More than 75 people gathered last Saturday in the parking lot of the Glen Street Long Island Rail Road station, where speakers called attention to the effects of federal immigration enforcement on local families and the fear they say has spread through immigrant communities.
The rally, organized by the Glen Cove Rapid Response Network, brought together residents and advocates amid continued concern about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. Some attendees carried signs reading “We are all immigrants.”
For Nelson Melgar, the issues discussed at the rally were deeply personal. Melgar, 36, came to Glen Cove from Honduras with his family when he was 13. He lived in the United States without legal status before receiving protection under the policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. He went on to graduate from Glen Cove High School, attend college and law school, and become a family and immigration attorney.
Melgar’s goal in speaking at the rally, he said, was “to put a face to those immigrant neighbors.”
“Glen Cove is quite literally the first place that we came to,” Melgar said. “We came here for economic reasons. “We came here to escape poverty.”
When he arrived, he said, one of his first obstacles was learning English. He taught himself, carrying a dictionary, learning a new word each day and listening to English-language music. He repeated words to himself as he walked home from school to learn how to pronounce them.
It took him a year, Melgar said, to complete his school’s English as a Second Language program and moved into honors classes.
When his classmates began considering college, he faced another barrier. Because he was undocumented, he said, financial aid was largely unavailable to him, and his family and friends questioned whether pursuing a degree made sense when his immigration status could prevent him from getting a job.
A guidance counselor encouraged him to apply to Nassau Community College where earned an associate degree before continuing his education at Hunter College, where he studied political science and international relations.
Melgar recalled working low-paying jobs, including at a car wash, and riding his bike to work before taking a lengthy bus ride from Glen Cove to NCC.
His circumstances changed after he received DACA protection, which gave him authorization to work legally in the U.S. “It did change my life,” Melgar said.
With the ability to earn better wages and spend less time working, he said, he was able to focus on his education, and got involved in community advocacy, particularly issues affecting immigrants and immigrant students.
Melgar later attended New York Law School’s evening program while working during the day. He spent four years in law school, and got involved in student government before he graduated. He now operates his own practice, focusing primarily on family law and immigration.
Despite everything DACA made possible for him, Melgar said, the program did not provide him with a path to citizenship.
At the rally, he pushed back against the association of undocumented immigrants with crime Melgar cited a 2020 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that analyzed Texas Department of Public Safety data from 2012 through 2018. Researchers found that U.S.-born citizens were more than twice as likely as undocumented immigrants to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times as likely to be arrested for drug crimes and more than four times as likely to be arrested for property crimes.
The Glen Cove Rapid Response Network said that fears surrounding immigration enforcement have increasingly affected the daily lives of immigrant residents. Nabil Azamy, of Glen Cove, a network member who emceed the rally, said the Glen Street station was chosen as its location in part because of its symbolism. The area was the site of ICE activity during an earlier surge of immigration enforcement in Nassau County last year.
“Some of the people this poem welcomes are now being treated as if they don’t belong,” Azamy said, referring to Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus,” the sonnet inscribed on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. “We’re here because they do belong. They are our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and the parents of our children’s classmates.”
The Glen Cove group is part of a larger network of volunteers across Long Island who respond to reports of ICE activity. They document what they observe, alert people nearby and distribute information about their rights.
Mike White, a Sea Cliff resident and a network member, described responding to a report of ICE activity in Glen Cove about a month before the rally. White said that volunteers photographed suspected ICE vehicles and, after confirming the agents’ presence, began alerting people in the neighborhood and distributing know-your-rights cards. “We don’t interfere,” White said. “We’re just warning the neighbors.”
White recalled warning a young woman leaving an apartment building. After looking around and seeing several vehicles that White said belonged to ICE agents, she thanked him and went back inside. Encounters like that, White said, illustrate the fear he believes immigration enforcement has created locally.
