Nearly 1,000 people from Sackets Harbor, a small town of 1,300 in northwest New York state, and the surrounding area marched and protested April 5 against the arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents of a family, a mother and three schoolchildren, March 27. They were taken to the privately run Karnes County immigration detention facility in Texas.
The overwhelming outcry from working people in the area helped win a victory — the family was released. This was confirmed April 7 by local officials, school administrators and Kathy Hochul, governor of New York.
One of the organizers of the protest was Jonna St. Croix, a social studies teacher at Sackets Harbor Central School and president of the Teachers Association. In a town as small as theirs, she told the media, everyone knows the three children who were disappeared.
“When there is an empty desk in the classroom, it is very evident, and we miss them,” she said. The youngest is in the third grade and the other two are in high school. St. Croix teaches the two teenagers.
“Some students made a welcome home sign for his desk,” she said, “and it’s still sitting there, and we hope he gets to see it soon.”
Jaime Cook, the school district’s principal, also built the protest. “We are in shock,” she said in a letter to the community. “And it is that shared shock that has unified our community in the call for our students’ release.”
The family “had declared themselves to immigration judges, attend court on their assigned dates, and were following the legal process,” she said.
“Their family has worked at the nearby ‘Old McDonald’s’ petting zoo and dairy farm for 15 years.”
Cook pointed to how families in the area, with and without papers, had gotten to know and care for each other. “I’ve driven them to their house after tutoring sessions. I’ve picked them up for tutoring sessions,” she told NBC News. “In this kind of town, this is a car pool town, I know them.”
The ICE agents had mounted a raid on housing at the North Harbor Dairy farm in the town, looking for a South African immigrant charged with possession of child pornography. The family lived nearby and were picked up when agents knocked on doors on the block.
Tom Homan, the Donald Trump administration’s “border czar,” also has a home in the area, a fact that drew some press. Participants in the April 5 rally marched a mile to rally outside his house. He told a local radio station he was looking into the raid and the possibility the family could be released.
Their release is another example of the strength of the working class when it is united and takes action.