By Patrick Markey
Near panic gripped the Irish community in Yonkers and northern parts of the Bronx last week as rumors mushroomed about a supposed upcoming INS raid on businesses there.
Last weekend, the rumors that agents were set to arrive on Monday sparked an avalanche of calls from concerned business owners to immigration centers along Katonah Avenue and in Queens.
Some residents called the Aisling Irish Center on McLean Avenue in Yonkers saying they had been told the center had been tipped off about the raid. By Thursday, the rumor mill was spinning furiously, as some employees stayed away from work for fear agents were about to arrive.
“People didn’t even ask if the raids had actually happened or not, they just believed the INS were already there,” said Sister Edna McNicolas, who works at the Yonkers center.
“If they are going to come, there is not much we can do about it. And if they do come, they’re not going to tip anyone off,” she said.
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That fear, center employees said, was a result of the recent INS operations to arrest Irish working illegally in Boston and Philadelphia. In both those incidents, immigration advocates believe, the INS were working on complaints from local residents, perhaps from within the Irish community itself.
“We’re not sure exactly where it came from, but it certainly escalated. People were fearfully of going out,” Eamonn Dornan of the Emerald Immigration Center said about last week’s rumor. The center fielded calls from several business owners and bars about the raid rumors, he said.
While the INS will only usually act on the basis of a specific complaint, and at the moment there is no reason to believe they’ll act “off their own bat,” Dornan said last week’s panic is an indication of the effect the recent raids in the Northwest have had on the Irish communities here. Fear of raids can cause a “freeze factor” with employers not hiring undocumented aliens, Dornan explained.
“While people can be careful, the kind of near panic we witnessed last week does nobody any good,” he said.