A mother and her three children who were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents as part of a sweep in the tiny hometown of the Trump administration’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, have been released following days of outcry from community figures, advocates and protesters calling for their freedom.
Over the weekend, about a thousand protesters marched outside of Homan’s home in a small New York village, calling for the release of the family after they were detained last month. The family has not been named or spoken out publicly.
Jaime Cook, principal of the Sackets Harbor school district where the children reportedly attended class, wrote a letter to the community pleading for the students’ safe return.
She described the students as having “no ties to criminal activity” and that they are “loved in their classrooms”.
“We are in shock,” the letter reads. “And it is that shared shock that has unified our community in the call for our students’ release.”
The family was taken into custody in a 27 March raid at a large dairy farm in the remote town that has a population of fewer than 1,500 in Jefferson county in north-western New York state, on Lake Ontario near the Canadian border. The target of the raid was reportedly a South African national charged with trafficking in child sexual abuse material, whom they apprehended, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents said.