Volunteers hand out “know your rights” kits as immigration fears rise

The worst part for Fernanda Castañeda is the uncertainty.

“We don’t really know what could happen,” said the Gravesend resident one February Saturday, reflecting on a possible intensification of immigration enforcement in New York City. “But you do get stressed, you start thinking and you say, well, it can happen.”

Her worries come after a year of aggressive immigration enforcement by the Trump administration, which led to operations in several U.S. cities, including Louisiana, Mississippi, and, more recently, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

During one of those operations, two U.S. citizens were killed by officers, a development that sparked backlash against ICE tactics. The reaction was strong enough that “border czar” Tom Homan announced the imminent end of the Minneapolis deployment on Feb. 12.

According to the White House, 4,000 undocumented immigrants were arrested.

In New York, the militarized images coming out of Minnesota have fueled ongoing efforts to strengthen immigrant support networks, leaving many people worried about the possibility of something similar happening in Sunset Park.

Worries for those left behind

For people like Fermín Dávila and his wife, Marta, what has happened in the last year in the United States is troubling. They wonder what happens to the families left behind. After all, he asked, “in this country, who doesn’t have an immigrant in their family?”

It is not an unfamiliar situation in Sunset Park. The Sunset Post recently reported on a weekend of deportations in the neighborhood. It also does not take much searching on social media to find stories about arrests or sightings of ICE agents in the neighborhood.

The lack of local arrest data makes it difficult to measure the impact on Sunset Park and its families. But ICE data compiled by the Deportation Data Project shows arrests in the New York City area rose sharply between 2024 and mid-October 2025, with street arrests up 212% during the Trump administration.

Several GoFundMe pages are currently raising money for relatives of people deported from Sunset Park. In families where the person arrested is the main breadwinner, relatives often end up relying on other family or friends to cover legal fees, daily expenses, and even rent.

“Everyone is worried because those are the ones who have families,” said José Mercado Esquivel, of Sunset Park. “If someone goes out to work and they grab me, then the family is left behind.”

New York City responds with community

Organizations across New York are responding by mobilizing support networks and organizing events to educate New Yorkers. One of those efforts was the distribution of 300 “know your rights” kits and whistles on Fifth Avenue, organized by Democratic Socialists of America, a national socialist political organization.

“There’s no better time than now,” said Adam Dore-Young, a member of DSA’s newly formed Solidarity Committee. “It’s very possible there could be an offensive against the city, like we saw in Minneapolis. We don’t know. We can’t know until it happens. That’s why we want people to be prepared.”

For many immigrant-rights advocates, preparedness has taken the form of building community. Groups like HandOff NYC have been coordinating weekend community events across the city as part of a call to “come together to protect New York City from federal attacks.” These events include art activities, fundraisers, and educational workshops.

Others have chosen a more personal approach. At Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, community-building starts with breaking bread together. For the Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, that work has taken on a deeper meaning over the last year.

“We say we have to eat together, right?” Ruiz shared. “That salvation is in community.”

That “salvation,” Ruiz said, is found in the protection community can offer immigrants through services like pro bono legal assistance, food pantries, court accompaniment, and community dinners where people come together to share.

Ruiz was one of the religious leaders who helped reactivate the New Sanctuary Coalition in 2007, to support New York’s immigrant communities.

That support was recently reaffirmed by Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani after he signed Executive Order 13 on Feb. 6.

The order includes provisions that call for agency audits related to interactions with immigration enforcement, training for public-facing city workers, limits on non-city use of city lots for enforcement activity, and expanded privacy protections, among other measures.

According to language from the mayor’s office, the goal is to “protect New Yorkers from abusive immigration enforcement.”