Three weeks ago, an ICE raid in Viejo San Juan jolted the city. In full view of locals and tourists, several masked agents in unmarked cars detained migrant employees from the Argentine restaurant El Viejo Almacén, just steps from La Fortaleza, the governor’s residence.
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Neighbors in my chat group were stunned. It was not an isolated case. Stories of similar scenes are sweeping Puerto Rico—raids without court orders, marked by deception and racial profiling, often regardless of legal status. Federal figures show that of the nearly 1,000 immigrants detained across the archipelago, fewer than 12% have criminal records, and most of those detained are minors. With about 90,000 immigrant residents, more than 20,000 undocumented, families are torn apart and neighborhoods live in fear.
This surge in arrests is the direct impact of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, which hit Puerto Rico with devastating force, increasing detentions five-fold. In Bayamón, ICE agents stopped a Dominican fruit vendor at a traffic light and hauled him away, leaving his dog tied and abandoned—an act his lawyer called a violation of basic decency. In Carolina, Bad Bunny posted a video of agents forcing people into unmarked cars, while in other raids officers pointed weapons. In Barrio Obrero, where the first raids began, parents now fear sending children to school and residents avoid clinics and supermarkets. These raids unravel Puerto Rico’s society.
Migrants have long been part of Puerto Rico’s culture and history. Dominicans, Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans, and others have been arriving for decades, enriching the archipelago’s culture and economy. Many of them risk their lives, chasing the same dream that pushes Puerto Ricans to move to the mainland United States: the hope of work, safety, and better life. And yet, for their labor, they are repaid with fear and betrayal.
It wasn’t always this way. In 2013, Governor Alejandro García Padilla signed a law allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, and by 2015 they were also able to open bank accounts, recognizing that equality and stability mattered more than papers. Celebrated as progressive, these measures also created a database of immigrant drivers. Today, ICE uses that very database—shared by Puerto Rico’s current government who has been cooperating—to identify and arrest migrants. Governor Jenniffer González defended the practice, saying, “We cannot choose which laws we are going to follow.” Unlike Puerto Rico, cities such as Boston, Colorado, Chicago and many others have chosen not to cooperate, adopting sanctuary policies to protect immigrants like the city hall of the western town of Aguadilla did, but the local government later withdrew federal funds after declaring itself a sanctuary city.
For many, this cooperation felt like a betrayal. The Puerto Rican government had promised immigrant communities that they would not be targeted. Municipal offices were supposed to be safe spaces. Yet in Cabo Rojo, a Dominican woman disappeared after seeking municipal services, only to end up in ICE custody. In Ocean Park, residents were forced to form a human shield to prevent federal agents from snatching workers at a construction site. What is happening is not simply the enforcement of U.S. law; it is the active participation of local authorities in a policy that criminalizes and dehumanizes people who came here to contribute.
Puerto Rico’s colonial status makes the situation more painful. With no voting representation in Congress, the archipelago has no formal say in federal immigration policy. The White House dictates; Puerto Rico enforces. Yet to claim there is no choice is misleading. Local governments could refuse to cooperate and resist acting as ICE’s outstretched hand. Instead, officials reinforce colonial subordination while deepening the vulnerability of immigrant communities.
At the heart of this debate is the question of solidarity. Puerto Ricans must ask ourselves: do we see Dominican, Haitian, Cuban, Venezuelan, and other migrants as outsiders, or as part of a broader Caribbean family? To stand with them is not just an act of compassion—it is an act of resistance. It is resistance against the colonial system that demands obedience to laws we had no part in creating. It is resistance against racialized exclusion that paints Black and Brown migrants as threats. And it is resistance against the broader war on immigrants that has now reached our shores.
Solidarity is also an affirmation of history. Before 1492, the Caribbean was a space of constant movement and exchange. The Taíno of Borikén, who had migrated from the Orinoco, traded with the Warao of Florida, with crops and knowledge flowing freely across the sea. Avocado, cassava, sweet potatoes, and maize traveled between islands long before Europeans divided the waters into empires. With European colonization came African and Asian communities, and under control by the United States migration has continued. Still today, migrants arrive, proving the Caribbean was never a land of walls but of bridges, kinship, and mutual survival.
There are already powerful examples of solidarity. In Ocean Park, when ICE agents arrived, neighbors locked arms to block them. Churches have offered food, shelter, and legal aid. The ACLU of Puerto Rico, alongside Amnesty International, Kilómetro 0, and Comuna Caribe, launched the campaign migrar no es un crimen, or “migrating is not a crime,” to denounce institutional violence and provide tools for community defense. Through sacalacarapr.com, Puerto Ricans can access guides, legal resources, and strategies to support immigrant neighbors. Protesters have marched with banners declaring, “Yo defiendo a mis hermanos.” These actions reject complicity and affirm justice.
Critics argue that Puerto Rico has no choice, that federal law leaves no room for resistance. But history proves otherwise. Sanctuary cities across the United States have limited cooperation with ICE, insisting that community trust and safety matter more than punitive enforcement. To claim helplessness is to embrace colonial subjugation, to accept that Puerto Rico can only obey. In reality, refusing to participate in raids would be both legally possible and morally necessary.
Some Puerto Ricans also argue that undocumented immigrants are a burden, straining public services or competing for jobs. But this framing ignores reality. Immigrants in Puerto Rico work in sectors often abandoned by others. They pay rent, buy food, and pay taxes through sales and consumption. Far from draining resources, they help sustain the economy. And even if they did not, their humanity would not be negotiable. No amount of economic contribution should determine whether a person deserves dignity, safety, and the chance to build a life.
Aimé Césaire warned that colonization “works to decivilize” not just the colonized but the colonizer as well.
Puerto Rico faces a choice. We can remain an obedient colonial outpost, handing our neighbors to American ICE agents, or we can stand with them, recognizing them as part of the same Caribbean family that has shaped us for centuries. Solidarity here is not symbolic. It is survival. It is resistance. And it is memory—memory of a time when the sea was not a wall but a bridge.
Puerto Ricans know what it means to migrate. We know the hope and heartbreak of leaving home in search of better futures. To turn our backs on those who come here seeking the same is to betray not only them but ourselves. Amid the raids, the handcuffs, and the families living in fear, we must remember who we are: a Caribbean people, forged in movement and connection. To defend our immigrant neighbors is to defend our own history, our own dignity, our own humanity. If we say we are one Caribbean, now is the time to prove it.