ICE’s colonial disgrace shakes Puerto Rico
A crowd marches against deportations and ICE raids in San Juan, Puerto Rico on June 14. Photo courtesy Colectiva Feminista en Construcción.
Opinion • Belinés Ramos Negrón • July 18, 2025 • Leer en castellano
People who migrate to Puerto Rico—by choice or by force—in the face of colonial, necropatriarchal, capitalist, and racist states arrive to encounter even more state discrimination and abandonment. This is especially true for our siblings from the Dominican Republic.
The safety, lives, and freedom of migrants on the island have been in continual danger in recent months. They have been targeted by federal agents in the colony as part of the anti-immigrant and racist policies of US President Donald Trump.
Although these measures are directed at the entire immigrant community in the US and its territories, they do not have the same impact on all bodies.
Existing today as a woman, non-white, queer, trans, or non-binary person living in poverty, or as a migrant in Puerto Rico, where the healthcare system is collapsed, the education system obsolete, and where there is no access to dignified housing, has direct consequences on our bodies.
These are some of the intersections from which many of us experience life here, even as we defend our land from the multiple crises and disasters, being a United States colony and territory. These conditions are exacerbated for migrants whose residency status has not yet been regularized.
Due to our geographical location in the Caribbean, we share a history with our sister countries Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Haiti, as well as with the Lesser Antilles. Our shared history has facilitated the movement of people from other Caribbean countries to Puerto Rico.
According to the latest data from the US Census Bureau, “in 2022, there were approximately 90,000 immigrants living in Puerto Rico.” More than half are Dominicans, according to estimates, which means they are “the largest immigrant community in the country,” though immigrants to Puerto Rico hail from many territories across Abya Yala.
I have developed and worked in close relationships and friendships with several people who are part of the migrant community in Puerto Rico, primarily women, through my work as a lawyer and in community organizing, activism, and art.
In these times of so much violence and uncertainty, some have shared their feelings and experiences about the effects of dehumanizing and racist policies on their community in recent months.
Panic in the community
Altagracia is a 51-year-old Black Dominican immigrant who arrived to Puerto Rico in 2004. She chanced the sea crossing in one of the small boats we call a yola. For her, migrating was not an option—it was an escape from domestic violence at the hands of her former partner.
When she arrived in Puerto Rico, Altagracia received assistance and accompaniment from the Centro de la Mujer Dominicana (Dominican Women's Center) and was able to regularize her residency status. Like many immigrant women, she was employed as a domestic worker in a number of different parts of the island. Even with residency, her experience as a Dominican immigrant has been one of discrimination and neglect by the state with regards to her basic needs, particularly when it comes to medical care.
When Hurricane Maria struck in 2017, Altagracia lost her home. Her health problems worsened, requiring specific treatments, which were denied or delayed—she eventually had to travel to the Dominican Republic to receive treatment.
“I can hardly eat, my stomach and colon are sick, I'm undergoing tests, and I have to follow a very strict diet,” Altagracia told me last time we spoke.
Many of these health conditions are related to stress or anxiety, effects of the way migrants live in Puerto Rico. These issues are part of my ongoing doctoral research, and are explored in the podcast La Otra Escena.
Altagracia has successfully established a network of Puerto Rican and Dominican friends in Puerto Rico. She currently supports many of them who, due to Trump's measures and the raids by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), dare not leave their homes. According to digital media outlet TODAS, as of June 5, 552 migrants have been detained in Puerto Rico this year. Of those, 468 were administrative detentions and 84 detentions for alleged links to criminal activity.
Puerto Rican authorities have cooperated with the United States in favor of the mass deportation project, confirming residents’ worst fears. The Puerto Rican government, led by Governor Jennifer González, has ordered the Puerto Rico State Police and municipal police forces to collaborate with the US by sharing information with immigration agents and enabling immigration raids on the island.
Among the examples of the state's misuse of information is their justification for handing over data on drivers without regular immigration status. Law 97-2013 allows undocumented immigrants who have lived on the island for more than one year to apply for a provisional driver's license.
The González administration has shared lists of the names of people who obtained provisional licenses under Law 97.
“My friends don't dare to go out, and they call me to ask me to buy things for them. Some have moved to other places because their license information is on file,” Altagracia told me over the phone on July 2. “There is panic in the community,”
Life at a standstill
Zaida is another friend, a 73-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic who is an activist, and a community leader. Like Altagracia, her immigration status was regularized years ago, and she too suffers from health conditions (in her case, back and circulation problems). She also supports the Dominican community in Puerto Rico in every way she can.
She tells me that the community is sad and desperate due to abuses committed during raids, which are becoming increasingly aggressive, and have even targeted people who help protect migrants.
Zaida recounted how, on July 2, news spread throughout Puerto Rico that “they pulled a woman out of an Uber, handcuffed her, and took her away.” This happened in Barrio Obrero in Santurce, a San Juan neighborhood that has become an ICE hunting ground.
“The women and youth who have arrived recently cannot go out to work, many have already left,” Zaida said when I asked about her inner circle in the community. “One left, and they caught him at the airport and sent him to Miami for a hearing before a judge.”
Zaida also told me about other women “who have risked going to work and have been caught, but they need to work so their children can go to school.”
She shares her great sadness that the community is experiencing such extreme and brutal uncertainty. In San Isidro, where she lives and where I work as a community lawyer, ICE agents entered and conducted a quick raid, taking away about six people. Since then, according to Zaida, they haven’t returned.
She says agents are known to come in and surveil the neighborhood, but they have not taken any more people away en masse. One strategy the police use to collaborate with ICE is to be very vigilant on the highway, she says, where they stop anyone who commits a traffic violation then checks their documentation. One impact of the raids is that people have stopped attending community meetings and going to church.
Refuge and support
On July 4, 2025, the mayor of Aguadilla, a town in northwestern Puerto Rico, approved a local law designating it a sanctuary city. The law bans municipal employees from helping with raids or investigations targeting undocumented immigrants. It is meant to oppose the anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration.
This could be a way to confront these attacks, which continue to increase fear among the migrant community in Puerto Rico.
In the colonial reality of the island, which depends on sudden decisions made by the United States Congress, it’s essential to support non-profit organizations, collectives, and communities that work directly with the migrant community. Efforts of alternative media outlets in Puerto Rico, such as TODAS and the CPI, have also been very important.
There are many projects—like the Colectiva Feminista en Construcción and Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, for example—that, in addition to nurturing spaces and specialties, organize, gather, and mobilize people to create support, alliances, and direct action from the streets and communities themselves.
On June 14, these organizations and collectives called for a demonstration on Fortaleza Street (or Resistencia Street, as we renamed it after the summer of 2019) to protest Trump's immigration policies, reminding everyone that we are a nation of migrants, and that we reject ICE raids.
Trump's measures continue to deepen the collective wounds of those who survive in this context in the archipelago, while our activism contributes to a history of solidarity and struggle among the people.
The work we do as a collective and a community, listening and responding to the needs on the ground, is what, as Zaida noted when we spoke, achieves mobilization, support, and protection for the migrant community in Puerto Rico.
