NEW YORK, NEW YORK – AUGUST 10: Students, activists and area politicians gather in Corona, Queens, a neighborhood with a significant immigrant population, to denounce the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arresting people in the area on August 10, 2026, in New York City. ICE actions have increased throughout New York City in recent months as the Trump administration continues to press for a surge in arrests in neighborhoods throughout the country with high numbers of immigrants.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Key TakeawaysAssemblymember Steven Raga and City Council Member Julie Won say ICE has targeted a stretch of Woodside near 37th Avenue and 69th Street and General Hart Playground in recent days, including Saturday, Aug. 29.The Woodside incidents follow a monthlong wave of reported ICE activity across western Queens, including rallies at Corona Plaza on Aug. 10 and in East Elmhurst on Aug. 17, plus a reported 14 ICE pickups along Astoria and Northern boulevards in July, up from two in June.DHS says its “Operation Rotten Apple” led to 2,197 arrests statewide between July 27 and Aug. 29; the most current nationwide ICE data shows fewer than a third of people in detention have any criminal conviction.’A Deliberate Campaign of Fear,’ Officials Say
Federal agents pulled immigrant residents off Woodside sidewalks in broad daylight this week, and the neighborhood’s own state representative says the pattern wasn’t accidental. Assemblymember Steven Raga and City Council Member Julie Won say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been running what Raga called a “deliberate campaign of fear and intimidation” through a heavily immigrant, Latino stretch of western Queens, according to QNS.
Raga’s office says it has fielded multiple accounts this week of neighbors being pulled off Woodside streets by agents believed to be with ICE, with several incidents clustered near 37th Avenue and 69th Street, and a separate encounter reported Saturday, Aug. 29, at General Hart Playground. The statement — echoed almost word for word by Won, according to Politics NY — argues that no family should have to worry a trip to work, school or the park could end with a relative taken into custody. Raga’s office says it is still gathering details on the incidents.
A Month of Rallies Across Western Queens
Woodside is the latest stop on a wave of alarm that has been moving through immigrant Queens for weeks. Nine days before Raga’s statement, Assemblymember Larinda Hooks led a rally at Barclay Triangle in East Elmhurst, joined by Assembly Members Catalina Cruz, Jessica González-Rojas, Alicia Hyndman and Clyde Vanel, telling the crowd that ICE activity had surged in the surrounding blocks. “This is not enforcement. This is cruelty and this is an abuse of power,” Hooks said, according to QNS. Hooks pointed to 14 reported ICE pickups along Astoria and Northern boulevards in July, compared with just two the month before.
That Aug. 17 rally came a week after residents and advocacy groups gathered at Corona Plaza to protest what they described as near-daily detentions across Elmhurst, East Elmhurst, College Point and Corona, according to amNewYork. Both demonstrations trace back to the same underlying trend: citywide ICE sightings roughly doubled in July, with East Elmhurst logging the heaviest concentration of encounters, based on tracking by the volunteer network Hands Off NYC, cited by amNewYork. Queens Rep. Grace Meng is now pushing federal legislation aimed at adding oversight to the agency’s tactics. “This is just scaring our families,” she told the outlet.
Washington’s Counter-Narrative: ‘Operation Rotten Apple’
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin offered a very different account at a Sept. 1 press conference, announcing that a five-week sweep dubbed “Operation Rotten Apple” had produced 2,197 arrests across New York state between July 27 and Aug. 29, according to PIX11. “These individuals should never have been on our streets,” Mullin said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul pushed back on that framing, telling reporters that after a year and a half of stepped-up federal enforcement, agents should have already located “the worst of the worst and the baddest of the bad,” according to ABC7 New York.
What the Numbers Actually Show
DHS has framed the operation as a public-safety win, highlighting arrests tied to violent convictions. But the agency’s own nationwide detention figures complicate the “worst of the worst” framing: as of July 11, roughly 71% of people held in ICE custody had no criminal conviction of any kind, meaning fewer than a third did, according to data compiled by Syracuse University’s TRAC project. DHS has not released a conviction breakdown specific to Operation Rotten Apple, so the New York numbers may not mirror the national ones exactly — but they do mean the national picture DHS points to looks different from the one it described in Queens.
Corona and Jackson Heights Already Feel the Impact
The fallout isn’t confined to sidewalks and headlines. Vendors and organizers at Corona Plaza — the same elevated-train corridor that runs north into Woodside — say the square has visibly thinned out as fear keeps shoppers and day laborers home, according to NY1. “All of these raids are causing so much fear and trauma in our communities,” Make the Road New York’s Luba Cortes told the outlet, describing Corona as the neighborhood where the group has tracked the most enforcement activity.
Nearby in Jackson Heights, commercial blocks along Roosevelt Avenue have shown a similar pattern, with business owners describing a warier daily routine, per spring reporting from Documented NY referenced by HelpNewYork. The pattern isn’t unique to Queens — researchers tracking enforcement sweeps elsewhere in the country have found similar surges can depress sales at Latino-owned businesses for months, sometimes long enough to force closures, according to Marketplace.
Know Your Rights: Where to Get Help
New Yorkers don’t have to face an ICE encounter without information. The city’s ActionNYC program offers free, confidential immigration legal help in any language, regardless of status; appointments can be made by calling 800-354-0365 or by calling 311 and asking for “ActionNYC,” per the city’s official resource guide for immigrant New Yorkers. The state’s New Americans Hotline, reachable at 800-566-7636, offers similar multilingual referrals. Make the Road New York, which took part in both the Corona and East Elmhurst demonstrations, also provides know-your-rights information and legal referrals through its Queens offices. The baseline protection holds at any door: agents need a signed judicial warrant to enter a home, and no one is required to answer questions about immigration status without a lawyer present.
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