While U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ramp up enforcement actions against immigrant communities — over the weekend, masked agents targeted Charlotte, North Carolina, a sanctuary city, detaining more than 130 people — activists with Indivisible Brooklyn, an all-volunteer grassroots group that organizes actions and events to promote justice and hold elected officials accountable, held a candlelight vigil outside U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ Bay Ridge office on Nov. 17 for the “disappeared.”
The event was held in solidarity with thousands of immigrants detained by ICE and CBP. A similar vigil took place simultaneously outside the representative’s Staten Island office, organized by the Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian Church.
Holding signs with images of immigrants currently in or who have died in ICE custody, activists called on the Republican lawmaker to denounce Trump-era immigration policies that detain immigrants without legal representation, violating due process.
In October, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported deporting 527,000 immigrants, claiming 70% of ICE arrests involved immigrants charged with or convicted of a crime.
However, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research and data organization founded in 1989 at Syracuse University, reported that as of Sept. 21, 42,755 (71.5%) of the 59,762 immigrants held in ICE detention had no criminal convictions. Those with records were convicted of minor offenses, including traffic violations. As of August 2025, immigration courts had recorded 505,599 new cases, with only 1.59% based on alleged criminal activity.
According to Human Rights First, the Trump administration carried out 10,672 ICE flights — including removal, removal-related, and domestic transfer, or “shuffle,” flights — through Oct. 31. Often, immigrants had no connection to the countries to which they were deported.
The American Immigration Council reported that as of Sept. 29, 23 people had died in ICE custody, an increase of 400% compared with the previous four years combined. ProPublica found that more than 170 Americans, including nearly 20 children, were detained by masked ICE agents during the first nine months of the second Trump administration.
An educator and Indivisible activist shared stories of students detained by ICE, including Sara Velasquez Gomez, who immigrated to the United States from Colombia with her family in 2022.
Last June, Velasquez Gomez graduated at the top of her class from Port Richmond High School in Staten Island and then worked at a warehouse in New Jersey. In late October, she and several others were detained by ICE and are currently held out of state, according to the Staten Island Advance..
“We tell our students, do the right thing, work hard, get an education, follow the rules, and you’ll succeed. Sarah did all of those things, and what happened to her?” the activist asked.
Reverend Juan Carlos Ruiz, pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, has been organizing a weekly “Vigil for Democracy” outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, where some immigrant detainees are held.
Ruiz told Brooklyn Paper that ICE agents had arrested a Sunset Park resident on Monday morning using a facial recognition app called “Mobile Fortify.”
The app allows an ICE agent to point a smartphone camera at anyone; it compares the person’s face against government databases containing millions of images and grants instant access to their information. The app also allows contactless fingerprint collection. Civil liberties groups, including the ACLU, have raised concerns about potential misuse.
“That’s happening, you know? Another family called me. They cannot find a friend [who has been missing] since Wednesday, and they don’t really know where to look. And that’s the problem, you know,” Ruiz said, noting that many immigrants were retraumatized by masked ICE agents.
“When you have masked people taking away [people], it triggers a lot of the trauma that people are fleeing from. It’s a complex phenomenon that we have in our hands here, very dehumanizing. The intention is to inflict or inject terror into our community, which is what it’s doing,” he said.
Indivisible organizer Lee Crawford said organizations are preparing for an “escalated” federal presence in New York City and encouraged attendees to join a “Hands Off NYC” training session.
Similar to training and organizing during the Civil Rights Era in the South, the sessions provide skills training including Know Your Rights, ICE Watch, and organizing and mobilization strategies.
“There are city-wide trainings in every borough coming up, so that we can protect one another and our communities,” Crawford said.
Carol Smolenski called herself a “stalwart” attendee of “Malliotakis Monday,” a bi-weekly protest outside the rep’s Bay Ridge office.
“I used to work for an international agency, and these are the kinds of stories you hear about happening in other countries, in Guatemala, in the Philippines. The fact that we are now confronting this here, masked men kidnapping people off the street, and my representative says nothing about it, that’s why I’m out here,” she said. “What happened to my country? It’s not supposed to be like this.”
Malliotakis’ office did not respond to a request for comment.
