The White House border czar, Tom Homan, issued a warning on Friday, August 29, 2025, “you’re gonna see a ramp up of operations in New York” come Labor Day. He declined to elaborate on that and there is no information on ICE’s website about any formal plans to launch additional enforcement in NY starting next week.
The Trump Administration has already brought a lawsuit against New York City claiming that it was a “sanctuary city” that was breaking the law by refusing to cooperate with ICE to carry out immigration arrests or to share information about the whereabouts of potential immigrants.
The Intercept reported on disturbing raids that have taken place on Long Island where dozens of masked men with no badges or other identification have shown up in small towns totting assault rifles and entering private property without asking for permission or stating their intentions. The local police departments with jurisdiction over these communities are not even made aware of ICE’s presence resulting in terrifying situations in which no one knows who these armed men are that are kidnapping dozens of Latinos. Frankly, it’s concerning that the local police allow this to go on. Anyone who wears a mask and sunglasses can walk around with a gun abducting people in broad daylight since the police would assume they must be ICE officers and lack any one of confirming.
A dozen or more masked men, some with long guns, tried to enter a men’s homeless shelter without identifying themselves in a rural town with a long-standing immigrant community on eastern Long Island in New York. Officials from the local police department later admitted they didn’t know where the masked men came from — only adding to local residents’ concerns. – The Intercept
According to the Intercept, the masked men were also seen around Nassau County in Western Long Island parked at elementary schools, which greatly alarmed parents who in one instance confronted them asking what they were doing on school grounds if they were not parents and asking why they had their faces covered. In California there was an incident in which ICE was caught lying to school officials claiming that they had permission from the parents of a fourth grader to take her out of school when they did not. ICE officers are relentless in their efforts to apprehend school children, sending dozens of armed officers to stakeout an elementary school. They are willing to lie to parents, teachers, school administrators, and anyone else in order to make their arrest.
A 6-year-old girl from Queens was arrested and shipped two thousand miles to a Texas detention center after ICE agents grabbed her, her mother, and her brother, as they left a routine check-in at the NY Immigration Court. Dayra and her family members are being detained hundreds of miles from one another at different facilities. The family entered the US in 2022 from Ecuador. The Daily News reported further on the heartbreaking situation. Exactly one week after they were detained, Dayra and her mother, Martha, were put on a plane and deported to Ecuador, leaving behind two other children in New York.
Immigration authorities have detained more than 50 children under the age of 18 in the New York City area since Trump began his anti-immigrant crusade. It has been reported that there have been at least 38 of those children have already been deported.
Congress has given ICE $45 billion of taxpayer money to massively increase their detention efforts and increase capacity. Trump has moved to expand the government’s ability to hold families in detention. The administration also recently sought to terminate a decades-old legal agreement that mandates basic standards of care for children in custody, arguing that it limits expansion efforts.
Governor of Washington said on Thursday that his office was demanding an explanation from Border Patrol for their decision to arrest firefighters who were fighting a wildfire in the state. The Governor said in a statement that he was “deeply concerned” that the Trump administration had targeted firefighters trying to contain the Bear Gulch fire in Olympic National Forest, west of Seattle. This isn’t the first time ICE arrested a firefighter. ABC News reported that a volunteer firefighter in Westchester who had been living in the US for more than forty years was arrested by ICE earlier this month.
People are still being arrested every day at the New York Immigration Court as they are trying to abide by the law and attend their court hearings and scheduled appointments. It has been reported that the New York Immigration Court is a confusing disaster where families are being torn apart in the hallways despite being granted more time in the US by the Judge.
This is to say that ICE has already been aggressively enforcing the Trump immigration agenda in NYC for months. It is frightening to think about ICE “ramping up” those efforts after Labor Day. Perhaps the Border Czar is just talking big and there isn’t any actual plan to increase enforcement in NYC next week but it is something to be aware of in case they do have one.
Enjoy your day off, but watch out for ICE!