Immigrants on Long Island: Salvadoran mom tells Huntington Station church gathering her kids 'don't want to go nowhere' due to fear of ICE

A Salvadoran immigrant told an interfaith gathering on Wednesday that she makes her U.S.-born children carry their passports when they go out because she fears they could be detained and separated from her amid the Trump administration’s anti-immigration campaign.

Esmeralda Iglesias, a resident of Huntington Station, where the event was held in a church, said that fear is tearing through the Latino community as the government seeks to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history.

Even migrants with legal status are afraid because many are getting picked up, she said.

"They don't want to go to the store, they don't want to go nowhere, because now they (the authorities) don't respect if they have TPS, or any permit" to be here legally, she said, referring to Temporary Protected Status, which was recently canceled for some countries as a protection against deportation. "I tell my kids, if they go out, please bring your passport ... I'm feeling scared, and my heart is broken."

Iglesias was among a dozen speakers at the event at the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church held on the 77th anniversary of the signing of the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States, with Eleanor Roosevelt playing a key role, was instrumental in creating the document, which has been translated into 500 languages. It set out for the first time fundamental rights that should be universally protected.

"Look how far we as a country have fallen from the precepts that we signed and which the United Nations General Assembly adopted," Sister Janet Kinney of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood told the crowd.

"A country which once prided itself as a country of immigrants, who now by its actions vilifies them, treats them as less than, and separates parents from their children through mass deportation efforts without respect for their due process rights," she said. "What has become of us?"

President Donald Trump contends the offensive is aimed at deporting dangerous criminals who are here illegally. But various studies and media reports have shown that many of those detained have no criminal record, and that those with records were often charged with minor crimes such as traffic violations.

People "are being grabbed off the streets without due process, without the opportunity to contact their lawyer, speak with their families, challenge their arrest," said Rabbi Lina Zerbarini of Kehillath Shalom Synagogue of Cold Spring Harbor.

"It is our country, our government, democratically elected that is doing this. This is our national shame," she said.

The Rev. Lawrence Provenzano, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, said in a statement read at the event that "the hatred and cruelty that we are seeing today is among the darkest times in our history."

Two brothers from Long Island, Jose and Josue Trejo Lopez, 20 and 19, who were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a routine check-in in March and later deported to El Salvador, appeared at the event by live video feed.

They have been separated from their mother and younger brother who are in Georgia, can’t find work in El Salvador and worry about how to pay their rent there, they and event organizers said.

The U.S. government "only see us as criminals," Jose said. "But in reality we are not criminals ... We are just normal people."