A friend of mine in Europe recently remarked that many people survived the Holocaust because someone took action to protect them.
The histories are not interchangeable. The obligation to save one another is.
New York, we are here.
On Thursday afternoon, an ICE officer shot Oscar Belgal in the neck in Marble Hill while his 5-year-old son was in his car. Belgal survived. The child was not physically injured. Two heartbreaking realizations I’ve had in recent months came to a head with this incident.
First: Following the rules does not guarantee protection. Immigrants are being hunted and punished simply because they are immigrants, usually brown and Black.
I still hear incredulity when people are detained, deported, monitored or shackled via their ankles, despite having shown up for court when they were supposed to, applied for lawful status or done what the government asked of them.
The disbelief reveals something about us. Many immigrants and children of immigrants, and even the broader public, cling to a narrative of the United States in which hard work, compliance and patience deliver safety and prosperity. We want to believe there is a “right way” to belong—and that doing things right will keep us safe. That is absolutely not true.
Most ICE detainees as of July 11 — 46,436 out of 65,765, or 70.6% — have no criminal conviction, according to data from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research organization at Syracuse University. It’s also worth noting that the Trump administration characterizes the very act of crossing the border itself as an “illegal” action. However, seeking asylum in the U.S. was perfectly legal until former President Biden sharply restricted most claims in June 2024 — not coincidentally as election season got underway.
The cruelty, the fear, the vastness and opacity of the deportation net are not accidental. They are the point. The wails you hear from immigrants when they are taken by ICE are equal parts terror and defeat that doing the right thing did not matter.
Second: America is inflicting trauma on a generation of children — American children
The 5-year-old in the car on Thursday. The children whose parents contemplate leaving to avoid separation. Impossible calculations, like missing vaccines at government-run clinics to avoid sharing personal info, or skipping school because families no longer feel safe at dropoff.
As a child of immigrants, I can tell you what school represents: our safe haven, our gateway to America, lessons in math and pop culture, the place where our parents’ dreams also are realized. When children carry fear into the classroom, or bypass going to school altogether because they and their families are afraid, we are allowing trauma to define an entire generation. As a country, we lose something fundamental. Belief. Possibility. Advancement.
So let’s talk about what New Yorkers can and ought to DO before it’s too late. I base the following tips on decades of reporting on immigration, data and websites from civic organizations, and at least a half-dozen interviews and conversations with elected officials, volunteers and experts. Some requested anonymity for safety.
Educate yourself
People still do not know the level of deportations occurring in New York City because they unfold stealthily and under the radar, compared to other parts of the country. However, they add up.
For months, Epicenter and many other media outlets across the city have chronicled the less visible nature of immigration enforcement all around us. Last December, we wrote: “Small-scale ICE operations are happening at a faster clip than the dramatic, highly publicized raids that dominate national news. These are more surgical actions, often taking place in New York’s boroughs, where agents can maneuver more easily…” An October analysis of federal records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, reported by Gothamist, found that there have been more than 19,500 ICE arrests in New York State and nearly 18,000 in New Jersey since the start of President Trump’s second term. Most involved Latin American men without criminal histories.
Learn before you act. Hands Off NYC and the New York Civil Liberties Union are offering a free virtual Know Your Rights and ICE Response training on Oct. 20, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. It covers constitutional rights, encounters with immigration agents and ways to support your community.
Build protection networks around your neighbors
I can think of few groups whose labor we rely on more than immigrants. They make up the New York we love: its arts, its streets, its food, its care, its comforts. Being part of a community means seeing neighbors as truly neighbors—not divided between people who deliver, clean, cook or care and the rest.
Start with the circles you already belong to: your building, school or block. Make offers specific. Can you be the person a parent calls if they cannot pick up their child? Can you deliver groceries every Thursday? Help a family identify whom to contact in an emergency? Can you help as an interpreter? Work out the details privately, with their permission, before a crisis. Being part of someone’s plan means knowing what you have agreed to do — and following through.
