'Egregious' ICE raid targeted US citizen and military vet: Newark mayor

24 January 2025

When Donald Trump promised mass deportations on the campaign trail in 2024, some of his critics feared that people who are living in the United States legally could be wrongly deported — including U.S. citizens. Now, during the first week of Trump's second presidency, Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras J. Baraka is alleging that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers wrongly arrested a U.S. citizen who served in the military.

The Daily Beast's Janna Brancolini reports that on Thursday, January 23, "about 10 or 12 ICE agents raided a seafood wholesaler and restaurant" in Newark. Baraka alleges that the agents didn't have a warrant and were in violation of the U.S. Constitution's 4th Amendment, which protects against unlawful search and seizure.

Ocean Food Depot owner Luis Janota told New York City's PIX11 News, "I asked (the agents) what documentation they were looking for, and they said it was a license or a passport. I thought, who walks around with a passport…. One of the guys was a military veteran…. He is Puerto Rican and the manager of our warehouse."

Janota added, "It looked to me like they were specifically going after certain kinds of people — not every kind, because they did not ask me for documentation or my American workers, Portuguese workers, or white workers."

Although Puerto Rico does not have statehood, it is a U.S. territory — and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.

Baraka, in an official statement, attacked the January 23 ICE raid as "egregious" and said, "One of the detainees is a U.S. military veteran who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned. Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized."

Brancolini notes that Trump declared a state of emergency after returning to the White House on January 20.

"On Thursday night," according to Brancolini, "the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security signed a memo giving ICE officials the power to deport about 1.4 million people who were allowed to enter the country temporarily and thought they were in the U.S. legally, the New York Times reported. The move shows Trump isn’t just targeting people who snuck across the border, but who came to the U.S. via official, authorized pathways, according to the Times. "

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