SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — 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 Donald 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 immigrants in Puerto Rico, which has a population of about 3.2 million, who are there without legal permission. 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.
Agents have targeted immigrants with reentry violations who had been previously deported, 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. González-Ramos was on hand last month at the famed beachfront La Concha resort, which is undergoing renovations, when agents detained 53 subcontracted workers.
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 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; González-Ramos’ 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. 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 worksite last month, 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.
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 ACLU 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 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.
González-Ramos said federal authorities have requested that Puerto Rico’s government share data on about 6,000 driver’s licenses that have been issued to immigrants living there without legal permission. Puerto Rico has issued such licenses since 2013. El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest daily newspaper, reported Wednesday that Puerto Rico’s 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 residents there without legal permission 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.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2025 The New York Times
