Río Piedras Community Organizes to Help Immigrants Besieged by Trump Order

The day after United States federal agents raided Puerto Rican communities where immigrants have traditionally lived, residents of Río Piedras came out in defense of their immigrant neighbors through house-to-house orientations regarding their civil rights and how they can protect themselves if the authorities come to their door.

“They are brothers and sisters that came here to work,” said Miguel Acevedo Sierra, artisan and community leader, while he walked through the poorly illuminated streets of his neighborhood. 9 Millones accompanied a group of neighbors—including Acevedo Sierra—that handed out flyers.

In total, nearly 40 people scattered throughout the neighborhoods of Río Piedras, placing flyers in mail boxes, fences, and house gates. They handed them directly to people they encountered on the street and placed them under windshield wipers. Volunteers who spoke with 9 Millones said that, in general, people were receptive to their message of solidarity and community support to immigrants.

Acevedo Sierra said that Dominicans in his neighborhood have kept their doors closed due to  fear of being targeted by federal authorities in these immigration raids. The deployment of militarized firearms and equipment undertaken by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Drug Administration Enforcement (DEA), and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), in Puerto Rico, sowed terror in the immigrant community.

The Community Board of the Urban Area of Río Piedras (JCCURP) planned this response after two young people warned that their neighbors were being arrested, via a group chat with representatives of the Río Piedras community. From there, Río Piedras residents started sharing information they had seen on social media. The group organized in-person orientations, believing that it would be more effective, because it could give people “familiar faces to identify where they could get help,” according to Odalys Rivera Vázquez, community representative of one of the communities of the JCCURP.

Edwin Figueroa Collazo—community leader of a neighborhood where ICE arrested eight people that were on their way to work on Sunday morning—criticized the inhumane form in which the United States conducted these detentions. “Their families do not know anything. They are afraid they are being mistreated… that they are not getting food,” he lamented.

Only one of the eight people detained has been able to communicate with their family after being arrested, Figueroa Collazo detailed. He noted that, for many families, the people arrested were the sole income earners. Now, not only are they left without a member of their family, but they will get into financial problems.

Both Rivera Vázquez and Figueroa Collazo fear that the next stop for ICE’s anti-immigrant crusade will be schools. The director of Homeland Security in Puerto Rico, Rebecca González Ramos, has assured that they could raid schools, although she later backtracked. “It is not our mission to go into schools,” she clarified afterwards, and added that they will work with local government to “to avoid carrying out an operation in these locations.” Hours later, the Teachers Federation of Puerto Rico denounced that Bayamon's educational region had begun requesting information on undocumented or immigrant students.

President Donald Trump’s Executive Order revoked former President Joe Biden’s migration policies and ordered agency heads to remove restrictions that prevented ICE from entering schools, hospitals or places of worship.

In the city of Chicago, the public school administration has denied entry to federal authorities if they do not provide a criminal warrant signed by a federal judge. That is to say, an administrative order looking to comply with civil immigration law is not enough; there has to be a criminal investigation for criminal behavior. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stresses that being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime in the United States, but a civil offense.

Sunday's raids came as part of the anti-immigrant “crackdown” pushed by President Trump, who imposed quotas on field offices to arrest at least 75 people per day, sources told the Washington Post. Both officials and former ICE officials, who spoke to the Washington Post on condition of anonymity, said the pressure to meet these quotas would result in “more indiscriminate enforcement tactics” and cause the agency to “face accusations of civil rights violations.”

Although Governor González Colón maintained that the raids only target migrants “with criminal records,” the federal agency's first operation in Puerto Rico—since President Trump signed the executive order—indiscriminately caught people with immigration documents, as well as undocumented individuals.

“The best thing we have is this: being in community,” said Mariana Soler Olivera, one of the volunteers in Río Piedras, as people gathered in front of the Casa Ruth community center.

Rivera Vázquez reported that they will be doing more events to inform the Rio Piedras community about migrants' rights and are also working to connect people affected by the raids with legal representation.

Editor's note: 9 Millones does journalism that inspires action and solidarity. If you are an immigrant and need guidance regarding Donald Trump's recent orders, you can call Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico's Immigrant Legal Support Line at 939-545-3030. This line operates Monday through Friday, from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.