Immigration Enforcement Sweep in Hampton Bays Causes Panic Among Undocumented Workers

For Erik, the morning of Wednesday, November 5, started out like many others in the offseason.

The swimming pool company he works for seven months of the year had concluded its pool closings and cut its seasonal staffing, so Erik had boarded a bus near his home in Riverhead and rode to Hampton Bays in the hope of earning a day’s pay from someone in need of help cleaning up leaves or some other manual labor.

He got off the Suffolk County bus on Montauk Highway and walked to Dunkin’ Donuts in the movie theater parking lot.

Erik is from Honduras and has been in the Unites States for 14 years, living on the East End for the last six years. He did not enter the county legally and speaks no English. He agreed to speak with The Press last week through an interpreter, if only his first name was used.

On the morning of November 5, as he approached Dunkin’ Donuts, he saw people start running.

“He saw a lot of people running and screaming ‘It’s ICE! It’s ICE!’” the translator said as Erik recounted what he saw. “They had guns and were pointing them. There were people running. It looked like a war.”

Erik ran, too.

As several Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers fanned out across the parking lot, seemingly attempting to just chase down anyone who fled, Erik ran around the side of the building to a rear area where one of the businesses kept its garbage.

He ducked behind the cans and crouched down, just before officers rounded the building chasing others. He saw one man fall down, another get tackled by an officer, and both men hauled away roughly.

“It was terrible how people were treated — like animals,” he said through the translator. “The officers, he didn’t think they were ICE because they didn’t have the vests. But they had masks, and in the United States they have to show their faces because they work for the government, so he didn’t think they were real police.”

Many of the approximately two dozen officers who took part in the immigration enforcement sweep that day in Hampton Bays and Westhampton were, in fact, ICE officers, accompanied by officers of other federal agencies. Some wore vests emblazoned with the word “Police.” Many wore no visible badge or other identifying symbols indicating what agency or department they represented. Almost all wore masks to hide their faces — as many officers have in immigration raids around the country, for fear of retribution when not on the job over the federal policies they are enforcing.

One witness to an arrest in Westhampton said she recognized one of her instructors in a security guard training program she takes through Eastern Suffolk BOCES, who covered his face with his mask when she called out to him.

After hiding for about 20 minutes behind the garbage cans, Erik said he hadn’t seen an officer in several minutes but feared they would come back around the building, so he dashed into the woods nearby and hid with another man he knew from the morning bus rides from Riverhead.

After a while, when it was clear the operation had moved on, they emerged. He said that word had spread quickly and that many immigrants arriving in Hampton Bays on later buses didn’t get off. Another man who had hidden in the woods was scared that agents would stop one of the buses and haul undocumented people off, so he walked home to Riverhead.

Erik rode the bus home.

And he has continued to come to Hampton Bays intermittently in the weeks since looking for work. But he said that many of the people that used to come have stopped, fearing that another immigration sweep is coming.

Family members of some of those men who were detained, Erik said, haven’t heard from their loved ones and have been reticent to track them down themselves.

“They are scared to call because they are undocumented,” he said though the translator.