Egregious ICE Raid Grabs U.S. Military Vet in Roundup
Donald Trump’s promised mass deportations have already begun, and in Newark, New Jersey, a U.S. military veteran was detained after Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a seafood store Thursday.
The city’s mayor, Ras Baraka, said that ICE agents conducted the raid without a search warrant and both undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens were detained. About 10 or 12 ICE agents entered the store after receiving complaints and were looking for documentation, the owner of Ocean Food Depot, Luis Janota, told PIX11 News.
“I was confused; they took three people who did not have any documentation on them,” Janota said. “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?’
“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 added.
Baraka issued a statement Thursday blasting the raid.
“This egregious act is in plain violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees ‘the right of the people be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,’” the statement read. “Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized.”
As with all other law enforcement agencies, the courts have ruled that ICE is subject to the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. A valid search warrant signed by a judge is required for agents to enter private property, which includes employee-only areas in businesses. It’s not clear if ICE entered into those areas at Ocean Food Depot.
If this is what ICE’s raids to round up undocumented immigrants are going to be like, there will be more examples of U.S. citizens caught up and detained mistakenly. Plus, if no search warrant is obtained, many of the people ICE detains will have grounds to challenge the agency. In any case, the president’s demand for mass deportations will be causing more chaos and confusion to come.