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.
The detentions were apparently part of a broader ICE enforcement action in Montclair this week. The Montclair Pod has been told that as many as five or six people may have been taken into custody, though federal authorities have not publicly confirmed the number, their identities or the circumstances surrounding each detention.
Now, the Montclair Civil Rights Commission is condemning the enforcement actions “in the strongest possible terms” and calling on ICE to disclose who was detained, why they were taken into custody and where their cases stand.
Civil Rights Commission Demands Answers From ICE
The Montclair Civil Rights Commission is now condemning this week’s ICE enforcement activity “in the strongest possible terms,” saying federal authorities owe the community answers about what happened.
“ICE owes the people of Montclair a full explanation for their actions, and the CRC supports our elected officials in doing all they can to demand justice, fairness, and information,” the Commission said in a statement.
The CRC also confirmed that some Montclair residents detained this week are being held at Delaney Hall, the federal immigration detention center in Newark.
“The CRC is extremely concerned that some of those Montclair residents are now held at Delaney Hall, a facility the Governor has noted is already the subject of documented violence, in-custody deaths, and extremely poor conditions.”
The Commission called on ICE to respond to Township inquiries, disclose the names, charges and legal status of those detained this week and grant them immediate access to attorneys.
It also sharply criticized the methods it says have characterized immigration enforcement.
“The CRC demands an immediate end to tactics built around intimidation, indiscriminate detention, racial or ethnic profiling, unnecessary force, and secrecy. Due process matters. Probable cause matters. Judicial oversight matters. The right to protest matters. Accountability matters.”
“The right to ask a law enforcement officer who they are and under what authority they are acting matters. ICE must not be above any of those principles.”
The statement ends with a pledge to continue tracking ICE activity in Montclair and pressing local officials to respond.
“This Commission will continue to monitor these actions, document violations, and press the township to use every lawful tool available to protect its residents.”
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.
