me”: Haitian immigrant spent two days in detention despite regular status
Despite having his immigration status regularized, Junior Antoine was in the custody of federal authorities for two days after he was detained on Sunday as part of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) anti-immigrant raid in Barrio Obrero, in Santurce.
Antoine, who has been in Puerto Rico for a little over a year, said he was at his home in Barrio Obrero when officers “grabbed” him, which he did not resist because, he said, he did not want to “fight” with the authorities.
“They get inside the house, and they don’t even give me a chance to take my phone, my passport or anything else. They get inside the house to look for your passport,” said one of the 47 people detained by ICE on Sunday around the island.
Carlos Berríos Polanco reported for The Latino Newsletter that “Puerto Rico’s Dominican Community Terrified After Immigration Raids.”
Fear and uncertainty grow as reports emerge of detentions, racial profiling, and legal confusion
SAN JUAN — Since federal authorities carried out their first immigration raid after President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting undocumented migrants for removal, members of Puerto Rico’s Dominican community, both documented and undocumented, have been terrified that they could be next.“This has been like a cemetery since the morning,” said César Rafael Hernández, a Dominican migrant, in Plaza Antonio R. Barceló in Barrio Obrero, which has been uncharacteristically empty since the Sunday raid. Some who were still there were apprehensive. Many were waiting to pick up food and produce from a local non-profit that distributes food to those in need.
Hernández was previously stopped by federal authorities enforcing President Trump’s immigrant crackdown without his permanent residence documents on his person, but was allowed to get them from his home to prove his migratory status. He now keeps his green card, alongside his license and other migration documents, in a fanny pack ready to show them to anybody at any time.
However, others have not been so lucky. One Dominican man who was stopped during the Sunday immigration raid —carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)— did not have his residence documents on his person and was detained alongside other undocumented migrants but was eventually let go after federal authorities were able to verify his migration status. A Haitian man spent two days detained even though he has regular migration status. Many migrants do not keep their migration documents on their person, instead choosing to safely leave them at home, because it is their main form of proving their residency status in the United States.
Join me in the comments for updates, and for the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.
