Federal Immigration Sweep in Hampton Bays, Westhampton Beach Sparks Protests

Residents and local officials have issued sweeping condemnations of federal immigration policy this week in the wake of a November 5 sweep by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that resulted in the arrest of 12 people whom the federal agency claims were in the United States illegally.

Dozens of protesters lined Montauk Highway in Hampton Bays on Friday morning, November 7, decrying the arrests, carrying signs saying things like “Community Not Cruelty” and “Stop ICE,” and calling for an end to the immigration sweeps. Another protest is planned for this coming Friday, November 14, in Westhampton, and a large protest was being planned for the November 12 meeting of the Southampton Town Board.

The sweeps are unwarranted and unwanted in the South Fork communities, those critical of the federal operations say.

“We live here and we do not approve,” said Anita Boyer, who helped organize Friday’s protest.

“These are our friends and neighbors and our colleagues who are being affected by the ICE raids in our community in Hampton Bays and in Westhampton,” Suffolk County Legislator Ann Welker said at the protest. “This cannot go on.”

State Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni said that the methods the ICE agents have used and the secrecy cloaking many aspects of the operations are very concerning constitutional issues.

“The basic process of policing in this country, when law enforcement comes into a situation they are identified by a nameplate, a badge number [and] if someone is detained … they are generally told why,” he said. “Our police officers are well trained and very professional, and when something happens, later that day we know who was detained and why they were detained.

“To have groups of people not identifying themselves in any way, taking people off the streets, without reason, without cause, without due process — it’s troubling,” he added. “We don’t know where this is going to stop. They can seemingly do anything, and that scares the hell out of me — and it is wrong.”

Though the immigration enforcement push has yet to see a major foray into East Hampton Town, the Town Board issued a joint statement this week, condemning the federal action and the collateral damage it was causing even far from Hampton Bays.

“For our neighbors and friends to be taken without explanation, leaving families unsure where their loved ones were or why, creates deep fear and uncertainty in our community. No family should have to live in fear — afraid to go to work, take their children to school, see a doctor, or gather in community to worship,” the Town Board’s statement said. “This is not what justice in America should look like.”

“Here in East Hampton, we stand with our immigrant neighbors. We are a town built on care, connection and compassion. The people who live and work here, no matter where they were born, are part of the fabric of this community. When even one family feels unsafe, we all lose something. To our immigrant neighbors: We see you, we value you, and we stand with you. You are not alone.”

The November 5 operation marked the largest federal immigration sweep on the South Fork since the start of President Donald Trump’s second administration.

Approximately two dozen federal officers arrived in a caravan of what appeared to be their personal cars and mustered at the Hampton Bays Fire Department on Montauk Highway at dawn that morning, from where they set out in a fleet of unmarked minivans, SUVs and two large white vans that witnesses to some of the apprehensions said were used to hold and transport those who were detained.

Immigrant rights activists said that at least eight people were arrested in Hampton Bays shortly after the officers fanned out from the firehouse. Arrests were made at the Hampton Bays 7-Eleven, outside the Dunkin’ Donuts and at a Latino-owned bakery on Montauk Highway.

The federal agents then quickly moved on to Westhampton, where they stopped at the property adjacent to the 7-Eleven on Mill Road where Latino laborers frequently gather.

Witnesses said one of the federal agents’ vehicles tried to stop a vehicle driven by a Latino man from leaving the area and the two collided, leaving the minivan the agents were driving disabled. The minivan was hauled away on a flatbed later in the day, and the 18-year-old driver of the other vehicle, who is a U.S. citizen, was charged by Southampton Town Police with leaving the scene of an accident.

Minerva Perez, the president of the Latino advocacy group OLA of Eastern Long Island, said that the group’s “rapid response team” was hawking the agents’ movements, documenting the arrest operations and treatment of those arrested and offering support for relatives or friends of those arrested.

“Our communities are not safe right now — this is damage being done to our communities,” Perez said. “We’ve got all these people out here to serve our wealthy community and now we have put them in harm’s way. So what are people doing who are comfortable at this moment, what are they doing to help them right now, what are we all doing right now? Where are the people standing up right now?”

Each of the raids on Wednesday morning did quickly draw an audience of angry residents — some who just happened upon the agents, others who were drawn there by calls or alerts on apps set up to track where immigration agents are — who took videos and pictures of the officers, the arrests and the aftermath. Many directed harsh — often obscenity laced — invectives toward the officers.

“What are they doing here? We don’t want them here. Get the f--- out,” one woman said, just loudly enough for the nearby federal officers to hear, while watching a group of four officers who remained behind at the Westhampton 7-Eleven following the collision between the two vehicles.

“This is disgusting. It’s so pathetic,” said another woman.

