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NEW BEDFORD — Two Guatemalan men were taken into custody by immigration authorities during an early morning raid Friday in the city’s South End.
Family members said authorities — identifying themselves as Immigration and wearing military fatigues — used a battering ram to break down the door to their home on Viall Street just before 7 a.m. They did not show warrants, according to family members.
“They just yelled that ‘we’re from Immigration’” said Josué, 16, in Spanish, who asked to be identified only by his middle name due to fears around deportation. “Then they heard me in my room and broke down my door and pointed a gun at my head. It was traumatizing.”
The agents detained two Guatemalan immigrants, José Antonio Garcia Garcia, 39, and Miguel Ordoñez Socop, 35. It is unclear whether either has a criminal record.
Two minors, Josué and his cousin Londy, 16, both students at New Bedford High School, and another cousin, Elizabeth, 18, said they were briefly handcuffed and ordered to show papers proving their legal residency. Another cousin of Socop’s, Leticia, 19, spent the morning applying for a job in Fall River and arrived shortly after the raid ended. They have also been identified by their middle names.
“They just came in and shouted, ‘put your hands up’ and put me against a wall,” said Londy, in Spanish.
Londy said seven or eight ICE and Drug Enforcement Administration agents entered the apartment while many more were positioned outside. The DEA began collaboration with ICE on immigration enforcement operations shortly after President Donald Trump took office.
“I had just gone into my room to prepare for school,” said Josué, who is Garcia Garcia’s nephew. “Then I heard a loud noise and Don José came in and told us to be quiet because Immigration was here.”
Shortly afterward, Josué said agents knocked down the bedroom door and he jumped up from his bed. At that point, one of the agents pointed a rifle at him.
“I must’ve scared him,” he said.
Elizabeth, who was still asleep when the raid began, said she continued to feign sleep out of fear as the agents entered the room. They pointed a rifle at her as well and searched her for weapons, she said.
After being handcuffed, they were brought outside where agents reviewed their documents before releasing them. They were given no reason for either Garcia’s or Socop’s detention, they said. The operation took only 15 minutes, they said.
The two men were the only ones bringing money into the six-person household, with the two boys still in high school and the two young women looking for work.
“We’re scared to even go out,” said Leticia. “We just go out looking for work and come back home.”
“[ICE] just said we’re taking them in,” Elizabeth said. “Now, we have no idea where they are.”
“I’m nervous to return home,” said Elizabeth. “They might come back.”
Reports on Facebook from around 8 a.m. showed men in military fatigues eating breakfast at their vehicles parked near the Brock Street Police SubStation. They said they were with the Department of Homeland Security (under whose umbrella ICE falls), according to a video taken by local activists.
New Bedford Police Department spokeswoman Holly Huntoon said the agents may have been parked near the station due to operations but city police were unaware of their activities.
“We don’t know anything about it,” she said.
Multiple actions this week
Casey Jones said her husband, David Hinojosa, 53, had just returned from work unloading fishing boats around 9 a.m. on Tuesday when a knock came to the door of their trailer. The couple were rendered homeless for about three weeks in May until someone gave them the trailer they’ve called home since the summer.
“All we heard was a knock, nothing loud,” she said. “Then a few minutes later I heard ‘do you have anything that’s gonna poke me,’ and I put on my shoes to check it out.”
Hinojosa faces charges from about two weeks ago for allegedly stealing a welding machine with the intention of selling it for money.
“They didn’t let me say ‘bye, I love you, or anything,” she said. “They just gave me a card. Later I called it and it popped up as Boston Immigration.”
She said that since then, she and others have made multiple efforts to get in touch with authorities to locate Hinojosa, but to no avail. The situation is aggravated by the fact that Jones, who has mobility issues, has no other source of income.
“I literally just stay in my camper with my two dogs,” she said. “I 100% depend on him for everything.”
Helena DaSilva Hughes, president of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center, said Hinojosa’s case was not the first she heard of this week. On Monday, she said, ICE detained a Haitian man in the city, leaving his wife and two children alone.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in the United States,” she said. “It brings me back to the PIDE in Portugal when I was a kid,” she said, referring to the secret police force of the Portuguese state at the time.
“When I was 9 or 10 years old, adults would stop talking when kids entered the room because they didn’t want us to blab,” she said. “I’m seeing people shut up like that now.”
Other ICE operations
This week’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids are not the first in the city.
Three Guatemalan car wash workers were arrested on March 11 in New Bedford’s North End after a group of immigration agents stormed the business as shocked customers and coworkers watched.
The detainees were identified as Santos López Coxaj, Ezequiel Cos Pacheco, and Alberto Ciprian Sam, according to Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts, which has provided aid to the immigrant community since the 1990s.
Witnesses said three other workers managed to flee the 30-minute operation, which took place at Minit Man Car Wash at 2351 Purchase St. Another worker who was Cape Verdean was asked for his name but was not arrested, Williams said.
The agents, dressed in civilian clothing and driving unmarked vehicles, did not identify themselves during the raid, according to Adrian Ventura, director of Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, which advocates for immigrant workers. An owner of the car wash said she recognized one of the agents as a former customer.
The arrested workers were being processed at the ICE facility in Burlington before being detained in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, Williams said. All workers are undocumented and none of the three have criminal records, she said.
An immigration operation also took place on Feb. 10
Luis Castro Castro, 44, a Guatemalan immigrant, was arrested in an operation involving about 10 immigration agents. The detention took place at a store located at 1273 Acushnet Ave., whose former owner was convicted a year ago for selling fake government identification documents.
According to witnesses, a group of agents entered the store shortly before noon and, after checking the documents of the new owner and other individuals present — all of Guatemalan origin — took Castro Castro, as he was unable to prove he resides in the country with valid documents.