Not everybody needs to start an organization. Ask an existing one what help it needs:
- Make the Road New York
- Hands Off NYC
- New York Immigration Coalition
- A local Indivisible chapter
One volunteer suggests distributing know-your-rights information to businesses and organizing tables near schools, with the school community’s coordination. Ask parents and staff what time and location work best. Discretion is great; the aim is to get useful information into people’s hands, not photograph their — or your — participation.
You do not have to write the materials yourself. The Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs offers multilingual resources. The Asian American Federation also has guides in several languages. Make the Road New York also maintains know-your-rights resources and a deportation-defense manual in English and Spanish.
Help a neighborhood group download, print and distribute them in the languages your neighbors use. Share reliable resources, not rumors, and make sure people know where to turn for legal help.
During Covid, I said that volunteerism and centering the most vulnerable were not simply about giving back. They were about making up for what we took. If we could pause back then at 7 p.m. everyday to make some noise for essential workers, surely we can get even louder when they face deportation? Get your whistles out — but as my Irish and Jewish friends advised this weekend, bang on pots, pans, garbage can lids too.
New York has the seeds of a network of refuge and care. We’ll need to get off the internet for this to work. Many efforts organize privately on Signal, WhatsApp and in person for safety. Ask established organizations or local elected officials’ staff to connect you with neighborhood efforts or groups.
Respect the privacy and choices of the people asking for help. Do not post vulnerable people’s locations or invent legal advice. For neighborhood observation and reporting of enforcement activity, begin with training and established networks — not reckless confrontation or a rumor mill.
If you see ICE, you can call or text the hotline 229-304-8720.
Again: People survive persecution not only through their own strength, but because others decide their lives are worth protecting.
Ask who is enabling these detentions
The Thursday shooting has also raised questions about whether a Target parking facility was being used as a staging ground by immigration enforcement officers. Target says it is not working with ICE. In western Queens, local officials and advocates allege TD Bank and the Bulova Corporate Center have been used as ICE staging facilities.
New Yorkers can demand answers from property owners and businesses about how their spaces are being used. Is there an agreement? Was permission granted? What can the owner lawfully do to prevent its property from becoming infrastructure for an enforcement operation?
Verify first. Then organize lawful, public pressure around what you can establish. The places where we shop and work owe communities transparency.
Watch the NYPD’s words — and demand protection
As the cameras rolled Thursday night and protesters swelled, local and state officials held a press conference at the site of where an ICE agent shot Belgal. There, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch disclosed Belgal’s grand larceny conviction and probation sentence, as well as a pending drug-sale charge.
I question her framing and its inclusion in the press conference — and whether a person’s humanity must rest on a spotless record. A criminal past does not answer whether an officer’s use of force was justified. A pending charge is not a conviction. Neither should become a substitute for investigating what happened, nor justification for cruelty and dehumanization.
When officials mention an immigrant’s criminal record, they risk steering the public toward a judgment about whether he deserved protection rather than whether ICE agents (reminder: dressed in construction vests and carrying rifles without an identifying agency) acted lawfully. Again, the belief that some immigrants are more worthy than others or came in the “right way” is a fallacy.
Our statements and ensuing media statements should not simply adopt that framing.
We also need specific answers about what counts as cooperation with ICE. Are NYPD officers directing traffic, clearing a path or otherwise helping an immigration operation proceed? If an ICE agent and a protester tussle, who does the NYPD side with? What policy governs those actions, and who reviews whether officers followed it? Ask elected officials to seek answers about specific incidents. An assurance that New York is a sanctuary city does not explain what police did on a particular block — or who they protected.
Demand better from City Hall
Mayor Zohran Mamdani was propelled into office by communities like, well, us.
Now it’s on him to ensure local institutions, such as the NYPD but also commercial parking lots or landlords or the local courts, do not become extensions of a federal deportation machine. After months of “bromance” coverage, the mayor’s relationship with Trump can no longer be measured by development deals and jokes about bidets at Gracie Mansion, but only by whom it protects. Mamdani points to helping secure the release of a Columbia-enrolled Azerbaijani national from detention. That matters. But one person’s freedom is not a protection strategy. Tens of thousands have been taken; two hours of negotiations over Belgal’s release on Thursday were not fruitful. This relationship is not serving New Yorkers.
