Several hundred people rallied in Foley Square on Saturday against what they called the Trump administration’s “gestapo” tactics targeting New Jersey elected officials who made an unannounced visit to an ICE facility on Friday that ended with Newark Mayor Ras Baraka being arrested, and several Congress members intimidated by armed guards.
The May 10 rally at Foley Square saw many activists, including progressive elected officials in New York City, decried the incident as an attack on democracy and civil rights in America. They also pressed City Hall to take a firmer stand against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and to do more to protect the rights of all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status.
Saturday’s rally was organized by the Working Families Party, Make the Road Action (NY & NJ), New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice and NYIC Action. Among the attendees were two mayoral candidates whom the WFP endorsed in the Democratic primary — City Comptroller Brad Lander and Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani — and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
But it was Brooklyn City Council Member and city Comptroller candidate Justin Brannan who had the most pointed comments of the rally, labeling ICE as “Trump’s gestapo” while alleging that City Hall and Mayor Eric Adams, through his relationship with President Trump, had “sold us out.”
“The ICE cowboys are out there running rampant over our rights,” Brannan said. “In a moment like this, we need to demand more of our elected officials at every level of government. Local politicians have a responsibility and obligation to stand in the breach between the federal government and our most vulnerable.”
A number of protesters at Saturday’s rally making the same comparison between ICE’s tactics and that of the gestapo, Hitler’s brutal secret police force in Nazi Germany. One sign read, “ICEstapo illegally arrested Newark Mayor,” while a large unfurled banner read, “Would’ve fought the Nazis? Now’s your chance!”
One protester also waved an upside-down American flag — a symbol of distress.
Mamdani blasted Mayor Adams for visiting with Trump and taking a cooperative tone with the right-wing Republican on the same day as the May 9 incident in New Jersey in which ICE agents arrested Baraka for allegedly trespassing on property while he and three Congress members from the Garden State made an unannounced visit to Newark’s Delaney Hall — a privately-owned, ICE-operated detention center.
Baraka was later released from the detention center, but said he had done nothing wrong.
Sienna Fontaine of Make the Road Action said the incident demonstrated a need for New York City to take a bolder stance in protecting immigrants during the second Trump administration.
“Trump and his billionaires are trying to divide us while they put their hands in our pocket, while they try to dismantle our safety net, while they try to dismantle Medicaid and Medicare and all the things that generations before us have built so that people in this country can live with dignity,” Fontaine said. “Today is the day that we say we stand together.”
Lander agreed, saying that it was essential for New York’s government not to find itself bullied by Washington.
“We must stand up to this administration,” he said. “They will do this to every one of us if they could.”
