‘We Are Patriots’: Nassau Protests ICE

MERRICK, NY. — Sunrise Highway was the site of a series of protests Saturday, as Long Islanders took to the lanes and shoulders of the thoroughfare to voice their opposition to the conduct of Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). In six different locations — Merrick, Freeport, Baldwin, Rockville Centre, Lynbrook and Valley Stream — Protestors held homemade signs and chanted in unison to voice their displeasure with the federal agency.

The protest came almost a month after Alex Pretti was shot and killed by a border patrol agent and about six weeks after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, both of which took place in Minneapolis. In the weeks since both deaths, vigils have taken place across Long Island in efforts to protect immigrant neighbors and call for accountability from the embattled immigration force.

Saturday’s protest was scored by Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” and multiple entries from Rage Against The Machine, the band whose frontman, Tom Morello, headlined a Jan. 30 Concert of Solidarity and Resistance to Defend Minnesota in the wake of Good and Pretti’s deaths.

Signs were on display with a broad range of slogans, from the direct — “Hands Off Our Neighbors,” “Ice Murdered Renee & Alex,” and “We are all immigrants” — to the abstract. One sign said, “I like my neighborhood like I like my whiskey: Neat.” Another read, “the only ICE you can trust to uphold Law & Order is ICE T,” a reference to rapper Ice T's long-running role on “Law & Order: SVU.”

Other signs invoked bible verses, or simply read “ICE out.” There were also numerous American flags present along the highway, some of which flew upside down. Regardless of the words written on the poster boards, the message among protestors was clear: They wanted a change.

“I think our country and our government is at a tremendous risk. We are no longer a democracy, we’re moving towards a police state, and I think that's clear, from what you see around the country and what you've seen on Long Island,” one demonstrator in Merrick said. “And I think it's important that people have a voice. We have a First Amendment, and we’ve got to use it until we don't have it.”

The man said he had seen protest movements before, and said his participation Saturday was born out of his desire for a country he loves to be a better version of itself.

“I'm old enough to remember busing. I'm old enough to remember the civil rights movement, and the war in Vietnam, and we are patriots. But that doesn't mean we don't have a right to dissent,” he said. “We just want it to be fair. We just want it to be fair for everybody, so that's why I'm here.”

Locust Valley resident David Wright was protesting outside the Dunkin Donuts in Freeport, previously the site of a vigil in memory of Renee Good. For Wright, the demonstration Saturday was a chance to not only protest the actions of ICE, but to protest the immigration system that begat the controversial agency.

“I’m out here to protest ICE, and hopefully make our voices heard regarding what’s going on with the immigration system here…It needs to be changed drastically, and they’re getting out of hand,” Wright said. “They killed two people already, and we don’t want that to happen here, or any place else.”

When asked what he hoped might change after Saturday’s demonstration, Wright said he hoped ICE’s presence on the island might lessen, with some different approaches to immigration enforcement coming to the surface.

“I hope the changes will be ICE out of everywhere, and a different philosophy on immigration. It has to change “ Wright said. “You can’t have ‘illegal,’ whatever that means, but you can’t have people being ripped off the street, children getting taken away from their parents. That’s not the way to do it either.”

For Freeport resident Sheila McElhearn, holding a sign in front of the same Dunkin as Wright, the frustration was more specific.

“I don't want to live in a nation where it's almost a police state,” McElhearn said. “There's no accountability. The fact that the [ICE agents] are masked is crazy. I've never heard of anything like that in this country.”

When asked what she hoped might change, McElhearn said she wanted the federal agency to behave, "like a regular police force."

“I want to see ICE behave like a regular police force that doesn't mask itself,” McElhearn said.

Darien Ward, protesting with the Baldwin Democratic Club, said the protest was important as a way to protect everyone’s rights, including those of immigrants in Nassau County.

“Today is a day to sure up our own civil rights, as well as all immigrants, all the civil rights that we have. If we let this slide, it’s a slippery slope.” Ward said. “End of the day, we have to have reasonable expectations to how ICE should act.”

When asked what “reasonable behavior” looked like, Ward said he hoped the federal agency would comply with the law and

“They should be following the law like any other law enforcement agency does, if they are calling them themselves law enforcement,” Ward said. “They should not be rounding people up off the street, they should have warrants, they should not be just violating the civil rights that we have. That's the main point. We want them to understand that."

Elsewhere at the Baldwin demonstration, Cassandra Simmons of the New Hempstead Democratic Club invoked the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when explaining why she was protesting.

“King said it best: A threat to justice anywhere is a total catastrophe to justice everywhere,” Simmons said. “They're doing this today. What are they going to do tomorrow? No, we have to stop it now.”

In the half hour before Saturday’s anti-ICE protests kicked off, there was also a group of counter protestors who gathered in the Bellmore LIRR station parking lot, parking trucks emblazoned with messages in support of ICE, President Donald Trump, and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. At this parking lot gathering, the music was a little bit different: Vanilla Ice’s, “Ice Ice Baby” and the Village People’s “YMCA,” which became a fixture at Trump’s campaign rallies in 2024, played from car speakers.

Speaking in front of the counter protestors was a lineup including congressional candidate Greg Hach and Phil Grillo, a former Republican district leader in Queens who was previously arrested and sentenced to 12 months in prison for his role in the January 6 capitol riot before being pardoned by Trump at the start of his second term.

“It’s such an honor to be here,” Grillo told the crowd of counter protestors before they got in their cars to drive. The pardoned January 6th insurrectionist described the crowd of counter protestors as “real American patriots who love America, want to see America thrive.”

Hach, who’s running to unseat Tom Suozzi in New York’s 3rd congressional district, said the counter protest was serving a dual purpose.

“We’re here to back police, we’re here to back our ICE officers, but I’m also here to say, very explicitly, that we support legal immigration. Legal immigration of people who want to assimilate. People who want to come here and make America better for all of us,” Hach said.

After the speakers finished, the counter protestors got in their cars, trucks, SUVs and a retrofitted limousine.

As the ICE supporters drove west along Sunrise Highway, anti-ICE protestors at the Merrick LIRR station turned their backs on the procession. Rage Against The Machine blared out of the speakers of a parked car in the station parking lot. One woman who hadn’t turned her back to the pro-ICE crowd took a different approach: walking out into the shoulder of the road with her arms extended toward the caravan and both of her middle fingers extended.

As the last dregs of the pro-ICE counter protestors rolled by, a woman holding an anti-ICE sign stood behind a highway barricade and pointed at an American flag, flying on a truck with pro-Trump and pro-ICE messaging on it.

“That’s my flag,” she said.