Latinos are bearing the brunt of immigration enforcement in New York, accounting for nearly three-quarters of arrests while making up just a quarter of the state's non-citizen population, according to a newreport out Wednesday.
Ecuadorians make up just 4% of New York state’s non-citizen population, but nearly a quarter of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in the state, the report found. Venezuelans and Guatemalans account for roughly 1% of the state’s non-citizen population but 7% and 8% of ICE arrests respectively, according to the report by the New York Immigration Coalition, a nonprofit statewide advocacy group, and researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“ The reason we zoomed in on Latinos in the report is that that was far and away the group that is being impacted the most by ICE right now,” said Chloe N. East, an associate economics professor at CU Boulder and one of the report's co-authors.
The researchers declined to speculate on reasons for the disproportionate representation by Latino immigrants, but the findings come amid rising criticism that federal immigration officers rely on racial and ethnic profiling in making arrests.
In September, the Supreme Court, in an emergency order, cleared the way for racial profiling as grounds for immigration stops. Since then, some Latino residents in Chicago and Los Angeles, including green card holders, have claimed federal agents have targeted them for questioning because of their race and skin color.
There was no immediate comment on the report from the Department of Homeland Security or ICE. The Trump administration, aided by some $170 billion in new funding, has ramped up immigration law enforcement across the country, and promised to “flood the zone” – New York City – with enforcement agents.
The findings roughly cover the first six months of President Donald Trump’s second term. The picture in New York largely mirrors the nation, according to the report. The report largely did not analyze racial disproportionalities under previous administrations, but East, the researcher, said her past research found that ICE under the first Obama administration also disproportionately arrested Latinos.
Across the country, ICE has arrested more noncitizens from Mexico and Central America than from South Asia, Europe and Africa combined, the report found. The disparity in arrests affects nearly every Latino population in the United States, including Mexicans, Ecuadorans, Colombians, Cubans, Peruvians, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Guatemalans and Venezuelans.
For example, a noncitizen from Nicaragua is 115 times more likely to be arrested by ICE than a noncitizen from India. And a noncitizen from South America is 28 times more likely to be arrested than a noncitizen from Europe, according to the report.
The report also found that men account for a disproportionate share of the arrests in New York and nationwide. They account for 50% of the country’s and state’s non-citizen population but 89% of the ICE arrestees.
Nationwide, the researchers found that immigrants without criminal records constitute an increasing share of ICE arrests. Arrests of immigrants with no criminal histories have grown three times faster than arrests of people with criminal convictions. The data shows that only 30% of those arrested had a criminal conviction.
The report authors warned that ICE arrests could “intensify significantly,” based on experiences in Los Angeles and prior arrest patterns in New York state.
Last summer, as National Guard members and federal troops descended upon Los Angeles, ICE arrests in Los Angeles surged to twice as high as in New York, the report found.
The report comes as local immigration attorneys contend in court filings about “indiscriminate” stops of Hispanic men in heavily immigrant neighborhoods, particularly in Corona, Queens.
Attorneys at Make the Road New York, a local chapter of an immigration advocacy group, have testified in court filings that a few of their clients were detained as “part of an operation of indiscriminate stops of Hispanic people in the Corona, Queens neighborhood.”
“As part of this sweep, Hispanic individuals are stopped, detained, questioned, and in some cases threatened based solely on their race,” attorneys wrote in one case, regarding a blind Ecuadorian man named Carlos Anibal Chalco Chango.
In that case, first reported by the New York Times, federal agents questioned and photographed Chalco Chango on Nov. 4 while he was on his way to work, before handcuffing him and detaining him, according to court filings. ICE eventually released the man, who the Times reported was deprived of his cane while in custody.
