Tag: Ozone Park

JHISN Newsletter 04/25/2026

Posted on April 25, 2026 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

Remain vigilant? Breathe a temporary sigh of relief? The mass targeting of immigrants for deportation in central Queens has not yet materialized. We share recent wisdom from Queens Neighborhoods United: “[W]e can’t always live in fear that ICE is around, and we can’t pretend that ICE is never around. Finding a balance and arming ourselves with information to inform our day-to-day lives is important.” Find a balance; stay informed; build and hold our collective strength.

Yet, every day, police violence against immigrants continues, and our first article highlights the pursuit of justice for two Queens families shattered by NYPD shootings in their homes.

Our second article dives into the mess of government propaganda, misinformation, missing data, and realistic “best estimates” of the number of immigrants in the US who have been recently detained and/or deported. Who really counts in US society? All those whose lives have been upended by a revved-up mass detention and deportation machine deserve to be counted.

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Where is justice for two Queens families shattered by NYPD violence?
  2. Checking the numbers on US detentions and deportations

1. Justice for Win Rozario and Jabez Chakraborty!

On March 27, 2024, struggling with a mental health crisis in his Ozone Park home, 19-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant Win Rozario called 911 for help. What showed up was two aggressive cops, who provoked, tased, and gunned him down without mercy in front of his family.

“After shooting Win, the NYPD forced Win’s mom and brother to go to the precinct immediately, refusing to let them accompany Win to the hospital. Win’s mother and brother were separated and interrogated without lawyers and before being notified that Win had died. The NYPD then refused to let the Rozario family back into their apartment for over 48 hours, refusing to let them retrieve critical medications or even feed their cat. It took the advocacy of the Public Advocate to get the Rozario family back into their home – which the police had neglected to clean up after murdering Win.” —The Justice Committee

In September 2025, NYC’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) found that Officers Matthew Cianfrocco and Salvatore Alongi used excessive force and abused their authority. But so far, they have not faced any consequences. State Attorney General Letitia James refused to prosecute the cops, a decision the family called “cowardly.” Potential disciplinary action is now at the discretion of New York Police Commissioner Tisch, who is considered likely to order the loss of some vacation days—or no punishment at all. Only Mayor Mamdani can overrule whatever she decides.

This April 1, the Rozario family and local immigrant justice group Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) led a demonstration at Diversity Plaza, solemnly marking the second anniversary of Win’s murder and calling on the city to fire Cianfrocco and Alongi:

“Win’s mother shared her experiences and demands: ‘I can’t believe two years have passed and still the police have not been punished… I want to say that police should not be sent to respond to situations involving illness or mental health crises. Otherwise, more families like mine will be forced to live with this emptiness and grief.’” —@DRUMNYC

The Diversity Plaza protest also mobilized support for another Queens immigrant family brutalized in a similar way by the NYPD. Jabez Chakraborty, 22, who lives with schizophrenia, was shot by cops in a January 2026 confrontation that his family insists was completely unnecessary.

“We are shocked and outraged by the NYPD’s treatment of our son and brother, Jabez Chakraborty, and our family. We called for help. We called 911 for an ambulance to provide medical attention for our son, who was in emotional distress. We did not call the police. Instead of medical responders, the NYPD arrived and shot our son multiple times right in front of us.” —Chakraborty family, 1/30/26

Although he was severely wounded, Jabez Chakraborty survived. But District Attorney Melinda Katz rushed to arraign him on assault and weapons charges as he lay chained to his hospital bed—ignoring objections from Mayor Mamdani.

