At a warehouse in Avenel, N.J., workers assigned to stock Versace dresses, Swarovski crystals and Louis Vuitton sneakers had settled into their shift one gray October morning when dozens of immigration agents swarmed the building and surrounded them.
Masked officers carrying long rifles blocked exits and used dogs and heat detectors to find employees who were hiding. A helicopter circled. Within hours, agents arrested 46 people, which federal officials said represented nearly one-fourth of the day’s work force.
The raid targeted a building with a little-known yet significant relationship with the federal government. Facilities like it are guarded by customs officials who let businesses store products until import taxes are paid. In exchange, officials enter at will to inspect merchandise.
On that day, they came for the workers.
The facilities are known as bonded warehouses and are abundant in North Jersey because of its proximity to a major international port. Federal agents raided at least three of them during a span of four months this year, alarming worker rights activists who believe that President Trump’s immigration crackdown has ensnared the region’s import-export industry.
Employees swept up in the raid said that they felt ambushed by the customs officers with whom they worked in the building, which is used by an Italian company called Savino Del Bene that moves fashion and luxury goods. Some of the people arrested said that they had work permits and open paths to legal status.
Federal officials said that work permits and pending asylum applications do not grant people legal status, although migrants with those designations have not historically been a priority for deportation.
Several of the workers arrested in the raids have since been released from detention, in some cases after spending weeks behind bars.
Jhonatan Bello, 18, had worked at the warehouse for two months when he was arrested. He was released in December, after enduring what he described as inhumane conditions inside a migrant detention center. He said that he was served rotten food and taken outside in freezing temperatures without a coat.
Mr. Bello, who emigrated from Colombia four years ago, had a work permit and a Social Security number and said that he had applied for legal status through his mother’s husband, who is a U.S. citizen.
“No human being deserves this,” Mr. Bello said in Spanish. “We endured so much hunger and cold.”
The Department of Homeland Security said that law enforcement agents were carrying out an inspection when they arrested the workers.
It was not immediately clear if Savino Del Bene would face penalties for employing undocumented people. Advocates for immigrants have said that warehouse workers are often hired by staffing agencies, making it hard to track their employment history. Attempts to reach representatives for Savino Del Bene were unsuccessful.
DHS officials said in a statement that Customs and Border Protection validates employee lists provided by bonded warehouses, and that failure to comply with the agency’s rules would “trigger immediate corrective action requirements and may result in suspension or removal from the program, loss of warehouse designation and referral to the authorities.”
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Advocates for worker rights have questioned the legality of the government’s arrest tactic.
“ICE typically needs a warrant signed by a judge — a judicial warrant — to enter places and to try to detain folks, but they’re finding this loophole,” said Amanda Dominguez, a community organizer at New Labor, an advocacy group that represents low-wage immigrant workers. “I would argue that they still need their own judicial warrant.”
Asked whether the federal agents had a judicial warrant to arrest migrants, DHS officials said they did not need one.
“DHS enforces the laws of the nation every day and regularly inspects bonded warehouses, since they operate under the supervision and control of CBP,” the officials wrote. “A bonded warehouse is within CBP search authority, and a search may be conducted at any time, without a warrant, to include both people and things.”
Jeremy Jong, a staff attorney at Al Otro Lado, a nonprofit that provides legal services to migrants based in California, represented a migrant who sued after he was arrested at a bonded warehouse that was storing wine and liquor in Edison, N.J.
Mr. Jong said that the government had broken due process laws by arresting people without verifying that they were in the country illegally — in addition to exploiting its relationship with businesses that keep products in bonded warehouses.
“Just because CBP has a right to be there does not mean that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply,” Mr. Jong said, referring to the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
About 10 miles away from Avenel, in the town of Edison, two similar immigration raids during the summer unsettled the community, where Amazon, FedEx and UPS have a large presence, employing thousands.
The first raid happened in July, when immigration authorities swarmed a wine and liquor warehouse, arresting 20 workers, mostly from South and Central America, who officials said were undocumented. The second was in August, at a warehouse that receives goods from abroad, including China, and stores them for large online retailers. It resulted in the arrests of 29 workers, making the three operations some of the largest in the region since Mr. Trump took office. Customs and Border Protection agents were seen at every raid.
In the aftermath, employees said that warehouses have been left short-staffed and behind schedule as detained workers were sent to immigration jails and others stopped showing up.
The raids have led immigrant activists to believe that the area around Avenel and Edison, which is about 30 miles southwest of Manhattan, was being targeted because of its concentration of warehouses. Workers fear that more raids are coming.
Haydi Torres, an organizer with the pro-immigrant organization Movimiento Cosecha, said that she felt saddened to see workers crying outside the warehouse in Avenel on the morning of the sweep. Ms. Torres said that relatives rushed to the scene with immigration papers for their family members, desperate to show federal agents. Workers who were released by the federal agents were given red bracelets by the authorities, signifying that they were legal permanent residents or citizens, Ms. Torres said.
Sandra Suero, the mother of Mr. Bello, the 18-year-old worker who was detained and then released weeks later, said that she waited outside for five hours to hear news of her son.
“The raid was carried out like they were the worst criminals,” Ms. Suero said in Spanish. “They were just working.”
Ana Ley is a Times reporter covering immigration in New York City.
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