Posted on: January 31, 2025 07:00 AM

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Inside the NYC immigration crackdown that yielded 39 arrests

At around 3 a.m. on Tuesday, dozens of Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers gathered at their Lower Manhattan headquarters for an early-morning briefing on the immigration arrests they were soon to conduct in New York City.

The ICE officers routinely target undocumented immigrants with criminal records in their homes or workplaces, but this operation, the first and most visible display of force by ICE in New York since President Trump returned to office, was clearly different.

This time, ICE agents teamed up with dozens of officers from other federal agencies as part of Mr. Trump’s growing immigration crackdown. This time, Mr. Trump’s top immigration official, Kristi Noem, who was confirmed as Homeland Security secretary three days before, showed up to give agents a pep talk. She then joined them in body armor as agents arrested a Venezuelan man in the Bronx suspected of being a gang member.

The public show of force — 29 teams with officers from several federal agencies — resulted in the arrests of 39 people, mostly in New York City and some on Long Island, according to Frank Tarentino, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in New York, one of the federal agencies involved in the raids.