🚨ICE arrests outside Union City church spark outrage

🚨The Department of Homeland Security denies the church was targeted

🚨Agents followed a vehicle for a mile before it stopped at the church, ICE said

UNION CITY — The Department of Homeland Security vehemently denies that ICE agents targeted a church on Sunday.

Video shared online shows ICE agents taking two individuals into custody outside a church on 19th Street. The detainees were taken away in separate vehicles. A DEA agent was also seen in the video.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said Monday night that the agents conducted a targeted surveillance for a mile before stopping a vehicle near the church but the church itself was not the target.

“This type of garbage is contributing to our officers facing a more than 1,300% increase in assaults against them,” McLaughlin said about the online criticism and reports.

She said agents arrested Emilio Ruiz-Esquivel, an unauthorized immigrant from El Salvador who had been issued a final order of removal from an immigration judge after he failed to show up for his immigration hearing.

They also arrested Oscar Leonel Telon Gonzalez, an unauthorized immigrant from Guatemala who illegally entered the United States.

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Lawmaker cites ‘sensitive locations’ and pushes reforms

Prior to McLaughlin’s statement, U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez, D-N.J. 8th District, said that churches used to be “sensitive locations” and off-limits to ICE agents.

“The fact this happened outside a church should enrage every single American,” Menendez told CBS New York.

In a statement with Assemblymen Gabriel Rodriguez and Larry Weinstein on Monday afternoon, Mayor Brian Stack said that some people who have been detained by ICE in the city had been on their way to work. Another was headed to the store to buy diapers for his baby.

The Democrat, who is also a state senator, expressed support for the new state portal to report ICE activity. The legislators also said they are working to support legislation to regulate ICE activity in New Jersey, including prohibiting masks during operations. Other legislation would codify the state’s Immigrant Trust Directive and protect private data from being shared.

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