Update March 3, 4 p.m.:
Riverhead Town Supervisor Jerry Halpin said at the Town Board’s March 3 meeting that town police have questioned the two students who were approached, and their parents, and were able to locate the operator of the SUV that approached them, and had determined that the “operator was a member of the public,” who “informed the children on their own” that ICE was in the area.
“We confirmed the individual was not connected with an ICE officer,” he said.
Ms. Perez, who again asked the board to discuss OLA’s proposed safety measure, said that “ICE was all around the school” that day.
“That is a fact,” she said. “We want to make sure the actions of these random raids are not stopping children from going to school, or happening near hospitals or schools.”
Ms. Perez said OLA representatives have met with representatives from every other town and village on the East End, and she is “looking forward to hearing from the Town Board” what the proper way to have a dialogue with Riverhead will be.
Original Story Follows:
In what is becoming almost a weekly occurrence, federal agents returned to Riverhead Friday afternoon in a rapid series of raids that reportedly included a foot chase that led to the detention of a man near the Riverhead Library, and the questioning of two fifth graders on their way to Pulaski Street School.
The reports of students being questioned by someone in a dark SUV with blacked-out windows galvanized Minerva Perez, executive director of OLA of Eastern Long Island, a Latino advocacy group that has been working to get local governments here to sign on to legislation outlining how local law enforcement can protect public safety during ICE raids.
Ms. Perez took to social media Friday evening in two impassioned posts, the first of which decried “some of most horrific descriptions of another ICE raid in Riverhead.”
A crowd of ICE Out protesters, led by Anita Boyer, took to the streets of Riverhead again on Saturday, marching from Town Hall through downtown Riverhead and up the steps of the Suffolk County courthouse on Griffing Avenue.
Ms. Perez said in one of her Friday evening social media posts that two students “walking to school this morning were approached by a black SUV to ask about an immigration action. They did exactly what they should have done and walked themselves right to school…. Now children cannot walk to school because grown adults in blacked out SUVs are going to roll up on them?”
“We do know, leaders of Riverhead Town, that if you do not put the safety of the children of Riverhead Town at the top of your priority, that is something you are going to have to answer for,” she said. “You are going to have to explain to your parents and children why you find it to be acceptable for ICE to run an action in front of a fifth and sixth grade school.”
She added that, in the case of the person who was detained, “if they had a judicial warrant, they could have served it in so many different ways… that is nauseating…. Children have the message it is not possible to walk to my school, and even if I’m walking with my parent, ICE would find it correct to take a caregiver in front of their children.”
“Come to the Riverhead Town Board, at the next public meeting, and speak about the importance of your child, or yourself, being able to get to school safely,” she said in another post, urging students who feel unsafe going to school to talk to their parents about speaking publicly at the Town Board meeting about their fears as well.
“Put some sanity, and some reality around the actions that happened today,” she said, adding that enforcement actions affect all students in a school.
“Do you want your little blond kid walking up to school in front of a police action? Do you want that for any of them?” she said.
The Riverhead Town Board next meets on Tuesday, March 3 at 2 p.m.
Marchers Take Heed of Marathon Ahead
On the streets of Riverhead during the protest Saturday afternoon, the mood was one of frustration, especially among marchers who had attended the Riverhead Town Board’s last meeting on Feb. 18, a marathon, four-hour meeting in which they waited until after six public hearings to speak in response to the last ICE raid in Riverhead.
Members of the Town Board had not responded to their concerns at the meeting, and in later comments to the press had seemed disinterested in the OLA resolution.
“They need to come aboard. If the agents are coming and overriding them, staging in their police parking lots, that’s disrespectful to the board,” said Nathalie Alenski, who was in the crowd Saturday with a bullhorn.
“We need more people coming out and helping out, just for basic human decency and dignity. People have gotta be treating other people like human beings,” said Eva Roberts. “People are treating people that don’t look like them as if they are not humans.”
“More people have gotta step up and speak up, and I hope more people do,” she said. “We can’t just look the other way. People are not looking at what’s actually happening. I hope more people mobilize in Riverhead.”
“We have to keep showing up. We have to stay loud, because if you think that any of these town boards is just going to give anything to us, you are wrong,” Anita Boyer, the protest organizer, told the crowd. “When you see information about town board meetings you need to show up… We don’t want in a few months or a few years to ask ourselves again, ‘how did we get here?'”
“How do you train for a marathon? Do you go running once a month? Do you only go to the gym every other week?” she asked the crowd. “No. You have to show up for yourself every single day. A lot of us here have the privilege of dipping in and out whenever we feel like it. We are allowed to turn off the news when it gets overwhelming. We can numb ourselves. We can ignore it, and our lives will not be that different. But our immigrant friends and family and neighbors do not have that privilege. We have to resist, for ourselves, the temptation of turning it off.”
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With all due respect, this poorly constructed and toothless law will not keep ICE out of Riverhead.
It will only bring more ICE to Riverhead.
Please stop pushing this “law”. Focus on Habeas Writs and assisting families of those removed.