Border czar Tom Homan visited in Puerto Rico this week to meet with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials amid reports of intensifying immigration raids in the U.S. territory, according to a summary of his trip posted on social media on Wednesday.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have not responded to questions from The Washington Post since Tuesday about enforcement unfolding on the island. The White House said Homan visited the island briefly “to do assessments of immigration and maritime border security efforts,” which are part of his regular duties, and has since left.
Traditionally the federal government has not enforced immigration law in Puerto Rico as aggressively as it does on the mainland.
“This is very unusual for Puerto Rico,” said Jose Rodriguez, of the Dominican Human Rights Committee, one of several advocates tracking ICE on the island.
El Nuevo Día, the island’s largest newspaper, reported that a local ICE spokeswoman confirmed that immigration agents have launched an operation in the San Juan metropolitan area. The spokeswoman did not say how many immigrants have been arrested or their nationalities, the newspaper reported.
Videos showed masked, armed officers traveling in SUVs and partially blocking streets in areas such as Santurce, home to many Dominican residents, to set up roadblocks to question drivers and passengers.
At least 15 people were arrested in the San Juan area, mostly after vehicle stops, advocates and witnesses said.
Attorney Rosaura González Rucci said one of her clients, a 35-year-old man, was arrested early Thursday in San Juan when he was carpooling to work and stopped at a gas station to buy bags of ice.
González Rucci said her client, who is from the Dominican Republic, has lived in Puerto Rico for a decade, is married to a legal permanent resident, and has two U.S. citizen daughters. She said he has an approved petition for legal residency through his wife, but that process has not advanced, leaving him in legal limbo. She said her client has no criminal record.
“As time goes by, they are becoming more aggressive,” González-Rucci said of ICE.
On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Puerto Rico called on Homan and HSI’s leadership to immediately halt the arrests.
Earlier this month, the civil rights organization demanded that the island’s transportation secretary resign after confirming that the agency voluntarily turned over confidential information about 6,321 immigrants who hold driver’s licenses to ICE.
The governor’s office did not respond to requests for information about the arrests.
“We strongly reject the massive deployment of ICE agents,” Annette Martinez Orabona, director of the ACLU in Puerto Rico, said in a statement. “The actions observed this Thursday add to the pattern of systematic violence and harassment against our immigrant communities, while also indicating an increase in this type of operation.”
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