“What purpose does it serve to punish someone who needed medical and mental health care, and got bullets instead? This shooting was not an isolated incident: it’s a devastating example of how our systems repeatedly fail the most vulnerable New Yorkers.” —Fahd Ahmed, Executive Director of DRUM

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. The Reality Behind Detention & Deportation Propaganda Numbers

“We know of no reliable count of the total number of deportations during the first year of the Trump administration.” — Deportation Data Project (January 2026)

Those managing the anti-immigrant agenda of Trump and his hatemongering Homeland Security advisor, Stephen Miller, regularly obfuscate their arrest, detention, or deportation numbers. Such transparency problems are not new. Before Trump took office in 2024, the American Immigration Council (AIC) published Transparency Recommendations identifying numerous legally mandated reporting requirements that ICE failed to fulfill. The AIC reported that ICE, under Biden, was “severely undercounting the number of people it has in immigration detention.” In July of last year, Robert Garcia, a representative on the House Committee on Homeland Security, stated, “I actually just don’t trust numbers the administration is putting out, and I don’t think the American public should.” Thankfully, the diligent work of non-profits and university researchers does serve as a lighthouse in the fog.   

The number of people processed through the deportation machine is obscured by the administration’s hyperbolic statements. Only through the independent work of organizations, reporters, and pro bono lawyers, who process Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits to delve into Homeland Security data, can we get a sense of how many people are actually being processed through the deportation machine.

In March of last year, TRAC Reports won a major FOIA case against ICE and CPB when a court rejected all the government’s arguments for withholding records. In November 2025, TRAC released a report about detention and removals after the massive deployments of military and civil immigration enforcers: “The data show surprisingly little has been accomplished given the huge expenditure of resources devoted to this effort.” The increase in ICE removals under Trump in 2025 was reportedly only 7% higher than the 2024-25 numbers under Biden.

Before Trump’s second inauguration, data on border arrests, deportations, and other immigration metrics were published twice a month (as mandated by the DHS funding bill). An April 2026 visit to the DHS website finds that the immigration websites have not been updated since 2024. ICE Detention and Repatriation data has also not been updated since 2024. The 2025 numbers reported by Homeland Security on its detention management site are severely limited. Even a high school student’s online ICE Tracker project is making a better attempt than Homeland Security to share this data publicly.

While TRAC Reports highlighted the many data errors in ICE data releases, the Vera Institute of Justice reported that the “failure [of ICE] to regularly release accurate, complete, and accessible data is part of what enables it to operate this multi-billion-dollar network with little oversight or accountability.” With the support of the Deportation Data Project, the Vera Institute published its December 2025 report on ICE Detention Trends in 1,464 facilities. If the ICE reports from August of last year are accurate, then the 61,226 people detained by ICE is the highest ever level of detention. 

“First, ICE arrests quadrupled, including both street arrests and transfers from criminal custody to ICE immigration custody. ICE street arrests (i.e. arrests not at jails) went up by over a factor of eleven. Street arrests at this order of magnitude are a new phenomenon. For both types of arrests, ICE was much less likely to target people with criminal convictions. These changes led to over a sevenfold increase in arrests of people without criminal convictions.”—Deportation Data Project


Transfers from Jails and Prisons Doubled and Street Arrests Increased by 11x—Deportation Data Project

The self-deportation component of the Miller-Trump strategy, despite a significant increase in numbers, failed spectacularly to deliver its promise as a cost-effective way to remove immigrants rapidly. Last September, DHS posted self-aggrandizing statements, and Kristi Noem talked about self-deportation numbers, which came from an estimate by the anti-immigrant think tank CIS that did not even use DHS data. 

Homeland Security spent $200M on ads (created by agencies with direct ties to DHS staff) to urge self-deportation through the incongruously named Project Homecoming. The “voluntary” project claims to offer applicants a free plane ticket and a stipend of $1,000, recently increased to $2,600. Data review confirmed around 25,000 people registered for self-deportation on the CBP mobile app. Only half of those actually returned home with DHS support. The others face delays in paperwork processing, have not received payments, and still await their flights home. Immigration attorneys indicate their lack of trust in the program. In reality, only a minority of immigrants are eligible for those incentives to leave: those who do not meet the requirements are simply handing over their information and risking detention. 


Voluntary Departures Increased by 28x—Deportation Data Project

Although the government’s Project Homecoming data is questionable, reliable data shows that the number of court cases ending in “voluntary departure” increased to 35,000—over three times those during the previous year. Looking at New York specifically, under Biden, less than 1% of people arrested by ICE opted for voluntary departure—today it is 22%. People are also deciding to self-deport without government intervention—but even at the point where they are boarding flights to return home, they are still being detained and handed over to ICE agents.

