Not a Criminal
- The East Hampton Press
- Jun 15
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 24
A speaker at a local graduation ceremony highlights the immigration struggle
An especially poignant happening in Suffolk County amid the Trump administration’s campaign against immigrants came last month when honors student Sara Lopez Garcia returned — virtually — for graduation ceremonies at Suffolk County Community College, and gave a video presentation.
A year earlier, agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency raided her home in Mastic and arrested her.
As Bart Jones reported in Newsday, Garcia, with a 3.9 GPA, “told the crowd … that while she joined in celebrating their new degrees, including hers, the day was bittersweet as she was forced to watch from 2,500 miles away in South America.”
“This day brings really difficult memories for me,” Garcia, dressed in graduation regalia, said from Colombia. Of her arrest, she said: “It was one of the moments of my life when I felt fear. I was so scared and everything was uncertain. I didn’t know what would happen to me, to my family, to my future.”
She was sent to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana. She had been brought to the U.S. by her mother, also arrested, and has no criminal record.
Jones wrote that English Professor Cynthia Eaton said she nominated Garcia to speak at graduation because “she was a model of determination in the face of adversity.” Said Eaton: “She is a good thinker. She’s a good learner. She’s a good person … Everybody on our campus knew Sara’s smile. They all loved Sara. She was like a magnet … upbeat, positive.”
Jim Morgo, ex-chief deputy county executive of Suffolk County and former vice chair of the college’s board of trustees, and a teacher, said Garcia “is the perfect example of everything that’s wrong with mass deportation. There’s no distinguishing the honor students from the rapist.”
A former classmate, Roxana Perez, said: “They had her in a prison like a criminal. She’s not a criminal at all … She was the most beautiful person in the world.”
In Suffolk County, like the rest of the nation, there’s opposition to the Trump deportation program. For months, there’ve been protests here. The Town of East Hampton and, before that, East Hampton Village passed laws blocking their participation with ICE.
Following the passage of the town law, the Organización Latino American of Eastern Long Island issued a statement that “expressed deep gratitude to the many residents, advocates, law enforcement personnel, business owners, educators, workers, and community members who attended and spoke during the May 7 public hearing, sharing personal stories in support of the legislation.”
‘There’s no distinguishing the honor students from the rapist.’
OLA Executive Director Minerva Perez said: “Today, we are hopeful. Our community showed what is possible when people come together with courage and compassion. This law is about trust — making sure families feel safe calling for help, participating in civic life, and living their daily lives without fear. We are deeply grateful to everyone who shared their story and stood with us throughout this process.”
The town and village actions were followed by laws enacted by New York State that prohibit “local governments, state and local police, and state and local corrections” from entering into “agreements with the federal government that allow for state and local enforcement personnel and facilities to be used for civil immigration enforcement purposes,” and that also ban “state, local and federal officers from wearing face covering while interacting with the public,” as ICE agents do.
While those measures were under consideration, Tom Homan, ex-director of ICE and recently given the title of “border czar” by President Donald Trump, vowed that if New York passed “this ridiculous legislation,” ICE would “flood the zone. You’re going to see more ICE agents than you have ever seen before.”
Last week, he repeated that threat after the laws passed. Homan told Fox News: “You’re gonna see more ICE agents [than] you’ve ever seen. … I just reviewed an operational plan. I’m not gonna tell you exactly when it’s gonna happen, but it’s coming.”
Meanwhile, also last week in the U.S. Senate, as the online “Raw America” newsletter of John Byrne was headlined: “Here’s The Terrible Thing Republicans Funded at 5 a.m.”
He wrote that “this week, while most of the country slept, Senate Republicans endorsed ICE’s killings … Just before 5 a.m., on a 52-47 party-line vote, Republicans passed roughly $70 billion in new funding for ICE and Border Patrol. They did it in the dark, without anyone to report on it. By the time you reached for the morning news, it was done. … By most estimates, roughly $150 billion of the enforcement money Congress handed them just last year is just sitting there unspent … And Republicans piled another $70 billion on top anyway.”
As to more immigration craziness, Greg Bovino, the former Border Patrol chief who was removed in January after Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, announced that he is seeking to run for U.S. president and said: “My one and only priority is deporting the 106 million illegal immigrants who are here.”
The website Mediaite commented that this is one-third of the population of the U.S., and “the true number of illegal immigrants peaked at 14 million in 2023, according to Pew [Research Center].” It said “Bovino’s declared desire to deport 106 million people is completely impossible.”
Back to Earth and Long Island:
The Bridgehampton Museum has begun a new exhibition to run through July 5, titled “What We Carry: Memory & Migration.”
The museum in its announcement said: “Rooted in themes central to the East End and beyond, ‘What We Carry’ underscores how migration stories are embedded in local history while resonating on a global scale.” It is “co-curated,” said the museum, by Jeremy Dennis, a Shinnecock; Mark Wilson with roots in Australia; and Darius Yektai, who has Iranian and Greek roots.
The exhibition, said the museum, will be followed by presentations by East Hampton attorney Lenny Ackerman, who will discuss his book “Leibisch’s Journey,” about his father escaping horrors in Europe and getting to the U.S., and Tara Rider, a Stony Brook University history professor, will speak about her book “Journey of Hope: The Irish in New York.”
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