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Geneva, N.Y. — The caravan was spotted first at the Byrne Dairy: a silver SUV and two black ones. Inside rode a team of at least five armed agents, wearing vests that said “ICE” and “HSI.”
They spent the day knocking on doors throughout the Hispanic neighborhoods in Geneva, a small Finger Lakes city that is home to hundreds of Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants. Many of them are undocumented, but have lived and worked here for years in the wineries, hotels, restaurants and farms.
As the agents knocked, residents texted, called and posted on Facebook: Look for these cars and these men. If you see them, know your rights.
At one point, three agents stood on the porch of a two-family home for nearly 20 minutes, waiting for someone to come out. Marisela Aguilera broadcast it over Facebook Live.
The agents were not hiding. It was the opposite. They wanted people to see.
They spent the day like this, eyewitness accounts, pictures and videos show. They moved slowly through the small city that has its own Mexican grocery store and where the schools offer classes taught in Spanish and English simultaneously.
It was as much parade as raid. A few people were detained, but the message was clear: You could be next.
The same scenario played out in Upstate New York cities and towns with large immigrant populations. Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are showing up in a way they never have before here — knocking on door after door and staking out hospitals, construction sites, a meatpacking plant and social service agencies, according to immigration advocates, families and lawyers who spoke to Syracuse.com.
As the agents moved, so did the reports from a network of advocates who shared information and photos of clearly identified ICE agents in unmarked SUVs from Brockport to Geneva, Rochester to Ithaca.
This crackdown on migrant families has largely happened outside of the public eye. And unlike the work of traditional law enforcement agencies, actions by ICE and Homeland Security agents leave no public paperwork. There is no way to know exactly how many people were taken in this new campaign Upstate.
“What’s different? Everything is different,” said Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program.
ICE Agents in Geneva NY begin immigration crackdown
The ripples go far beyond the people who have been detained by ICE agents, she said. People who came to the U.S. to work have stopped leaving their homes, said Dudley, other advocates and families. They are keeping their kids home from school. In Geneva, business at the Mexican grocery store fell off by 90% because everyone was afraid to go outside, according to the store’s post on social media. The store, Hernandez Grocery, began offering delivery.
The result: Some people are deciding to leave before they are forced, Dudley said.
“This was the goal,” she said. “Self-deportation.”
This is the beginning of what Donald Trump promised for months leading up to his election. He’s pledged a mass deportation of people who entered the country illegally. He has painted them as a dangerous group of criminals.
But the majority are families and single people who are working in a shadow economy that has kept farms, landscaping companies, restaurants, cleaning businesses and countless other labor-heavy industries running for decades. And while some have committed heinous crimes, the data show undocumented immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens.
In places like Geneva, the ICE show of force has left families afraid to send their children to school, afraid to go to the grocery store, and afraid that they are next.
Immigration arrests triple in a week
Three days after Trump took office, ICE began posting national daily arrest totals. Nationwide, there were 5,537 immigration arrests through Jan. 29. By Jan. 26, they were averaging about 1,000 a day, according to data posted by ICE on X. Those numbers are about three times the reported daily average for previous years.
“ICE is definitely arresting more people right now, and making a big show of it,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert from Cornell University Law School.
ICE has said it is now only looking for people who are in the country illegally and have committed crimes. They are low-hanging fruit to help Trump reach his promise of mass deportations; deporting people who have criminal records is easier and takes less time. But because little is filed publicly, it’s unclear if that’s the case.
This will not be the case for long, Yale-Loehr said. It’s been widely reported that the Trump administration has given arrest quotas to ICE offices, and it is threatening officials who don’t make their quotas.
“It is hard to meet quotas by just arresting noncitizens who have criminal convictions. For that reason, I suspect that ICE offices are going to places where they suspect there are a lot of immigrants, whether or not they have criminal convictions,” Yale-Loehr said.
Last week Trump signed a law that allows easier deportation after an arrest, not a conviction. That arrest can be for something as small as shoplifting.
The immigration crackdown is happening in a world that is largely outside of public view. Immigration court and law operates without the same checks and balances required by the federal and local legal systems. Court cases and documents are not filed publicly. People only get attorneys if they can afford to pay for them. Detention centers keep no public list of their inmates. ICE did not respond to syracuse.com’s requests for comment.
Even the warrants for detaining someone are different. ICE agents write their own warrants; no judge is required. But those warrants do not give them the power to go into someone’s house.
