Long Island immigrant rights activist tries to stay hot on trail of ICE

It was barely 7 a.m. on a late August Wednesday and Osman Canales was already out on a Long Island street toting his megaphone, this time in Patchogue, where he inched ever closer to ICE agents and blared his disgust as they made arrests.

"Shame on you for arresting workers," Canales shouted through a megaphone. "Separating families ... innocent workers that are being taken."

The 36-year-old Long Islander, also an immigrant from El Salvador and an American citizen, continued his verbal takedown of the heavily armed agents by way of a series of questions designed to poke at their humanity.

"Don’t you have families? Don’t you have children? What are you going to tell your children? That you’re separating families? That you left children without their parents? Shame on you," he said.

'The community is watching'

For this immigrant rights activist, fighting the battle for people who fear doing it for themselves means traversing Long Island nearly every morning — from Riverhead to Glen Cove — searching out ICE and other federal agents to let them know, as one advocate put it, "the community is watching."

Where President Donald Trump sees dangerous criminals as he vows the largest deportation campaign in the country's history, Canales said he sees workers, like his own parents so many years ago, trying to put food on the table for their families in a new country.

Along the way, he has become something akin to a folk hero in Long Island's immigrant community. While he isn’t the only one engaging in Long Island "ICE watch" patrols, as he calls them, Canales is perhaps the most well-known and prolific.

"I hold him in the highest regard just for the work he’s doing," said Richard Koubek, of the Long Island Immigrant Justice Alliance, a coalition of pro-immigrant groups. "He’s indefatigable. He doesn't shy away from controversy."

Hundreds tune in each morning to watch his Facebook live dispatches as he roams Long Island. Many followers send him reports of ICE "sightings" he posts on Facebook so immigrants know where to avoid.

Canales’ journey to activism started after he arrived in the United States from El Salvador with his parents at age 10. A naturalized U.S. citizen, he attended Walt Whitman High School in the South Huntington school district, Suffolk County Community College and SUNY Old Westbury, where he studied politics, law and economics. Canales was the first in his family to graduate from college.

Memory with a message

A memory from his time at Walt Whitman serves as a reminder that while the Trump administration's militarized approach to immigration and deportation is novel, ICE raids on Long Island are not. One day, Canales recalled, several classmates didn’t show up to school. It turned out, ICE had been conducting raids in the area and people were afraid to leave their homes.

That stuck with him — the randomness of what Canales saw then and sees now — and revealed an activist streak that still propels him.

But "what we're living now, I've never seen it before," he said. "It's very scary. A lot of us immigrated from our home countries looking for a safe place to be and to have a future."

He often rushes to the scene with hopes of capturing ICE agents as they make arrests, and telling the targeted immigrants their rights. Another goal is to ensure ICE has arrest warrants and documenting it when they don’t. He’s also on the alert for what he said has been racial profiling by the federal agents.

Some Facebook followers won’t leave home for work until they hear Canales’ daily report, like listening to radio traffic updates, he said.

"I do this because what we have seen is that these are innocent workers," he said. "They have not committed any crime. It is not a crime to be undocumented. It is a civil offense. And these are people that are being treated like criminals."

Long days

Canales goes out most days before his regular job starts at 8:30 a.m., hitting the streets as early as 5 a.m. After work ends at 4:30 p.m., he’s usually out again, often getting home as late as 8 p.m.

He was outside Huntington Hospital on Sunday. He joined protesters who gathered there after relatives of a man said the man was injured while federal immigration agents arrested him outside a Huntington Station 7-Eleven. The relative had been taken to the hospital, the man's family members said. 

Before Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown escalated in late May, with officials setting a goal of 3,000 arrests a day, Canales used to fill his gas tank once a week. Now it’s three times. He’s exhausted — but says the fight must go on.

Nadia Marin-Molina, the Nassau County-based co-executive director of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, said Canales "is doing incredible work" and has "gained a lot of trust from community members."

His work and that of others let ICE "know that the community is watching and that there is peaceful resistance against what they are trying to do," she said.

Often, masked men without identification or arrest warrants load handcuffed immigrants into unmarked vehicles and take them away, Canales noted.

"They are kidnapping people. They have no due process," he said. "They have no judicial warrant to arrest these people, and they are just racially profiling them."

A right to detain

ICE has said in statements that everyone it arrests "receives due process" and that it "doesn’t kidnap people. Everyone in ICE custody is accounted for" and can be found through an online tracking system.

The agency said it is not legally required to have a warrant to question people on the streets in "consensual encounters" and can detain them if there is "reasonable suspicion" they are here illegally.

It denied it is racially profiling people, calling the allegation "disgusting and categorically false."

While Canales has admirers, he’s also earned critics.

Advising immigrants of their rights is fine, but yelling insults at ICE agents is degrading, said Barrett Psareas, vice president of the Nassau County Civic Association.

"I think he is doing a disservice to law enforcement," Psareas said. "He has to back off. They have a job to do just like he feels he has a job to do. They don’t deserve to be insulted."

ICE said in a statement that it "respects the constitutional right to peacefully protest; however, harassing ICE officers or interfering as they are executing their official duty is against the law." It criticized "the irresponsible demonization of ICE by activists and elected officials."

Concerns about safety

Canales says he does not physically interfere with the agents’ activities, and his volunteer work is legal. Occasionally ICE backs off arresting people because of public eyewitnesses like him or other "rapid responders," he said.

On that Patchogue street last month, he shouted instructions to the people getting handcuffed and put in unmarked cars, according to a video recording on his Facebook page.

"Don’t sign anything!" he yelled in Spanish. "Don’t answer questions! Ask to talk to a lawyer!"

Amid the arrests, the immigration agents turned their attention to Canales: One approached with a large camera and filmed him.

ICE agents, he later said, "try to intimidate me" by "coming right to my face to film me. They film my car. They film the plates of my car."

His activism has triggered serious threats, prompting him to contact police, he said. Because of safety concerns, Canales asked Newsday not to publish where he lives on Long Island. He also doesn't want his job publicized for fear of repercussions.

In a statement, the Suffolk County Police Department said "officers provide a police presence at protests involving Canales to ensure safety."

Canales contacted police on June 12 about an anonymous post threatening him on social media, but he did not file a report, the department said. Canales was given the cell number of the department’s Latino liaison officer, though, and reminded to call 911 to report suspicious activity.

Helping immigrants in 'panic mode'

As he drove around Brentwood one recent morning, Canales scanned the roads looking for ICE agents. About 300 people were connected to his Facebook live page.

"They want to see how it looks outside before they go to work," he said.

Some asked him through messages to check Wicks Road in Brentwood — "that’s like a hot spot," he said.

The coast seemed clear there, he advised his Facebook followers in Spanish.

They appreciate his reports, he said, because they are terrified of being arrested, deported and, in many cases, separated from their children.

"Everybody," Canales added, "is in panic mode."

When he walks into Hispanic delis or drives around, people often recognize him, he said. Some deli owners tell him: "Here’s a free lunch."

On this day, Canales didn’t find ICE. But he would be back, he said.

"I'm exhausted, tired, overwhelmed," he said. But "I'm not going to stop."

Newsday's Peter Gill contributed to this story.