ICE in Amblebrook

As I ate breakfast on Feb. 11 my phone started pinging with unusual frequency. At first I ignored it, thinking it was just more texts advertising a sale or requesting campaign contributions.

But the sound of the pings was a little different in both tenor and volume. So I picked up the phone for a look.

I realized the pings were coming from a messaging app we set up to alert us to ICE activity here at Amblebrook, after two recent incidents of ICE incursions. (This neighborhood is private property and we’ve been told that it had been communicated to ICE that a warrant would be required for them to enter.)¹

The idea is that if one of us sees ICE activity, we activate the messaging app so that whoever gets the alert and can get to the site will do so to witness and document the scene, provide whatever support we can for the victims, and attempt to impose accountability on the federal agents, if only by showing them that people are watching and recording their actions.

You see, this neighborhood of 55+ residents is still under construction, and will be for several years to come. Many of the construction workers are Hispanic immigrants, predominantly with papers and legal status, but under our country’s current “leadership” that hardly matters; they’re Brown and speak Spanish as their first language, so they are fair game to this crowd.

When I got to the site several neighbors were already there. One told me she overheard an agent say to another, “there’s some old people following us around, let’s move on,” and they did, driving like a bat out of hell to another part of the neighborhood, where I followed and took the pictures immediately below.

I have no idea what their immigration status was — but I know for damn sure they weren’t “the worst of the worst.”

Several workers were taken away in handcuffs; witnesses’ estimates ranged anywhere from 5–15, and it was hard to determine as the agents stopped at several sites. As of the moment, I have no idea what the detainees’ immigration status is — but I know for damn sure they weren’t “the worst of the worst.”

As our house was being built we got to know many of these workers…the man from Guatemala who showed us pictures of his children and spoke of how the money he sent home to them helped their life prospects…the man from El Salvador who was so proud of being able to move his family here…the young couple of Mexican descent who was sent to smooth out some of the initially less-than-perfect work of the original crew and who left us their business card for future needs.

All of them friendly and respectful…just like their compadres we would come across at other neighborhood construction sites. Or the workers who maintained our landscaping for three seasons and cleared our snow in the winter.

Between the gutting of the construction workforce and the additional costs imposed on inputs by the imbecilic tariffs, our high housing costs will only escalate further.

So here we are, America — persecuting decent, hard-working family men who are building our houses — even as a big part of the “affordability problem” is a housing shortage. Between the gutting of the construction workforce and the additional costs imposed on inputs by the imbecilic tariffs, our high housing costs will only escalate further.

I am sure that my sense of right and wrong would infuriate me with this Administration’s treatment of these folks anyway, but in a way this is also personal.

I come from a third-generation Irish father and second-generation Italian mother. Neither of their families had it easy.

My Irish grandmother told me of experiencing Help Wanted ads with “No Irish Need Apply” tagged onto the job description.

She also told me a story from her childhood in the early 1900s, growing up about 45 miles up the Hudson from New York City, in what was then the sleepy rural hamlet of Peekskill in an Irish immigrant enclave. The story goes like this…

From time to time, the community was harassed by a local Klaven of Klansmen. The Irish were “foreign” and they were Catholic, and both of these characteristics were suspect.

Most of the menfolk were quarry workers, and most of the harassment took place while the men were at work, particularly if their stone-cutting jobs took them away from home for a couple of days. After one particularly egregious episode of harassment, my forbears cooked up a scheme. They leaked word that the men would be leaving on a job that would keep them away overnight for a day or two.

Sure enough, that night the Klan showed up in full regalia, in white robes with burning torches. Weren’t they surprised when from out of the closets, basements, and barns rushed the quarrymen to make them pay.

My grandmother said, “After that the Klan never came back.”

On the Italian side, my grandmother Josephina worked in New York’s garment district in a factory much like the one in which the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire tragedy occurred, before she married Salvatore, who worked with three brothers to establish a grocery store in Mt. Vernon, NY that thrived for decades, and extended credit to struggling customers during the Great Depression. My grandmother read Il Progresso, not The Daily Argus, until her final days.

Not too different from these construction and landscape workers.

We’re all immigrants after all, aren’t we? And let’s not even broach the subject that not all immigrants in our history were voluntary immigrants.²

¹ So far, despite calls to our state rep, state senator, US Rep, two US Senators, and the sheriff’s office, I have yet to receive an answer as to whether this incursion was authorized by a judicial warrant.

² …but I shouldn’t “go all DEI” on you, should I?

By Kevin McDonald. Originally published here.