In the quiet hours of early morning, volunteers patrol the streets of Staten Island. Their mission: to find officers with ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, attempting to round up undocumented immigrants.

"One of the things we are looking for is…the staging areas where ICE usually gathers and gets their briefing for the morning," Cesar Vargas said.

Vargas, an immigration reform advocate and the state's first openly undocumented lawyer, organized the patrols earlier this summer after President Donald Trump threatened a nationwide roundup of undocumented immigrants.

Vargas calls it Migra Watch, after La Migra, Spanish slag for immigration enforcement authorities.

"We're supposed to feel safe in our communities, and with ICE in our neighborhoods, ICE in our communities," Vargas said. "despite being a sanctuary city, it's making people feel very unsafe."

(Some of the volunteers for Migra Watch. Amanda Farinacci/NY1.)

Migra Watch visits sites where undocumented immigrants tend to gather or where ICE agents have operated in the past.

The patrol we joined did not come across any enforcement activity. Indeed, since Migra Watch began, there have been no known ICE raids on Staten Island.

But if the volunteers do witness an incident, they're instructed to observe simple rules:

  • Don't engage with ICE, but write down what's happening.
  • Gather information, including any ICE wrongdoing that can be used in legal proceedings
  • Inform detainees of their rights.

"You don't have to respond to their question. You don't have to respond to any documents," Vargas said. "They have no obligation to offer any type of information to the government; it's the government's job to make that case."

The watch began with just a handful of people and has now grown to attract more than 50 volunteers, residents and clergy members who say they want to help protect their undocumented neighbors.

"Just to provide that extra layer of the eyes and ears on what's happening," said Rev. Karen Jackson of Staten Island Inter-Religious Leadership.

The teams don't keep a set schedule because, like enforcement agents, they're hoping the element of surprise will work to their advantage. They say any day they don't encounter ICE is a good one, but they still want people to be prepared if they do.