The end goal of this administration is really not just about deportation. It is about enabling white nationalism and authoritarianism through racial profiling, eroding constitutional rights, scapegoating and subjugating immigrants, and weaponizing a massive private, for-profit prison system. 

WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

 

 

JHISN Newsletter 03/11/2023

Posted on March 11, 2023 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

 While it did not make many headlines this week, hundreds of excluded workers marched across the Manhattan Bridge on Monday, demanding the state budget fund unemployment assistance for all workers, including undocumented immigrants. Our first article also covers an under-reported story: the recent legal challenge to new city district maps that split the vibrant South Asian community in South Queens into three separate districts. Our second article takes a deeper look behind a news story on immigration that actually is—for the moment—getting lots of attention: the systematic labor exploitation of unaccompanied child migrants. 

 Newsletter highlights:
  1. New City Council maps disenfranchise Asians in Queens
  2. Child migrants funneled into exploitative jobs

1. Lawsuit Challenges City Council Redistricting

“Despite the protections of the NYC Charter and our warnings throughout the redistricting process, the council map carved up the community and muffled their voices, continuing our city’s painful history of dividing, marginalizing, and disenfranchising communities of color.”—Jerry Vattamala, Democracy Program Director of the AALDEF

Last weekend, just before the petitioning process began for the NY City Council primaries in June, many Queens elected officials marched up Skillman Avenue in the St. Pats for All parade. Celebrating the inclusivity of Queens, they walked in the Sunnyside parade that was created 23 years ago in response to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Manhattan refusing entry to LGBTQ+ marchers. Congresswoman Grace Meng reminded the Queens crowd in attendance that the Irish who came as refugees were not always welcomed with open arms, nor with equitable laws and policies. And Councilwoman Marjorie Velazquez raised cheers from the crowd as she said “Immigrants make America, America.”

The City Council electeds who were marching may have an additional hurdle to overcome this year: petitioning for the primaries may be delayed by a lawsuit brought by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) on behalf of South Asian community members including DRUM (Desis, Rising Up and Moving), our local immigrant workers’ organization. The lawsuit charges that 2022 redistricting decisions “unlawfully separat[ed] the Asian community” by carving up south Queens and “dilut[ing] the community’s voting strength.” The lawsuit calls for altered council maps that would create a new “opportunity district” for Asian American voters in the Queens areas of Richmond Hill and Ozone Park, and for a halt to petitioning until the district lines are settled. Judge Leslie Stroth ruled for a hearing last week and then recused herself from the case because she is also up for election as a candidate for the Supreme Court.

This lawsuit follows substantial debates, which began in November 2021, about redistricting maps that produced electoral districts that egregiously diminished the strength of Black, Asian, and Latino communities and voters. The New York City Charter says redistricting plans must ensure “the fair and effective representation of the racial and language minority groups in New York City,” protected by the 1965 United States Voting Rights Act. However, as Fulvia Vargas-De León, a lawyer with Latino Justice, noted, “Redistricting is often the silent voter suppressor.” 

This is not a new issue. Thirty years ago a coalition was formed to create districts that accurately reflect demographic shifts in New York populations: the outcome was a set of “Unity Maps”. Many immigrant advocacy organizations, including the AALDEF, put their support behind the Unity Maps and presented them to the Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) as examples of how redistricting could be non-partisan and be an accurate reflection of the minority populations in those areas. DRUM created a town hall series with the APA Voice (Asian Pacific American Voting and Organizing to Increase Civic Engagement), South Queens Women’s March, and the Caribbean Equality Project to oppose the redistricting that split the communities in Richmond Hill and Ozone Park. According to Patrick Stegemoeller, group attorney for the AALDEF, the Unity Maps were “ignored, in favor of a final plan that prioritized surrounding white-majority communities.” 

