The Village Mobilizes Against ICE

By Ed Yutkowitz

In towns and cities across the country, concerned citizens have taken action to protect undocumented aliens ─ and indeed all residents ─ against rampaging Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Here in the West Village, Village Independent Democrats (VID) is helping neighborhood residents to fight back against unwanted and unwarranted ICE visits. The club aims to educate business owners and managers on their rights ─ and those of their employees ─ and provide them with the information they need should ICE try to enter their premises.

Leading that effort is David Siffert, a former VID president and a candidate to succeed Deborah Glick as representative of New York State’s 66th Assembly District. Siffert has worked for months to coordinate the efforts of VID volunteers. “We go door-to-door to local businesses to help prepare them for ICE raids,” he says. “We do ‘know-your-rights’ training for business owners and managers and give out information for their employees.”

Siffert and his volunteers coordinate their routes and strive to meet with about 15 businesses a day. “The response from businesses has been incredibly positive,” Siffert notes. “Almost every business is excited to hear from us. New Yorkers want to protect each other.”

Siffert points out that ICE has been known to show bogus warrants to obtain access to non-public areas of businesses and accost employees. In fact, they must have judicial warrants signed by a judge (not fake “administrative warrants” on DHS letterhead) that specify the date, time, and areas they are allowed to enter.

The same rules apply for residential buildings. Co-ops and other private residences can actually craft policies to deny ICE permission to enter without a warrant and make sure that staff knows how to recognize a legitimate warrant. Siffert is available to educate building management and personnel. “I am happy to come by to train staff and residents so they know what to do if ICE shows up,” he says.

The VID volunteers provide businesses with written instructions, in both English and Spanish, on how to recognize and respond to legitimate warrants. Created by the Manhattan branch of Indivisible, the national organization dedicated to strengthening democracy in America, the material includes lists of rights and resources for business owners, managers, and employees. Hands Off, a coalition of groups dedicated to deterring ICE incursions in New York City, distributes the material to individual canvassing efforts.

Siffert’s efforts on behalf of immigrants are not new. He explains, “I’ve been doing work defending immigrants for many years ─ from helping Haitians get TPS status back in 2008 to going down to the Texas border in 2018 to help free detained migrant families. I’ve been a member of the New York Immigration Coalition Immigrant Leaders Council and have worked with the NYCLU, Bronx Defenders, and other organizations to try to make New York a sanctuary state. I’m not new to this fight, and I hope that voters and immigrant New Yorkers see that this is a long-term commitment for me.”

Progressives have warned about ICE abuses for years. But the agency has been newly empowered in Donald Trump’s second term. Many of its agents are poorly trained and lack the fundamental skills, common decency, and professional discipline to be effective in front-line law enforcement jobs. The agency’s leadership, under the recently fired Kristi Noem, has been a national embarrassment. Its agents have virtually, if not literally, been given a license to arrest, deport, and even kill innocent people, including American citizens and legal residents.

ICE raids seem deliberately designed to evoke terror. They make mass arrests ─ brutalizing men, women, and children, handcuffing them, offering no explanation, and jailing them, and sometimes deporting them, without hearings, attorneys, or the due process guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States. Anyone can be caught up in their sweeps. Deportees have been sent to countries known for the brutal conditions of their jails. Some have been sent places where they don’t even speak the language.

The courts have ruled against ICE countless times. But the administration seems unconcerned with the rule of law and continues to ignore judicial orders. Essentially, the agency has acted as a political police force for the Trump administration. It’s no wonder that so many commentators have compared it to the “Brownshirts,” the paramilitary force of the rising Nazi party in Germany in the 1930s.

For Siffert and his volunteers, resistance to ICE is a matter of conscience and commitment to the community and the country. “My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. When the secret police start rounding up my neighbors, it’s hard for me to ignore it,” he says.

The Village canvassing effort is but one of many taking place in the New York City metropolitan region and across America. In fact, it’s just a part of national movement to fight back in the courts and in the streets against the police state tactics of the federal government. As Siffert puts it, “Our efforts to organize and resist are one way we prevent the growth of fascism in America.”

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To learn how to join the fight to protect immigrant rights and resist the Trump administration’s authoritarian agenda, concerned citizens can visit the VID website at villagedemocrats.org.