The city’s communication needs to shift to be utilitarian and life-saving. (Hence, my conversion of this column from one of pain and outrage to a listicle of things you can do.) Think: What are schools telling families? What support is available when a parent is detained? Who is coordinating legal assistance? What should a neighbor do when they witness an operation? What mental health resources exist for children? (Epicenter published this guide: How to talk to kids stressed about ICE) How will the city communicate verified information quickly, in the languages people actually speak?
Further, I want to say something very plainly and explicitly: Latino New Yorkers must be central to this response for they are bearing the brunt of this crackdown.
One investigation found that ICE’s street-arrest campaign in New York and New Jersey disproportionately targets people from Latin America. Their experiences must be central to the city’s response. Of course, other ethnicities are affected by enforcement. The Deportation Data Project also recorded that federal immigration arrests in the New York City area increased 1,044% for Chinese and 1,000% for Bangladeshi immigrants last year.
Still, when the mayor offers a press conference on immigration and no Latino community leaders speak, that feels like a choice. The question is not who already has access to City Hall or has been consulted: It is whose experiences are missing and how to reassure communities that they are seen, heard and represented. Latinos need a meaningful, public-facing role in shaping City Hall’s response.
This is an economic crisis, too. Support immigrant businesses
In Jackson Heights where I live, we’re seeing the impact of mass deportation. The streets are not what they used to be. Even Halloween can become a measure of neighborhood fear: less candy handed out, fewer children at the door. (That was our house last year, hundreds of leftover chocolate bars and gummy-bear packets for the first time in a decade.)
Earlier this year, Documented reported the usual Ramadan bustle around Jackson Heights’ Diversity Plaza had diminished. Storeowners pointed to bitter cold and fear of ICE raids. The consequences of enforcement are not confined to detention: They reach the places where people shop, gather and celebrate. When customers stay home, businesses lose revenue. When workers fear the commute, employers lose staff. When a family loses a breadwinner, the effects travel through landlords, grocery stores, child-care providers and entire blocks.
The city, and all of us, must support immigrant-owned businesses. Ask owners what they need. These communities are economic engines for the entire city. And a reminder that the media, particularly those serving immigrants, are also worthy of your support.
Recognize that we are all part of the “public”
We must reject the notion that some people deserve a shared civic life while others are merely a burden. “Public charge,” however, has come to have a specific immigration-related meaning, now used to determine someone’s status based on how likely they are to use public benefits. That’s ironic given we all send our children to school. We rely on sanitation, hospitals, parks, libraries, roads and public transit. That is what a city is.
New York City and a coalition of local governments are challenging a federal rule that expands how officials can consider income-based public benefits when deciding certain visa and green card applications. The plaintiffs argue that the rule gives immigration officers sweeping discretion and will frighten eligible families away from using assistance they need. At Epicenter, for example, we are asked often about food-pantry services, because mixed-status immigrant families do not want to sign up for SNAP anymore, even if someone in their household is eligible.
That fear can harm the city as well as the individual family: People may forgo food, healthcare or housing assistance to protect their immigration prospects.
Real talk: This is not a Democrat vs. Republican issue. Democrats helped get us here, too. President Clinton’s 1996 welfare reforms excluded many lawful immigrants from public benefits; Obama expanded deportation enforcement; Biden sharply restricted asylum claims. These policies, and the willingness to exclude immigrants rather than protect them, did not begin with Trump.
We, the people, have a responsibility to step up. Besides showing up and speaking out, providing resources like food or legal services is another way. In our household, we sponsor another family’s access to fresh food via Connected Chef, which delivers sliding-scale groceries with “no questions asked.”
You do not have to do every job. You do have to find a job you can do reliably. New York’s future rests on more than your outrage — it requires action.
