The American Civil Liberties Union confirmed Sunday afternoon that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were patrolling Barrio Obrero, in Santurce, San Juan. The information was confirmed to El Nuevo Día by ACLU press spokesperson David Cordero. Earlier, the civil rights organization had denounced the actions of federal agents on Saturday afternoon in Río Piedras, where they pointed pepper spray at some civilians present who were documenting the agents’ intervention in that San Juan sector.
ACLU of Puerto Rico executive director Annette Martínez Orabona said the actions, which reportedly began Thursday and extended through the weekend, add to a pattern of systematic violence and stalking against immigrant communities and point to an increase in such interventions. She stressed that people have a constitutional right to record, document and protest ICE operations, protected by the First Amendment, noting that ICE and other federal agencies have retaliated against people exercising that right.
She cited the case of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a Minnesota citizen shot by ICE agents during raids against that state’s immigrant community, saying he was exercising his constitutional right to record. Martínez Orabona blamed the raids on the government of Governor Jenniffer González Colón and Transportation and Public Works Department (DTOP) secretary Edwin González Montalvo for voluntarily handing over the residential addresses and confidential information of more than 6,000 immigrants in Puerto Rico.