This is not the first lawsuit for this election cycle: the Our City Our Vote law, allowing 800,000 eligible immigrants to vote in municipal elections, was passed by NYC voters in 2022. However, plaintiffs in Staten Island alleged the law was “adopted with impermissible racial intent.” They claimed Black citizen voters would be negatively impacted when more “Hispanic foreign citizens” vote: Justice Ralph Prozio of Staten Island agreed, and struck down the new law. The city is currently appealing that ruling and it is unlikely we will see that case resolved for the 2023 election cycle.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

2. Unaccompanied Migrant Children: Alone and Exploited

When the New York Times story about exploited migrant children dropped on February 2, it was a bombshell. The Times reported that in the past two years, 250,000 unaccompanied minors have entered the US; many of them are “ending up in dangerous jobs that violate labor laws—including in factories that make products for well-known brands.” Some work 12- or 14-hour shifts, while still trying to go to school. Dozens have been killed or seriously injured on the job. The heartbreaking Times article—based on interviews and stunning photography of more than 100 migrant child workers in 20 states—offered readers an emotional testament, and created a political sensation.

By the very next day, lawmakers in Congress were “clamoring for action.” The Department of Labor solemnly declared that it “takes these egregious violations very seriously and investigates every child labor complaint they receive and acts to hold employers accountable.” They promised a new “Interagency Taskforce to Combat Child Labor Exploitation” and a host of bureaucratic measures to beef up child protection and labor law enforcement policies.

It was as if the politicians didn’t know that exploitation of migrant children was happening. But as recently as last year, Reuters ran a series of articles about underage refugees working in the Hyundai-Kia supply chain and in poultry factories. And immigrant justice advocates have been urgently raising the predicament of young refugees for years. What the Times story accomplished was to give some of these oppressed children a face, and a voice. It forced the shameful treatment of unaccompanied minors into the mainstream of political discussion—at least temporarily. 

From the point of view of immigrant justice, two issues stand out. The first is that the federal government, under Biden, is still separating children from their families at the southern border, although in new ways. By turning away almost all adult refugees under various cruel pretexts, in violation of international law, the US is forcing desperate refugee families to split up and send their children North alone—hoping that they can survive, and maybe help the family survive economically. This isn’t the openly racist carnival of the Trump years, which often targeted young children. It’s more of a cold-blooded unpublicized assembly line, trapping adult and infant refugees in war zones or fetid, dangerous encampments in Mexico, while rapidly processing tweens and teens to be sent all over the US. 

The second issue is that the immigration system is effectively organized to funnel young asylum seekers into labor exploitation. The US government doesn’t just fail to provide these children with a basic income, legal representation, or services after they leave preliminary detention-–it doesn’t even know where many of them are. States and cities also do little to help. It is the volunteer sponsor-–often a distant relative or friend of a friend-–who is supposed to “provide for the physical and mental well-being of the child, including but not limited to, food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care and other services as needed.” But this isn’t realistic. As the Times story makes clear, almost everyone in and around the system that “processes” unaccompanied minors expects the children to work and figures that into their decisions. 

Young people crossing the border are usually desperate to make money. They may owe thousands of dollars to smugglers who brought them here. They are risking everything with the goal of sending financial help to their endangered families. Their sponsors, who are often low-income people themselves, may expect the children they sponsor to contribute to their own upkeep. Some sponsors traffick the labor of migrant children, treating it like a business. On the other hand, school-age asylum seekers aren’t allowed to work legally because of “child protection” laws. This contradiction forces minors into the shadow economy and leaves them at the mercy of capitalism’s most unscrupulous profiteers.

And so there are thirteen-year-olds with fake IDs washing sheets in the back rooms of hotels, and exhausted fifteen-year-olds picking tomatoes all day in the sun or cleaning slaughterhouses with toxic chemicals all night. Young teenagers wait on the curb at day labor sites, competing for hard day labor in construction. As the Times story continues to reverberate nationally, we should be aware that thousands of unaccompanied child immigrants are living and working all around us in New York State. And we should always remember the local tragedy of Edwin Ajacalon, who migrated alone from Guatemala to Brooklyn at the age of 14. Edwin was riding his delivery bike in Brooklyn when he was mowed down by a speeding hit and run driver in a BMW. A whole family’s hopes suffered a huge blow with his death. The driver was never charged.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN.