tags: Press Releases

The Troubling Significance of the U.S. Military Veteran Detained in New Jersey ICE Raid

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Washington, DC — An ICE raid on a Newark, NJ restaurant yesterday that led to the detention of a U.S. military veteran and U.S. citizen was a troubling snapshot of the types of indiscriminate enforcement we fear the Trump administration is seeking to turbocharge.

As Newark Mayor Ras Baraka stated, the raids detained, “undocumented residents as well as citizens, without producing a warrant. One of the detainees is a U.S. military veteran who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned … Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized.”

As the restaurant owner told a local TV outlet (and Axios noted), “I asked [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?” … [the owner said] among the workers questioned was the manager of the restaurant’s warehouse, a Puerto Rican man and military veteran. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. ‘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 or my American workers, Portuguese workers or white workers.’”

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:

“The combination of a Trump administration seeking to sow fear and make as many people as possible deportable and the removal of common sense enforcement priorities is a recipe for overreach, cruelty, and chaos and already impacting U.S. citizens, military veterans, and long-settled immigrants with deep roots and ties to this nation. We fear the Newark raids are the proverbial canary in the coal mine and others should follow the lead of Mayor Baraka and local leaders and advocates who are sounding the alarm and pushing back against the chaos, cruelty, and excess that is already on display.”

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