In Puerto Rico A Rise in Detentions Creates Unease For Something Unseen Like This Before

Juan Vega, who migrated from the Dominican Republic in 2021, was detained by immigration agents in January and held for nearly two months in Miami.Credit...Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

 

By Patricia Mazzei

Reporting from San Juan, P.R.

June 5, 2025

Leer en español 

Immigration raids have been so rare in Puerto Rico that its only detention facility, in an office building next to a mall, can hold only about 20 detainees. Yet federal authorities in the U.S. territory have detained more than 500 people since President Trump took office in January.

The escalation has upset many Puerto Ricans, who are American citizens, and has underscored their uneasy relationship with Washington.

Nearly three-quarters of the detainees have hailed from one country, the Dominican Republic, which lies 80 miles west of Puerto Rico by boat. Many Dominicans share the same ethnic background, language and culture as Puerto Ricans, and the detentions of Dominicans have felt to many Puerto Ricans like an affront.

“It’s a historical aberration,” said Néstor Duprey, an associate professor of social sciences at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico. 

Generations of Dominicans, as well as some Haitians, have migrated to the Puerto Rico archipelago on rickety boats from Hispaniola island, starting families and filling critical jobs in housekeeping, home health care and construction. Other than interdictions at sea and occasional raids in the capital, San Juan, federal authorities largely avoided mass immigration enforcement on the island before now.

Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic “have stronger cultural and linguistic links than, I think, most countries in the world,” said Jorge Duany, an expert on Caribbean migration, citing their accents, Catholicism and shared love of baseball.

Federal authorities estimate that there may be about 20,000 unauthorized immigrants in Puerto Rico, which has a population of about 3.2 million. By the federal government’s own account, few of the people it has detained since January — 83 out of 509, as of Monday — have a criminal record.

“You don’t see a Mexican presence here, you don’t see a Venezuelan presence here in the narcotics world,” said Rebecca González-Ramos, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Juan. 

In San Juan, signs in Spanish say, “No human being is illegal” and “In this house we support the migrant community.”Credit...Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

Puerto Rico’s only immigration detention facility is in an office building next to a mall, and can hold about 20 detainees.Credit...Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

 

Agents have targeted immigrants with re-entry violations who had been previously deported, Ms. González-Ramos said in an interview. She added that her agents, whose jurisdiction includes the U.S. Virgin Islands, will soon enforce immigration violations against people suspected of marriage, identity or benefits fraud. Many tips coming into the office, she said, come from exes who report on their former partners’ immigration status. 

Most of her staff, which typically tackles cybercrime, drug trafficking and human smuggling, is now focused on immigration enforcement. Ms. González-Ramos was on hand last month at the famed beachfront La Concha resort, which is undergoing renovations, when agents detained 53 subcontracted workers.

Ms. González-Ramos said that Puerto Rico was no different from anywhere else in the United States where federal agencies have prioritized immigration enforcement. Unlike her counterparts in most other jurisdictions, however, she is speaking publicly, which she attributed to a news media culture in Puerto Rico that demands visibility.

“It’s important for me that the media gives out the message: If you’re here illegally, you need to self-deport, or find the mechanism to adjust,” she said, “even if that might be a message that people don’t want to hear.”

She has also emphasized that she is Puerto Rican and that one of her grandmothers was Dominican. Some of her agents are Dominican, Venezuelan or Mexican immigrants, she said. 

Federal authorities have faced criticism in Puerto Rico since the recent round of raids began on Jan. 26. A 52-year-old Dominican construction worker died at a job site in March after he fell from a roof where he had been hiding from immigration agents. He fell after the agents left, following the detentions of 13 other workers at the site; Ms. González-Ramos’s office said it did not learn of his death until May.

Some detainees and their families worry that they have been targeted for having darker skin than most Puerto Ricans, under the assumption that Dominicans are more likely than Puerto Ricans to be Black. Ms. González-Ramos denied that federal agents consider skin color or accent in deciding whom to detain.

