In Sunday’s New York Times Metropolitan Section, Ginia Bellafante’s Big City column has the title “The Empty Storefront Crisis and the End of the American Dream”. She begins by telling the story of Sam I-Rumi, proprietor of Pet’s Emporium on Montague Street (photo, by C. Scales), who immigrated to New York in 1980 at the age of eighteen. After nine years here he opened his store on Montague; its survival for thirty years makes Ms. Bellafante describe it, and him, as “the hardiest plant in the most unforgiving weather.”Of Montague Street as a whole, Ms. Bellafante writes:“Once the prime shopping artery of an…
ICE officers are making immigrants afraid to come to court, report finds
The growing presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers outside New York courthouses is causing more immigrants to miss their court dates for fear of being detained, a new report outlined Friday. In Brooklyn – which saw the highest number of ICE courthouse arrests, with 35 in 2018 – ICE’s presence has led not only defendants, but also victims and witnesses to fear coming to court, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. “The Brooklyn Special Victims Bureau struggled to prosecute a sexual abuse case where the witness, an undocumented mother of the victim, feared cooperation…