New York’s opposition to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) solely continued to develop final weekend, as hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Manhattan for a nationwide strike.
“What we’ve got witnessed taking place throughout communities, throughout America, beneath this administration — the Trump administration — is actually an atrocity,” stated Congressmember Yvette Clarke, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, at a state of the district occasion in Flatbush, Brooklyn on January 29. “It’s a crime in each sense of the phrase. Day after day, our neighbors have been pressured to view a neverending stream of kidnapping, torture, and certainly, even homicide.”
Many protesters within the streets on January 30 have been offended over what’s being referred to as the “state-sanctioned” shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota. Their deaths are added to others who’ve misplaced their lives by the hands of ICE brokers previously yr, together with Keith Porter in California and Silvero Villegas Gonzalez in Illinois.
On January 29, the U.S. Senate voted to dam an appropriations invoice that will give ICE roughly $10 billion in funding, however handed a number of spending payments later, sending them to the Home. Clarke had stated her colleagues within the Home are additionally decided to carry the road on ICE funding, however referred to as it a “battle.” The block had led to a partial authorities shutdown, however the Home voted on February 3 to move the invoice, which President Trump signed.
The arrests of a number of Black unbiased journalists, together with Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, by federal brokers have intensified the nationwide outcry in opposition to the current immigration enforcement measures. The journalists have been detained supposedly in reference to a protest they have been protecting at a St. Paul church on January 18. Each have been launched, however their arrests marked the Trump administration’s “escalating effort and actions to criminalize and threaten press freedom beneath the guise of regulation enforcement,” stated the Nationwide Affiliation of Black Journalists (NABJ) in an open letter it launched January 30.
On the state stage, members of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, & Asian (BPHA) Legislative Caucus rallied in Albany for immigration protections and anti-ICE payments. Many legislators have taken a multifaceted strategy, introducing items of state laws in tandem that work to sort out points which can be affecting immigrant communities. These efforts embrace payments that unmask ICE and regulation enforcement officers on responsibility or make it simpler to defend constitutionally protected civil rights violated by ICE in courtroom.
Assemblymember Brian Cunningham sponsors Meeting Invoice A9589, which bars federal immigration officers from coming into hospitals or finishing up arrests on folks receiving care, employed, or in any other case current at a hospital all through the state. Cunningham, who’s of Jamaican background, stated that his workplace usually works with Caribbean immigrants within the district.
“No query I signify two of the biggest hospitals in Brooklyn, Downstate and Kings County. Each are security web hospitals. Each are hospitals that quite a lot of immigrant communities come to due to lack of healthcare or simply accessibility,” stated Cunningham. “As immigrants are coming to hospitals, they shouldn’t really feel threatened.”
Cunningham stated that states have the power and accountability to reply quickly of their jurisdictions when the federal authorities doesn’t act.
“Whether or not it’s the tens of millions of {dollars} in capital, and expense cash to nonprofits in that space, or restoring funding for primary companies, or whether or not it’s a capital funding on this district, I feel all these issues inform a singular story of what’s taking place in Albany,” stated Cunningham. “Generally the distraction, the media by way of TV, is quite a lot of the federal authorities — the drama and theatrics that occur in Washington — however their municipalities and state-level officers, not simply right here in New York, however throughout the nation, who’re actually standing up presently once we want the federal government to face up. We’re not seeing that form of resistance and pushback on the federal stage, however we’re seeing that state by state.”
Domestically, organizations and nonprofits are centered on rising grassroots resistance campaigns, walkouts, mass demonstrations, sit-ins, and civilian fast response groups in actual time to guard perceived immigrants focused by federal officers.
The Palms Off NYC coalition stated they noticed a big soar within the variety of first-timers becoming a member of their Know Your Rights coaching this previous weekend. Their classes emphasised tips on how to fight authoritarianism, adapt to always altering immigration legal guidelines, know their basic rights, and what to do as a bystander or witness in encounters with officers. Their coaching additionally contains tips on how to establish not simply ICE brokers, however different federal businesses cooperating with them, reminiscent of Division of Homeland Safety (DHS), Customs and Border Safety (CBP), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP); or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
“It’s unacceptable that ICE continues to homicide folks,” stated Metropolis Council Speaker Julie Menin at a Palms Off coaching on the New York Society for Moral Tradition on Saturday, Jan. 31.
Numerous the outrage and shock has pushed many New Yorkers to be on excessive alert for appearances of ICE all through the 5 boroughs, always posting to social media about warnings and confrontations with assumed brokers.
In the meantime, New York Metropolis’s council members are making some headway with anti-ICE laws. They just lately voted to re-enact the Safer Sanctuary Act (Int. 1412), which might bar federal immigration authorities from sustaining places of work in jails or wherever the Division of Correction (DOC) has jurisdiction. This was one of many payments vetoed by former Mayor Eric Adams on December 31, 2025, simply earlier than he left workplace.