‘We are looking for you’
Jorge Velasquez and his family were having their usual Sunday afternoon get-together, drinking coffee and playing with the puppy when there was a knock at the door of the Geneva mobile home.
At least three ICE officers stood on the front step, Jorge’s stepdaughter, Maria Guerra, said in an interview with Syracuse.com.
The family locked the doors and scrambled to hide in a room away from the windows. The blended family is all from Guatemala. They are all undocumented, but have immigration cases in progress and work legally in fields ranging from landscaping to county government.
Still, they were afraid. But Jorge was not. The patriarch of the family has been in the U.S. since 1997. Everyone in Geneva knows “Jorge,” his stepdaughter said.
He went outside to see what the ICE agents wanted. We are here for you, they told him. They said they had a warrant, but no one saw one, the family said.
Jorge was led away in handcuffs and is now at the U.S. Immigration Detention Center in Batavia. His family isn’t sure why he was the one who was taken. Jorge’s family said he had one run-in with the law several years ago. He ended up being convicted of driving while ability impaired.
His lawyer, Jose Perez, said it might just be because he answered the door. Perez, who has offices in Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, has been running his own campaign on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook to inform the undocumented of their rights. His biggest piece of advice: Do not open the door.
Unlike with police, the warrants ICE agents use do not allow them to enter a person’s home. They would need a judicial warrant, which they rarely use, immigration lawyers said. They can be in public places, and ask people questions, such as who they are.
But the protection is gone once the door opens. A person still has the right to refuse to answer questions, and to make sure the officer has a warrant, but the safest way to avoid being picked up is to not open the door, Perez and others said.
Usually, once you’ve been detained, there’s little chance to stop the momentum for deportation. But Jorge has a 22-year-old son, Eric, who is a U.S. citizen. His son is severely disabled, largely unable to communicate and he requires a wheelchair to get around. He has a babysitter while Jorge is working, but Eric relies on Jorge and Jorge is the only one who has the legal ability to make decisions for Eric, his family said.
Jorge is Eric’s only guardian; his mother left him when he was 3, Jorge’s family said.
Jorge’s brother Marco, an Uber driver, said everyone is worried about what will happen to Jorge, but they are even more concerned about Eric. No one else has legal custody of him.
Jorge is one of the few clients who have been detained, Perez said. But ICE has been tightening other controls in ways Perez has not seen before, sending the message to families: you’re going to be deported soon.
Maria Elizabeth Morocho has to sit forward in Perez’s office chair so her feet touch the ground. The ankle monitor above her sneaker is unmistakable. The undocumented mother of two has been in the U.S. about a year. She is from Ecuador. She and her husband have been going to regular check-ins with ICE, they and Perez, their lawyer, said.
But when they went to one last week, the agents asked Morocho why she didn’t bring her daughter. They never brought the kids, who are in school. They were never asked to, she said.
But this time, Morocho said, the agent put an ankle monitor on her because she did not bring her daughter. This is all new, said Perez, who has been an immigration lawyer for more than a decade.
And it’s about ICE flexing its muscle, Perez said.
“I think that they may be in the next appointment they will deport me is next month,” Morocho said. “I’m afraid that they will just take me away.”
She said her children are worried ICE agents will come into the Syracuse school they attend and take them, too.
A knock on the door
Marisela Aguilera lives in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood in Geneva. She is the American-born daughter of Mexican parents.
When the ICE agents knocked on her neighbor’s door in their Geneva duplex last weekend, she felt fear, but also the privilege that comes with being a citizen, she said. She broadcast the video on Facebook and shared it with Syracuse.com.
She stepped onto her porch and asked the ICE agents who they were looking for. An individual? she asks.
“If you’re not going to help us, we’re not going to have this conversation,” an officer wearing a Homeland Security Investigations vest. “Clearly, you’re talking to them, telling them not to open the door, that they have rights.”
We’ll just sit on the house, the officers said to one another. Two went to the neighbor’s yard to watch the back door. The other officers stood on Aguilera’s porch, mostly pretending she was not there.
After more than 10 minutes, the officers went to the street to get into their cars. A woman walking by began asking them questions, telling them that the price of produce was surely going to go up because they were taking away the people who pick it.
The agents listened quietly and nodded. Then one shook her hand and told her they were going to leave, get out of her hair.
“But that doesn’t mean we won’t be back,” he said.
Lauren Long contributed to this story.
Marnie Eisenstadt writes about immigration, people and public affairs in Central New York. Contact her anytime email | cell 315-470-2246.
