Two kitchen workers from Raymond’s, the longtime Church Street diner, were detained by federal immigration agents Wednesday morning on their way to work on Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair, according to an employee at the restaurant.
A Community Already on Edge
Wednesday’s arrests are the latest and most visible sign of something Montclair has been living with quietly for months. Earlier this year, The Montclair Pod spoke with Masiel Rodriguez-Vars, executive director of the Montclair Fund for Educational Excellence (MFEE), about how ICE’s presence was already reshaping daily life for immigrant families here, even without the large-scale raids seen in cities like Newark or Jersey City.
At the time, Rodriguez-Vars described families as “really scared, nervous and anxious,” changing how they get to work, shop for groceries, and pick up their kids. Some had stopped leaving their homes altogether, even though, as she put it, going without work means being unable to feed a family. Others had started sending only one household member out at a time, or avoiding certain stores and food pantries.
What made Montclair’s situation different from neighboring cities, she explained, wasn’t the absence of enforcement, but its shape. Rather than sweeping raids, local detentions had tended to be targeted, often catching people who were doing exactly what they’d been told to do: showing up for scheduled immigration check-ins or asylum interviews. “These are folks who really should not have ever been picked up and put in detention,” she said, adding that detainees’ legal rights were often not being honored in practice.
By the time of that conversation, six people from the Montclair community had already been detained, some for as long as six months, leaving children who hadn’t seen a parent in that same stretch of time. Wednesday’s raid included more than the two workers at Raymond’s we’re told. Potentially up to five or six individuals were taken in.
Rodriguez-Vars said the emotional toll on kids has been particularly severe, many of them internalizing a sense that they and their families are being pushed out of a country they fought hard to reach. Montclair’s school district adopted protocols in early 2025 barring ICE from entering school buildings without a judicial warrant, a distinction Rodriguez-Vars called critical, since administrative warrants don’t carry that authority.
What Comes Next
MFEE has been working on a list of concrete ways residents can support affected families, and points people toward local congregations, including The Unitarian Universalist Congregation and Union Congregational Church, that have taken on active support roles. One idea under discussion is a volunteer network to accompany immigrants to bus stops or appointments. For legal support, MFEE works with Catholic Charities in Newark, and families with kids in Montclair schools can reach out directly for referrals.
Wednesday’s detentions at Raymond’s suggest that quiet, targeted enforcement Rodriguez-Vars described earlier this year hasn’t slowed down, it’s just moved closer to daily routines most people in town see every day: getting to a job at a restaurant on Church Street. We’ll continue following this story as more details become available.
