Three men were arrested at a seafood distributor in New Jersey last week, as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Two were released within days.
David Salinas’s day started out like any other.
He was doing inventory of shellfish on the computer in an office at the Ocean Seafood Depot, where he has worked for nearly two years, when he heard loud shouting coming from the warehouse.
They opened the door to the warehouse, he said, and heard a voice asking: “Who speaks Spanish?”
The agents started separating the Spanish-speaking workers from the rest, Salinas and another employee recalled.
Agents loaded Salinas into a nondescript vehicle. He and his two colleagues were driven five miles to the Elizabeth Detention Center, an ICE facility operated by a private prison company.
On Jan. 24, Salinas’s family members and friends learned that there was hope of his release. ICE informed them he had to pay a $10,000 bond. Nobody, including Salinas, had the money on their own. So workers at Ocean Seafood Depot pooled together donations, and more than a dozen other of Salinas’s relatives and friends chipped in to come up with money for his release.
On Monday — four days after he was arrested — Salinas was allowed to leave. So was one of his co-workers, Robinson Sanchez.
He and Sanchez were given notices to appear in court, kicking off what is likely to be a lengthy legal process. Their third co-worker, Sanchez’s uncle, had overstayed his visa, and was kept in detention and placed in deportation proceedings, according to an ICE spokesperson.
