Puerto Rico's Dominican Community Terrified After Immigration Raids

SAN JUAN — Since federal authorities carried out their first immigration raid after President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting undocumented migrants for removal, members of Puerto Rico’s Dominican community, both documented and undocumented, have been terrified that they could be next.

“This has been like a cemetery since the morning,” said César Rafael Hernández, a Dominican migrant, in Plaza Antonio R. Barceló in Barrio Obrero, which has been uncharacteristically empty since the Sunday raid. Some who were still there were apprehensive. Many were waiting to pick up food and produce from a local non-profit that distributes food to those in need.

Hernández was previously stopped by federal authorities enforcing President Trump’s immigrant crackdown without his permanent residence documents on his person, but was allowed to get them from his home to prove his migratory status. He now keeps his green card, alongside his license and other migration documents, in a fanny pack ready to show them to anybody at any time. 

However, others have not been so lucky. One Dominican man who was stopped during the Sunday immigration raid —carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)— did not have his residence documents on his person and was detained alongside other undocumented migrants but was eventually let go after federal authorities were able to verify his migration status. A Haitian man spent two days detained even though he has regular migration status. Many migrants do not keep their migration documents on their person, instead choosing to safely leave them at home, because it is their main form of proving their residency status in the United States.

No Criminal Records

While both state and federal authorities have emphasized that they have been going after migrants with criminal records first, only one of her clients had a deportation order and none had criminal records, Julie Cruz Santana, an immigration lawyer who has represented three arrested migrants, claimed. She worries that all migrants are being made out as criminals even though being undocumented is a civil offense and crossing a border is a federal misdemeanor. 

“Who wants to move out of their house if they have everything,” she asked rhetorically over the phone, saying that many leave their home countries because they fear for their safety.

The logistics of where detained people are being held and where they are taken is not clear, explained Cruz Santana. She spent two days tracking down a migrant she was representing and by that time, he had already agreed to be voluntarily deported. So far, 11 migrants have agreed to voluntary deportation.

“There will always be collateral damage,” HSI director Rebecca González Ramos told El Nuevo Día when asked about detaining and arresting people with some sort of regularized migration status. Of the 47 people arrested during the raid, one was a criminal suspect in the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile, of the 1,179 people arrested on Sunday across the United States, 52% were “criminal arrests,” a senior Trump administration official told NBC News. The rest appear to be nonviolent offenders or people who have not committed any criminal offense.

The Puerto Rico Government Response

Many Dominicans were shocked once the raid took place because Governor Jenniffer González-Colón had assured the community that President Trump’s immigration executive orders were focused on the Mexico-U.S. border and not Puerto Rico, explained José Rodríguez, president of the Dominican Committee of Human Rights.

“The community trusted [that], came out into the street and then they were detained. That’s why they arrested so many people. Now she gives her back to us,” he said.

People are now living in terror, he said, and explained that migrant-heavy communities like Barrio Obrero have kept their doors closed and are afraid of going out into the streets for fear of being picked up by ICE. He believes that federal authorities were racially profiling immigrants because they were mainly going after majority-Black communities. 

After the raid and the more subtle detainments of migrants in the following days, González-Colón said Puerto Rico “cannot afford the luxury of not complying” with the executive order because it would result in cuts to federal funding it receives from the central government. The island has been obligated nearly $14 billion in 2025 alone and received over $40 billion in obligations in 2024, according to USASpending. 

“We should anticipate the worst, independently of its legality and that is why we have to educate people about their rights,” said Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández Rivera, Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative in the U.S. Congress, about the possibility of mixed-status families being deported together, as President Trump has proposed.

He said he will be asking the Mayors Association of Puerto Rico if they would consider making their municipalities “sanctuary cities” and said he would support such a measure. Hernández Rivera added that he already spoke with the mayor of Caguas, which also has a large immigrant population, and the mayor was “willing to help the community.”

Hernández Rivera, a member of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, noted that there was a difference between obstructing these types of federal operations and proactively collaborating with them. He, alongside Congressman Adriano Espaillat sent a letter to Homeland Security and ICE concerning allegations that Puerto Ricans were being indiscriminately detained during these immigration raids.

The Puerto Rico Police Department guidelines explicitly prohibit state police from asking about a person’s migration status. However, HSI does have about 90 state police assigned to it that “collaborate with investigations,” according to El Nuevo Día. Meanwhile, the mayor of San Juan has said that neither his office nor municipal police were consulted about the raid, he has assured that they will not cooperate with immigration enforcement. 

The Department of Justice is currently creating a list of victims and witnesses with undefined migration status, which the not-yet-confirmed Justice secretary was merely to “manage existing aid programs.” Similarly, the Teachers Federation of Puerto Rico denounced the education region of Bayamón is requesting information about migrant students and the designated Education Secretary said he is working on a protocol for immigration inside schools.

“There is no reason for a child’s or their families migration status to be identified,” said Annette Martínez Orabona, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Puerto Rico.

About the Author

Carlos Berríos Polanco is a journalist from Puerto Rico covering climate, conflict, and the intersection of the two.

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