Queens Residents Go About Their Day — But Live in Quiet Fear of ICE Raids

Woodside, New York - At any given time, life in Queens, NYC's largest borough and home to about 2.2 million New Yorkers, begins exhaustively so early or so late in a city that never sleeps.

You’ll see the pattern of movement of people with different ethnicities, like a clock work. If you're in the hardcore labor force of construction workers, waiting crew, and care givers, you're usually up at 5am and hop on the train by 6am to start working at 7am.

If you're an office employee or executive, you're usually out of your comfort zone from 7 or 8am to clock in at 9am.

Young students, meanwhile, populate the trains by 7am and 3pm, to go to school and return home. Hospital workers hop on the train regularly according to and from their work shifts.

Such is life as I saw it in Queens, my home for almost two decades now, home to most Filipinos in the East Coast, and where the world's most diverse communities thrive.

These days, however, there is an invisible but real fear in people’s hearts here, the paranoia of being randomly arrested by immigration enforcers.  

NY State Assemblymember Steven Raga expressed concern of the heightened fear of residents in his legislative district in Jackson Heights, Woodside, Elmhurst, and Maspeth as random crackdown for supposedly undocumented immigrants intensifies. Raga, born in the US, is the first Filipino-American elected official in New York State.

In an interview at the Jackson Heights Diversity Plaza during the health and cultural fair of Apicha Community Health Center, Raga said that his office has notably sensed a “big fear” in the community. “On an average day, we have constituents and neighbors who are being disappeared in court on 26th Federal Plaza. How can we help them? That’s a thing (that we do) but we cannot post live or pictures on social media. But yes, that’s an everyday thing, the trauma that they are facing right now.”

The ICE website has indicated that it recently made arrests in and around Queens, including the apprehension of a 19-year-old student at an immigration court in Manhattan in June and a 42-year-old Ecuadorian citizen on August 8 for a prior offense in Queens.

ICE also conducted a larger enforcement action in June that resulted in over 80 arrests in the New York City area, including parts of Queens and Long Island.

Raga revealed that some of his staff help escort people who have cases and hearings at 26th Federal Plaza “just so because they are scared to even walk there. They need someone to be with.”

Raga said that his office also follows up on the affected families, although it is no longer in their scope of work, to assure them of assistance such as referrals to legal or any social support.

“I wish I had a pen to (write off) their pain and ease their trauma. But that’s just what we can do so far for now - get their contact information and be of assistance as much as we are allowed to,” said Raga.

The NYU Furman Center noted that in 2023, "there were an estimated 2,252,196 people in Queens, of which 26.1% identified as Asian, 16.4% identified as Black, 28.1% identified as Hispanic, and 23.2% identified as White."

Civil rights groups here have sued the Trump administration to stop ICE officers from abducting people who show up to New York courthouses for their immigration appointments.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and others filed suit on August 1 in the Southern District of New York, representing organizations that work with noncitizens in immigration proceedings.

The case challenged “the Trump Administration’s sweeping, unprecedented campaign of targeting noncitizens at their immigration court proceedings by denying them the right to seek relief from removal in the courtroom and summarily arresting them as they exit.”

ACLU and NYCLU said that “to facilitate its goal of “mass deportations,” the Administration has reversed longstanding procedural and substantive protections that ensured noncitizens would be able to access immigration courts and fairly litigate their right to remain in the United States.”

Masked ICE officers have been stalking and disappearing people who attend their mandatory immigration appointments in New York’s courthouses.  

In 2021, media reports show that ICE had detained about 1,800 Filipinos nationwide, but deportations vary per year.

“We’re living in scary times. I keep track of my children and husband more often now than ever during the day, and I have my lawyer’s phone number handy. Although we have papers, I think non-whites are targeted randomly,” said Celia who lives in Sunnyside.