ICE sightings on the rise on Long Island, advocates say, as deportation arrests go up nationwide

The presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents appears to be, once again, growing on Long Island, as the agency's arrests rise nationwide, stoking renewed fear in immigrant communities, advocates said.

In the last two weeks, Islip Forward, the main nonprofit that tracks ICE activity on Long Island, said the number of ICE sightings by activists in Nassau and Suffolk counties has jumped from two or three a day to six or eight or more a day.

That pattern is still below what the group reported during earlier peak periods of 15 or 16 or more last year and earlier this year, but it is an increase, said the group’s founder, Ahmad Perez.

“I would absolutely classify this as an uptick," he told Newsday on Wednesday. “We’ve been seeing a lot more federal agents and officers out on residential streets."

“I don't want to say it's a surge, because we have seen what a surge looks like when we had, like, 15, 16, 17, 18 sightings per day," he added. “But we are absolutely on an upward trend."

A video posted by Islip Forward appears to show ICE agents wrestling a man to the ground on a street in Freeport on July 30. A photograph obtained by the group also shows the man face down on the ground with his hands handcuffed behind him.

Osman Canales, an experienced “ICE tracker" and advocate, said he was getting between one and three reports of ICE sightings a week from residents on Long Island. Now, it is up to five or more a day, he said. The actual numbers may be even higher since some ICE arrests, which typically take place rapidly, are not getting reported to activists, he said.

Nationwide, the average number of daily arrests by ICE has gone from nearly 1,000 in May to 1,474 in July, according to ICE data analyzed by Newsday. The available data for July includes up to July 11. If arrests continued at that pace for the rest of the month, it would set a record for President Donald Trump’s second term. The average of 1,319 in June was the highest so far.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, last year set a goal of 3,000 arrests a day for ICE.

The uptick in New York comes weeks after the state passed a law seeking to limit ICE activity, prompting Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, to repeatedly pledge to unleash a “surge" of agents in New York City.

ICE did not respond directly to questions about an uptick or the agency’s methods. But the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, told Newsday in a statement that “for operational security reasons" the agency does not divulge details of its activity.

“ICE agents uphold our nation’s immigration laws in all 50 states, seven days a week, 24 hours a day," DHS added. “ICE is targeting criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, criminals, gang members and more."

Nadia Marin-Molina, the Nassau County-based co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said, “ICE presence on Long Island streets has clearly increased over the summer. They have an inflated budget that Congress gave them, and they are using it to hurt grandfathers and uncles, people who just want to live and work in peace."

For immigrants on the streets, the trend has only added to the anxiety they have felt since the crackdown began shortly after Trump took office in January 2025, advocates said.

"Parents are making contingency plans in case they do not come home. Children are learning to recognize unmarked vehicles," Perez said. "This is what happens when immigration enforcement becomes a public spectacle: Entire communities begin living as though any ordinary moment could tear their family apart."

Murad Awawdeh, president of the Manhattan-based New York Immigration Coalition, said the ICE activity on Long Island mirrors an increase in New York City and statewide, especially in some upstate communities in the Capital District.

Since late July, “we have definitely seen an uptick and an increase in enforcement across the city, but also statewide," he told Newsday in an interview.

In the week prior to July 27, the coalition received confirmed reports of two people arrested by ICE in the city, Awawdeh said. In the week after July 27, it received 21 confirmed reports.

Still, he added, “I would not call this a surge, because it's not to the level of what we have seen in other areas of the country like Minnesota or Illinois or California."

In those cases, the federal government sent in hundreds of agents, along with National Guardsmen, to help carry out what Trump said would be the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history.

Trump’s crackdown, while supported by some, has also provoked widespread protests and a congressional freeze on ICE funding after agents fatally shot two United States citizens in Minneapolis in January. In July, ICE officers fatally shot two other people, in Houston and Biddeford, Maine, after agents tried to stop their vehicles.

While ICE has apparently steered away from high-profile “surges" since the January killings, the agency appears to be relying on other tactics, advocates said. ICE agents now appear to be conducting raids, arrests and surveillance not only in the early morning but in the evening as well, Perez said.

“We are actually getting activity as late as 6, 7 o'clock in some of these very same hot spots where they are lurking on residential streets," he said. “They are no longer interested in remaining quiet or hidden."

“We’ve been seeing a lot more federal agents and officers out on residential streets," he added.

Activists are also seeing new vehicles used by ICE agents that they have not previously seen, Perez and Canales said. Islip Forward tracks vehicles as well as sightings in general.

“We're talking about completely new people and completely new vehicles that we have not seen," Perez said.

Some agents have adopted a new practice of hanging small Latin American national flags on the mirrors of their unmarked vehicles to try to trick immigrants into thinking they are not with ICE, Canales said.