One eyewitness said she had recognized one of the officers as a man who was an instructor at a BOCES security and law enforcement program she attends in Riverhead. When she called out her teacher’s name, she said, he pulled a mask up over his face and turned away.

A group of officers approached by a reporter declined to discuss how many officers had come to the region and would not divulge how many people had been detained or whether the detention operation had targeted specific individuals or been just random sweeps of places known to attract Latinos.

A video taken by a witness to one of the arrests at the 7-Eleven in Westhampton captures the bystanders asking the man in handcuffs his name. He responds that his name is Augustin Velasquez as he is pushed into the white cargo van.

A video of another man handcuffed and lying on the ground on a roadside, wedged against the wheel of a black vehicle circulated widely among those tracking the operation on Wednesday morning. It had more than 76,000 views on Facebook less than an hour after it was taken. Many people claimed that the officers had “run over” the man in attempting to stop him, but none of those spoken to by a reporter actually witnessed the incident and the man does not appear injured in the video.

A spokesperson for ICE said that 12 “known criminal aliens” were arrested on November 5 in Hampton Bays and Westhampton by officers from the agency’s Long Island detachment. The statement from the agency said that some of those arrested had previous criminal charges against them and that all 12 had been determined to have entered and remained in the county illegally.

The agency identified only four of the 12 people detained — and listed previous criminal charges against each but did not give details of the charges or when and where the charges had been filed.

The agency said its officers had arrested Victor Martinez-Aparicio, a native of Mexico who had been convicted of endangering the welfare of a child; Alberto Gil-Garcia, also a native of Mexico, who had been previously deported in 2002 and has been charged in the U.S. with unspecified charges of assault and harassment; and Victor Hernandez Manual-Sosa, also Mexican, who has been charged with DWI and multiple counts of larceny.

Also among those who ICE identified as having been detained was Sergio Gonzalez — the man whose arrest inside a Hampton Bays bakery was caught on security camera footage and videos taken by witnesses and has been widely circulated on social media.

The agency’s statement said Gonzalez had been previously deported from the United States in 2010 and had reentered illegally and that while in the United States he has been arrested for DWI and robbery, though it did not offer any details about the circumstances of those charges.

Marit Molin, founder of the Hamptons Community Outreach, a citizens group that works with poor families around the region to help with food insecurity, home repairs and youth enrichment programs, said that the group was familiar with Gonzalez’s family: His mother lives in Hampton Bays and his daughter is a sophomore in college in New York.

“He is going to be deported. It’s a very sad moment for them,” she said, lamenting that the immigration sweeps have ensnared people who are constructive members of the community not a threat to it. “These are not dangerous criminals. Some may have some criminal history, but to me it is not enough to warrant sending agents out here to find them. Certainly there are people with more serious criminal histories that they should be going after rather than people like this.”

The condemnations of the federal posture toward immigration have been far from universal. The Facebook post of The Press’s first reporting of the sweeps on the morning of November 5 received hundreds of comments supporting the ICE raids and detentions and championing the pursuit of widespread deportations.

Friday’s protest was held across the street from the Hampton Bays Fire Department, and one protester’s sign read: “Fire and ICE Don’t Mix” — a reference to the fact that the approximately two dozen federal officers who conducted the sweeps on Wednesday had gathered in the firehouse parking lot and left their personal vehicles there for several hours while they conducted the operation.

People angered by the raids have criticized the fire department for “allowing” their property to be used.

But Rick Durand, chairman of the Hampton Bays Fire District board of commissioners, said the district had received no notice and does not have the authority to bar the federal officers from using their property.

“The issue of ICE being on our property was not our doing — they’re a federal agency, they can go where they want to,” Durand said on Friday morning. “We had no notification at all.”

Southampton Town Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara on Monday pleaded with those not happy about the federal actions to not direct their ire at local fire and police departments who have played no role other than as uninvolved bystanders. Doing so will only serve to potentially discourage immigrant members of the community from calling for help in an emergency, she said.

“I think it is wrong for residents and elected officials alike to protest the fire department — they had nothing to do with it,” McNamara said. She said she felt that the protest at the fire department created misimpressions about the role of local uniforms and implored advocates and representatives of the immigrant community to reassure their circle that the local emergency responders are not the enemy.

Southampton Town Police Chief James Kiernan said the town had not been alerted to last week’s federal operation prior to the agents’ arrival on Wednesday morning and Town Police officers did not participate in any way — though a town officer did respond to the scene of the collision in Westhampton to conduct an accident investigation, he said.

“Our local departments are here to help you,” McNamara said. “They are not calling ICE on you, they are not going to deport you for calling the police. Our fire and police departments are here to help you; they are not part of this.

“ICE was here last week, they may be back tomorrow, they might not come back for two months or they may never come back, we don’t know. But our law enforcement is here every day, and they are here to serve the community. That is the message we need to get to people.”