Detainees are usually flown off the island within 72 hours, often to Miami or Laredo, Texas, before they secure a lawyer. The American Civil Liberties Union of Puerto Rico has denounced that practice. Lawyers who represent detainees pro bono may have funding only to assist residents of their county, so a detainee from Puerto Rico may have difficulty securing free representation in Miami.

“The whole process, the way it is being carried out, is abusive,” said Annette Martínez-Orabona, a lawyer and the organization’s executive director. “It’s cruel.”

After the raid at the hotel work site last month, Ms. Martínez-Orabona and two other lawyers tried to visit the island’s detention facility, which is next to a shopping mall in Guaynabo, west of San Juan. Their requests were denied. They were able to obtain a copy of the list of lawyers that is provided to detainees. All the lawyers were in Florida.  

Ms. González-Ramos, of Homeland Security Investigations, said the federal government was considering reopening a mass detention center in Aguadilla, in northwestern Puerto Rico, which was closed in 2011 after reports of poor conditions. Reopening the facility could help “strategically,” she said, given that many detainees from across the United States are deported to Central or South America or the Caribbean.

The A.C.L.U. has opposed reopening the facility, saying it was not necessary to detain people who are not criminals and that reopening the facility would represent a “moral, legal and humanitarian setback.”

Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón, a Republican who has supported Mr. Trump and won the office in November, said in January that Dominicans in Puerto Rico did not have to fear mass deportations “because we are not Mexico or Texas.” She has since said the island “cannot afford” to ignore the Trump administration’s executive orders and put federal funds for the island’s critical needs at risk.

Ms. González-Ramos said federal authorities have requested that the Puerto Rico government share data on about 6,000 driver’s licenses that have been issued to unauthorized immigrants. Puerto Rico has issued such licenses since 2013. El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest daily newspaper, reported on Wednesday that the Puerto Rico government has been providing that data to federal authorities under subpoena. 

The first raids in Barrio Obrero, a heavily Dominican area of San Juan, whose name translates to “working-class neighborhood,” began in January, leading to empty stores and high rates of school absenteeism. Since then, a support network for undocumented residents has developed. Doctors and nurses make house calls. Neighbors walk their children to school.

San Pablo Methodist Church has organized grocery deliveries. The pastor, the Rev. Nilka Marrero, is setting up a legal and counseling clinic on church property.

“This neighborhood used to be a party,” she said, with music blaring and men playing dominoes and chess in the main square. “Now, there’s mourning.”

Rebecca González-Ramos sits in her office.

Rebecca González-Ramos, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Juan.Credit...Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

 

Juan Vega, who migrated by boat from the Dominican Republic in 2021, said he always felt welcome in Puerto Rico. He had Dominican friends, worked in construction and married Iris Lázaro, who had arrived by boat from the Dominican Republic in the late 1990s and is now a U.S. citizen. Then, one Sunday morning in January, Ms. Lázaro sent him to buy an avocado. 

Mr. Vega, 48, was stopped by immigration agents outside the grocery store. Though he told them his immigration petition was pending — his wife had applied for his citizenship by marriage — they detained him anyway. He was sent to Miami, where he spent nearly two months in detention while his wife frantically tried to get him out. They went through three lawyers. She scraped together $10,000 to pay his bail.

Mr. Vega, who said he lost 23 pounds in detention, is back in Puerto Rico. He carries a printout in his wallet with the details of his appointment in immigration court next month. His wife carries a copy of her naturalization certificate.

“I feel persecuted,” said Ms. Lázaro, 50. “I don’t feel comfortable anymore.” She said that when she supported Mr. Trump last year — Puerto Ricans can only vote for president in primaries, not in the general election — she never thought he would go after people like them, who build roofs, paint houses and remove debris.

She is so angry and scared, she said, that once the couple pay the debts they accumulated during Mr. Vega’s detention — between $25,000 and $30,000, she said — she is considering leaving Puerto Rico after more than three decades. She said she would return to the Dominican Republic.