According to video footage of the operation obtained by The New Bedford Light, the agents spoke Spanish, did not wear uniforms or vests identifying them as immigration officials, and were led by a woman. “Sorry, have a nice day,” some of them said as they left with the detainee.
“A different level” of ICE actions
While ICE has been conducting operations in the city under all presidential administrations, the agency has taken a different approach since Trump’s second term began in January, according to Williams.
Under previous administrations, she said ICE would target people who had outstanding warrants for their arrest on criminal charges.
“This is at a different level,” Williams said on Wednesday, referring to ICE actions in the city since late January. “They’re approaching people who don’t have any criminal record.”
She said it’s important that people understand their legal rights in encounters with ICE officers, including their right to not answer questions.
Kevin G. Andrade is a freelance journalist and occasional contributor to The Light. Arthur Hirsch contributed to this report.
I heard first about the car wash, I was upset that people who had worked there were taken, It was the first of people I knew to be hard working. Seems many are guatamalans for some reason, unsure if those at the car wash were related to those in the South end.
This article is clearly intended to make people feel bad for migrants and won’t push for deportation. But how many Americans that committed crime went to jail and left their wives and kids behind ? How many left a family without any income ? If I got arrested I know that the police wouldn’t be asking me if my family would be ok without me. The man who stole a welding machine and left his wife probably shouldn’t have been committing crime. A lot of MA residents are more upset about them being here than they are about a wife being home alone because her husband committed crime. Migrants are costing the taxpayers over a billion dollars a year, they have police called to the shelters all day long. They are overwhelming our healthcare system, some towns are stating that their ambulances are stuck sitting outside hospitals, unable to get their patients into the hospital, for 45 minutes or more. That’s time they are not available for other people. That’s because migrants are overrunning the emergency rooms for minor conditions more appropriately treated at a doctors office. Shelter staff have reported that migrants are calling ambulances for ridiculous things. The citizens of the state are suffering, and that is totally unacceptable. I hope that in time any person here illegally, and not Joe Biden “legally”, that they will all be repatriated to their countries of origin. All of them. The U.S. is not a charity, or a place for the entire world to go to get a nice life totally free. And for a lot of them I say, maybe you shouldn’t commit crime !
Was it necessary to break down a door and create terror and freighten innocent teen agers? Have you ever heard of the word empathy or do you consider that a dirty word as Elon Musk does?
Certainly criminals of any sort should feel the full force of the law. That includes a law breaker who just happens to be president of the USA.
What’s happening now is reminiscent of the tactics employed by the Gestapo in the 30s and 40s. America does need a Gestapo.
Did you know our country was not ours to begin with, to commit inhumanity towards others. Not all immigrants are criminals we have our own born hrrr criminals, an our jails are full of them. Did you know the current presidents parents were German born an immigrants an also the First Lady was an immigrant. Why don’t you read up on a bit of history an get educated on the Anericas an how it began. Think before you speak.
What you forgot was that all the immigrants you mentioned came here illegally, they didn’t walk thru the desert in Mexico, or thru the border in Canada, they arrived on a plane, train, or ship, and applied for a Green card, then learned the language followed by becoming citizens. The people you like are illegal immigrants who send their children to tax payer funded schools, they crossed our borders illegally and live in states where Democrats provide healthcare at the cost of tax payers, clearly you don’t pay taxes so you don’t mind, but the rest of us do, and we elected the President who will throw them all out.
The U.S doesn’t even belong to Americans so to say that we are aliens when you guys also took this country and where immigrants before, half of the people ice is taking don’t have criminal records, Also the guy who stole a welding machine was for income I’m sure if it was a white male stealing a welding machine and was later arrested and he stated why you wouldn’t be saying the same thing, and to build on to the whole “it’s not a charity or totally free” well guess what they are working hard and paying taxes as well just like you and for the record more white Americans are the ones calling ambulance and taking up spaces at hospitals for dumb things for example drugs every person I seen that consumes these drugs are Americans and for you to sit here and say that if an American was put in jail and left their kid behind well guess what they are being put in jail where their families can visit while immigrants are moved across the country or worse in detention centers they won’t be able to see or even speak to their families Americans would probably have more leniency while on the other hand an immigrant would be treated horribly
Karin, I hope someday, when your anger subsides, you think about what this kind of stuff does to a community. There are always better ways to deal with illegal immigration than to break into homes at gun point, especially where there are children.
All are presumed innocent until proven guilty. It seems that in all of these cases we do not have all the information to make any judgment. I believe a judicial warrant is needed to enter any home without permission unless there are exigent circumstances . Teenagers sleeping do not seem to meet this standard.
We got a whole lot more in this city that need to get out of here. It’s too expensive to live and all the immigrants are creating too much demand. It was fine when things were cheaper but now things are getting real and they gotta go. We need the space. If they’re so hard working they can go work hard to make things better in their own country instead of making it hard on us here. We don’t want them here anymore.
You act like trump is making the prices to living in New Bedford better, you act as if Americans aren’t also the reason prices are going up who voted for a president that doesn’t care about America. And yes they’ve already tried to work hard in their country but it’s hard living over there instead of kicking innocent people who want a better life for their children, out of a land that you guys don’t even own mind you. You guys should worry about the president you guys selected
This is terrible! Where are the Church people? Where are the citizens who care about democracy? We need to stand up against the lies from the White House that say ICE is only going after violent criminals! It sure looks like they are going after children, after working people, terrorizing families. I am ashamed of my country! I am ashamed that my tax dollars pay for armed thugs tearing down doors of people who are just trying to survive. This does not make me or my family safe. It threatens all of us with the loss of constitutional rights. This is going to “trickle up.”
this article is very useful, thank you for making a good article