Controlling the ICE machine

Today it's suspected immigrants. Who might be the next targets?

Attention these days on abductions people by the Customs and Immigration Enforcement (often with help from the U.S. Border Patrol and local cops) is laser-focused on the illegal snatching of people off public streets, in Home Depot parking lots or by crashing businesses to fish for anyone who might be in the U.S. without proper paper work.

These ICE raids certainly deserve close scrutiny. And they are getting it, along with a lot of pushback from citizens fed up with seeing neighbors and friends unceremoniously dragged away by masked men (although some ICE agents are female). These abductees largely disappear, dispatched to holding cells in other states. That’s a whole story right there.

For my Finger Lakes Times column this week, I wrote about an upstate raid of a company that seemed more a made-for-media event than a police action. ICE and local police had not asked the owner of business about his workers in the month-long run up to eventually to charging inside. My column about this sordid event is printed in its entirety at the bottom of this posting

ICE RAID IN CATO, NY

All that is depressing enough without reading a news report in the Guardian today about how academics are being targeted at UC Berkeley, investigated for anti-semitism. It smacks of McCarthyism. Plus, in a separate account, numerous individuals were fired or public excoriated for commenting about the shooting death of Charlie Kirk. Anything less than a glowing endorsement of his speeches and radical opinions are being treated as borderline treason.

Add those developments to ICE’s daytime abductions and it’s clear the authoritarian scenario we live in is getting worse by the day - all the more reason to ramp up our efforts to reclaim our democracy and continue to speak out.

Here’s Write On from the Friday, Sept. 12, 2025 Finger Lakes Times in Geneva NY

Put controls on the ICE machine

By Michael J. Fitzgerald, FLT columnist

The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid last week of the Nutrition Bar Confectioners company in the Cayuga County village of Cato, brought home for Finger Lakes' residents the controversial and too-often legally questionable tactics employed by ICE agents.

One of the Confectioners' owners reported a large squad of ICE operatives took away as many as 60 employees who had just punched in to work their shifts. He said some of the workers had documents in their vehicles - proving they are legal residents of the U.S. - but were not allowed by ICE to go fetch them. Instead, they were put into waiting vehicles and whisked away. ICE was aided by law enforcement from Cayuga and Oswego Counties,

The early morning seizures drew sharp rebukes from NY Governor Kathy Hochul and the City of Fulton's Mayor, James Rice.

“I am outraged by this morning’s ICE raids in Cato and Fulton, where more than 40 adults were seized — including parents of at least a dozen children at risk of returning from school to an empty house," Hochul told a Syracuse news outlet. "Today’s raids will not make New York safer. What they did was shatter hard-working families who are simply trying to build a life here, just like millions of immigrants before them."

Fulton's Mayor recited an oft-repeated complaint about ICE.

"This is not a Republican-versus-Democrat issue," he said. "These actions disregard the U.S. Constitution, which provides every person with the right to legal due process.”

Due process would require that the workers taken from the confectioner's plant go through a judicial hearing and review process. But as is often the case in the wake of these ICE raids, requests for information about why the plant was targeted, why specific workers were taken into custody and where they were taken remain unanswered.

The danger is obvious. If individuals claiming to be ICE representatives can waltz into any place they want, slap handcuffs on people and spirit them away to undisclosed locations, who is safe?

In the wake of this upstate NY incident, a number of citizen-led protests have been challenging the raid's legality and demanding to know where the workers are being held. These protests help the public to better understand how much these actions threaten all of us.

But it's time for Congress to get ICE to alter its playbook. In fact, way overdue.

Congress needs to reclaim its Constitutional powers when it comes to funding the government and not continue to leave spending decisions to the whims of the President.

That means reestablishing authority over budgets of agencies, including Customs and Immigration Enforcement. As a condition of funding, Congress could stipulate that ICE alter its roughshod tactics to reintroduce due process, require more professional conduct and unmask all agents. There's a lot more, but this is a minimum starting point.

If the ICE goal is to root out persons who are in the U.S. illegally, it can be done more efficiently with normal police procedures instead of a Wild West show of force like what happened in Cato. That early morning blitzkrieg had reportedly been in the works for a month. ICE could have asked the business owners at any time for information about employees' residency documents, avoiding the costly, taxpayer-funded circus that ensued.

Serious money issues are on the Congressional agenda this month. Unless Congress acts to fund the federal budget before Oct. 1, the federal government will be forced to shut down. A budget bill to keep the government going requires Democratic and GOP votes to pass - an ideal time to tie ICE funding to a set of more professional standards.

It should be the first item on the table. But not the only one.

Fitzgerald has worked at six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for two news services. He divides his time between Valois, N.Y., the San Francisco Bay area and the Pacific Northwest. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his websites at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com and michaeljfitzgerald.substack.com.