ICE raids net 2 in Tottenville, Grant City; advocates question tactics

Updated Feb 24, 8:22 AM; Posted Feb 24, 6:00 AM

FILE - In this Oct. 22, 2018, file photo, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detain a person during a raid in Richmond, Va. (Associated Press/Steve Helber)


STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – A father-to-be from Grant City was getting ready to hug his daughter for the first time, but that dream was shattered when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took him into custody at the end of January, his family says.

His arrest came in one of two recent raids in the South and East shores that have immigrant activists questioning the agency’s tactics after relatives of the detained allege the officers were vague about which law-enforcement branch they represented.


The raids occurred on back-to-back days, and both men were supposed to appear in court for driving-under-the-influence arrests, but had not yet been convicted of any crime.

“They violated their due process,” said Yesenia Mata, an immigrant activist and the executive director of La Colmena, a job community center in Port Richmond.


GRANT CITY ARREST

Three officers knocked on the door of Michel Avendano Palacios’s Grant City home at about 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 28, initially identifying themselves only as police and telling his mother they were conducting an investigation, without being specific, according to his family.

The officers did not present badges or a warrant signed by a judge; they only wore vests that said “police,” his mother, Maria, said.


At that point, Palacios’ wife, who was nine-months pregnant, asked if they had an order signed by a judge to enter their house and refused to open the door. The three men left -- or so Palacios thought.


At around 10:30 a.m., Palacios, his father and his wife exited the house and went to the deli around the corner on their way to work. At that point the officers came back.


“They grabbed him inside the deli,” said Palacios’ brother, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Palacio is still detained at Bergen County Jail in New Jersey.


A week later, his daughter would be born.

Palacios, 33, was not there.


“On his first day there, his blood pressure went up and he had a fever,” Maria said. “He is very anxious. He wants to know his baby. He is very hurt and very sad.”


Palacios’ brother said about three weeks later that the situation remains complicated, especially for the 34-year-old wife.


“The baby was born with a heart complication and dealing with both this and [what happened to her husband] is becoming too much for her,” he said.


Palacios came to the United States from Mexico in 2004 and is undocumented, the family said.


He was arrested on a driving under the influence charge in September 2019, according to the NYPD.


Palacios was supposed to appear in court for that case in March.


ARREST IN TOTTENVILLE DAY LATER


The next day ICE was back on Staten Island.


At around 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, four people showed up at Eved Sanchez’s home in Tottenville, said his wife Edith, who wished to only be identified by her first name.


“Someone came to knock on the door very hard,” Edith said. “I got scared. We didn’t know what was happening.”

Three men and a woman were behind the door, all in plainclothes, with three of them wearing a vest that only said “police,” according to the wife.


One of the men identified himself as police, adding that he was “in the middle on an investigation” and that he was looking for a man, Edith said.


“Right away they asked me ‘open the door we want to check inside of your house,’” she said.


But Edith refused and asked to see a warrant.


The man said he didn’t have any paper, but said he had a picture of a man named Luis who he was looking for, and showed her the photo through the window, Edith said.


She said she did not recognize the man and they left.


About 40 minutes after the encounter, Sanchez got ready to go to work, but his wife had a bad feeling.


“I did ask my husband not to go to work and stay home and wait,” Edith said.


Edith, 29, and her husband got in the car and immediately noticed an unmarked vehicle was following them. She said the officers stopped them and asked the couple to get out of the car.


Once again, the officers did not provide any paperwork or badge, Edith said, so she and her husband sat in the car and one of the officers showed them a picture of Sanchez and the date of his DUI arrest.

Sanchez was arrested in August of 2019, police records show. He was supposed to appear in court for the pending case in March.


After Edith asked multiple times for a warrant, a woman showed her a plain piece of paper with a paragraph written on it, but she wouldn’t hand it to Edith and ordered one of her colleagues to open the door and take Sanchez, the wife said.


At that point, Edith, who said she was seven months into a high-risk pregnancy, started to have cramps in her stomach.


“I started to get nervous and started shaking,” she said.


Edith said these three weeks have been “emotionally, mentally and physically” tiring and she still has dreams of the sound of a knock on her door which wake her up in fear.


“He hasn’t done anything wrong to this country,” Edith said of her husband. “Every immigrant comes to this country to work and to get a better life for them and their families in Mexico and just for a little mistake or maybe for some other person’s mistakes we all pay for that. We don’t deserve to be treated this way.”


‘DECEPTIVE TACTICS?’

“ICE is using deceptive tactics to enter homes and that is one of the things we are afraid of because if ICE comes to someone’s home and then says ‘I am a police officer’ and they are not showing anything and all you see is just a pistol, obviously you are going to be afraid,” Mata, the activist, said.

“What do you do when someone is taking someone you love? You are going to try to protect that person.”


Mata said the way ICE conducted the arrests will eventually drive the community away from trusting the Police Department.


“At times we will talk to the police and now in this situation how are we going to cooperate with the police?” Palacios’ brother said.


An ICE source confirmed to the Advance that both Palacios and Sanchez are in ICE custody.


According to the source, the officers identified themselves as ICE officers in both cases.


“Reports like this raise concerns about how ICE actions endanger public safety by creating confusion among community members as they carry out their mass deportation agenda," said Bitta Mostofi, the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office Immigrant Affairs, in a statement to the Advance.We want all New Yorkers to know you have rights in an encounter with federal immigration enforcement. You do not have to speak to ICE. You do not have to consent to their entry into your home. You do not have to agree to meet anyone later.”


Arrests like Palacios and Sanchez’s were not a priority under President Barack Obama, but things changed under President Donald Trump’s administration, activists say. The most updated data shows that 64% of the people detained have no criminal record.
In another attempt to tackle immigration, Trump recently decided to deploy agents with the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, who usually deal with potentially dangerous situations at the southern border, to sanctuary cities such as New York.

“Sending SWAT teams trained for rural border areas into our densely-populated streets is a formula for disaster that won’t make our city any safer,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “But this stunt isn’t about keeping people safe, it’s Trump’s desperate attempt to get re-elected.”


https://www.silive.com/news/2020/02/ice-raids-net-2-in-tottenville-grant-city-advocates-question-tactics.html