Federal immigration agents were seemingly forced to retreat from a roofing job site Tuesday in the Park Avenue neighborhood after being confronted by more than 100 protesters.
The group shouted “shame” and “Gestapo,” and applauded as agents in the ICE-led action drove a Border Patrol SUV away on four flat tires, which had been slashed.
One of the roofers was taken into custody, but agents left others apparently unchecked on the rooftop of the Westminster Road rental house.
Confrontations between immigration agents and protestors have been escalating across the country, leading the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops to cities like Los Angeles and elsewhere. Last week, The New York Times reported on an expected surge in enforcement, and that Trump officials had hinted of plans for a “crack down on so-called sanctuary cities,” which prohibit local law enforcement from assisting in federal immigration enforcement.
Roofing contractor Clayton Baker identified the man taken into custody by ICE as “Chino,” one of his employees. Baker said the man has been in the United States for about 25 years and had legal documentation to work.
“They took my best worker that’s been working with me for 5 years, and just basically, ‘See you later,’ you know?” Baker said. “He’s a family guy, and he’s got a baby on the way. He’s never even had a speeding ticket that I know of. He goes to church every Sunday, and he pays his taxes.
“But you want to come get him off of a hard-working job,” Baker continued. “It’s bulls–t, and it’s inhumane and it’s sad.”
A spokesman for U.S Customs and Border Protection said this was an ICE-led enforcement action and referred questions to that agency. ICE did not respond to a request for comment. The action also included agents from the IRS and other agencies.
Rochester’s sanctuary status already has drawn the attention of Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan and the Department of Justice, with a federal lawsuit filed by the administration against Mayor Malik Evans and City Council President Miguel Meléndez over the policy.
Last month, City Council unanimously approved reaffirming its Sanctuary City status.
Immigrants make up a large share of the construction workforce, particularly those essential to home building — including more than half of all roofers, according to the National Association of Home Builders. In New York, specifically, more than a third of all construction workers are foreign-born, records show.
In a video posted to Facebook, an ICE agent tells immigrant advocates, referring to the workers still on the roof: “They already admitted they are here illegally, and I can make a warrantless arrest. … We’re waiting for them to come down.”
But as time went on — the whole ordeal lasted about four hours, advocates said — representatives with the Western New York Coalition of Farmworker Serving Agencies began urging the agents to move on, arguing that the workers weren’t coming down, the arrests weren’t going to happen and the crowd was only continuing to grow. The agents relented, they said, and they offered to help them leave, urging protestors to step aside.
“The coalition is committed to standing alongside farmworkers, immigrants, and migrants to ensure dignity, fairness, and access to justice,” coalition executive director Irene Sanchez said in a news release sent out Tuesday evening. “In moments like this, our role is to make sure people know their rights and to safeguard their due process under the law.”
It was not immediately clear where Chino was taken. Baker said he is worried about making ends meet without his best worker, and is concerned for Chino’s family.
“It’s going to affect me, it’s going to affect their family,” he said. “I don’t even care about my bills. I’m just going to sacrifice the money and just give it to the family and I’ll figure something else out.”
For the activists and organizers, getting the immigration agents — several of whom were masked — to leave the jobsite was a sign of strength in numbers.
“These folks (the workers) deserve the same opportunity that each of us get, and so it’s important that we are here, we are Rochester strong, and we will not have ICE coming in and dividing us,” said the Rev. Myra Brown, pastor for Spiritus Christi. “We are one Rochester, and we will always be one Rochester. We will show up for each other.”
The action on Westminster, a stretch of road running from Canterbury Road to East Avenue, comes at a time when federal immigration enforcement has further ratcheted up under the direction of President Donald Trump. The entire state delegation representing Rochester — all Democrats — arrived at the scene as ICE began to leave.
Assemblymember Harry Bronson said the actions taken by the federal administration is a means of attempting to further divide the country.
“This is pitting one group of people against another group of people,” Bronson said. “This is an attempt to attack our democracy, because a democracy can only operate under the rule of law and can only operate if our leaders are following the law. And they’re not doing this, they’re pushing the envelope, and they’re doing this because they want to have a boogeyman out there, and for them, the boogeymen are people of color and people who aren’t originally from the United States.”
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to lift a court order in Los Angeles that stopped ICE agents from targeting people based on race, spoken language, or work. The Department of Homeland Security, in a post on X, responded to the ruling by saying “DHS law enforcement will continue to FLOOD THE ZONE in Los Angeles.”
Assemblymember Jen Lunsford said the ruling and its implications set a dangerous precedent.
“Every single one of us here have ancestors that at one point wouldn’t have been American enough,” she said. “And I’m waiting for the day that it comes back around and some of us are declared not American enough. No matter where we were born, we have to make sure that we are standing firm for what the Constitution actually says at this point, not what our Supreme Court is saying it means, because I am watching the erosion of the rule of law every single day.”
