Is ICE Activity Picking Up Steam in NYC?

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC. I mentioned at the top of the show, a New York City ice incident video that's now making the rounds online and on local TV news, just a few blocks from my building in Upper Manhattan on Thursday. A masked ice agent pepper sprayed a woman who was holding up her phone recording the agent's activities. You can see this in the video.
And I will replay from the top of the show, the short audio clips. Channel 2 later interviewed the woman, identified a 72-year-old Linda Wolfe, who told them she saw a tow truck getting ready to remove an ice vehicle that was disabled.

**Linda Wolfe** (0:49)
I said to the tow truck driver, you know, you should be ashamed of yourself working for ice. And he got crazy. The ice guys came over and they just maced me.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:01)
And Channel 2 also had this short clip from after the incident, of the incident. You'll hear the woman complain to the ICE agency, to the ICE agent about what he had done and his response.

**Mark Wayne Mullen** (1:14)
You just maced me.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:15)
I'm going to do it again.
You just maced me. She said, I'm going to do it again. He said. All while wearing a mask. Channel 2 reports the woman, Ms. Wolf, is considering legal action. And AM New York reports, it's illegal in New York state for the agent to even be masked while representing the government. AM New York also reports on a larger context. They say borders are Tom Homan's threatened surge of ICE detentions in New York may have now begun. Here is Homan suggesting something like that would happen after Governor Hoco signed a new law passed by the state legislature in June.

**Tom Homan** (1:53)
You can expect more ICE agents go to New York because Governor Hoco signed legislation that ended our 287G agreements where one agent can arrest one bad guy, turned over by a jail. Now we got to send a whole team to look for that guy. So she took the efficiencies of the jails away in 287G agreements. So it's only, it's math.
One agent can arrest one bad guy in the safety and security of the jail, which is safer for the aliens, safer for the agents, safer for the community. But she decided to kill all that. So now we got to send more agents to do the job that worked up one person.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:27)
Tom Holman in June, AM New York reports as of this morning that there have been multiple recent ice sightings in various boroughs. The one from Inwood was the first to really make the news. But there was another incident at a hospital emergency room in Lower Manhattan, the New York Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital on Gold Street. They say where masked ice agents were seen detaining a man who was in the ER.
For the first time, I've seen in my neighborhood uptown, flyers and whistles that people are handing out. The whistles are to alert people in a given public space if an ice agent is seen nearby.
The flyers made by the New York Immigration Coalition are called What to Do If You See Immigration Enforcement. I have one of them in front of me. With us now from the New York Immigration Coalition is Murad Awawdeh, who's the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. We also have city council member Carmen De La Rosa, who represents the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood, where that pepper spray incident was recorded. Welcome back both of you to WNYC. I'm sorry it's under these circumstances, but hi.

**Murad Awawdeh** (3:36)
Hello, and thank you for having us.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:38)
Murad, is there a surge of ICE agents taking place in New York to go to the larger context question first?

**Murad Awawdeh** (3:47)
I wouldn't call it a surge, not a surge in the context of what we've seen happen elsewhere across the country, but we are seeing a significant increase in enforcement across not just New York City, but on Long Island and across the state of New York.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:03)
Council member, what happened in the incident in Inwood? As far as you can tell, I saw you excerpted on TV, reacting to it.

**Carmen De La Rosa** (4:12)
Yes. Well, we started to get notifications that ICE was in the community.
I have been shouting out the mutual aid groups that have been coming together to inform us when ICE sightings are happening. You described it well at the beginning of the program where there was an incident with a tow truck, and one of our neighbors was pepper spray. People began to accumulate as they heard more that ICE had been in the community, and the ICE officers, from what I hear from folks that were on the ground when it was happening, they were aggressive just even coming out of their vehicles. They exited their vehicles shaking the mace bottles, and then immediately went towards the crowd, and then that's where they pepper sprayed Linda, and we want to thank Linda for her bravery and for her courage. And this is not the first time she's apparently been on the ground, and so we thank folks like her who have been on the ground and forming the community. I arrived on the scene a little bit after. There were still some folks around, but it wasn't an active scene when I got there. And what we're hearing from the community is that there's a lot of fear.