July 19–25, 2019 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 AWP 9
‘Rogue’ F is offi cial
MTA’s new train skips six stops in brownstone Brooklyn
ICE agents storm Sunset Park
Locals observed as immigration
El Grito
officials knocked
on the door of a house
on 56th Street. The residents
did not open the
door to the agents.
nues. The agents then headed
to another home on 56th Street
between Fifth and Sixth avenues
at about 7:30 a.m., according
to Flores.
None of the residents
opened their doors to ICE
officials, according to the
Mayor’s Office of Immigrant
Affairs. One man refused to
allow the federal agents access
to his 56th Street home
without a warrant, but the Gmen
vowed to return, according
to a Pix 11 report .
“It’s scary because it’s
my home and I know I don’t
have to open the door, but
they told me I did,” the man
told PIX 11.
The homeland security
agents also tried and failed
to raid a home in East Harlem
on Saturday, the Mayor’s
office reported. The attempted
arrests came a day
before ICE was scheduled to
sweep the country , conducting
repeated raids across 10
US sanctuary cities from last
Sunday through the end of
this week.
In preparation for the ICE
raids, the Mayor’s office and
several community organizations
have been trying to inform
residents of their rights
and to spread the word about
the ICE.
“We are working both on
EXPERT ADVICE:
What to do if ICE comes knocking
“If ICE comes to the door
in the middle of the night —
usually at 4 a.m. — you should
ask them, ‘do you have a warrant,’
and if they don’t have a
warrant you don’t have to let
them in,” said Hasan Shafiqullah,
Legal Aid Society’s chief
immigration lawyer.
Trump’s G-men attempted
to gain access to a property in
Harlem, along with two properties
in Sunset Park, and in
at least one of the Brooklyn
cases, the feds were thwarted
Connected
Creativity
By Rose Adams
Brooklyn Paper
The threat of raids by federal
immigration agents have
left Sunset Park a ghost town,
with locals heading indoors
and store owners closing up
shop as fear grips the neighborhood,
according to a local
civil rights advocate.
“The park is completely
empty,” said Dennis Flores,
the co-founder of a civil rights
organization in Sunset Park
called El Grito. “Several parts
of the neighborhood would
be packed with street vendors,
but it’s a ghost town,”
he said.
Immigration agents attempted
two raids on undocumented
residents in Sunset
Park on Saturday, neither of
which led to to an arrest, the
Mayor’s office confirmed.
The Immigrations and Customs
Enforcement officers began
the raids at about 6:30
a.m., knocking on the door of
a residence on 60th Street between
Second and Third ave-
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Kings County immigrants,
regardless of their legal status,
are protected by many of
the same rights that safeguard
U.S. citizens against harassment
by law enforcement.
As President Trump directs
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents to
conduct raids throughout the
borough, locals should seek to
arm themselves with knowledge
of their own rights, and
use the law to protect themselves
against the federal operatives.
ICE agents are not entitled
to enter your home, and must
come equipped with a warrant
signed by a federal judge in
order to invade your property,
according to a senior immigration
expert, who said that
anyone confronted by ICE at
their door should demand a
copy of the warrant and seek
to confirm its validity — before
opening their door.
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the ground and with numerous
community partners to
monitor, share, and respond to
ICE activities throughout the
five boroughs as they are reported
through multiple rapid
response hotlines,” said Bitta
Mostofi, the Commissioner
of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant
Affairs.
Immigration experts told
residents to refuse entry to immigration
agents, and that residents
should reach out to an
immigration attorney should
residents face a removal warrant
against them.
But not all city employees
plan to cooperate with
the mayor’s anti-ICE approach.
In a letter to his constituents
on July 12, Edward
Mullins, the president of the
police union Sergeants Benevolent
Association, urged cops
to “NOT leave any ICE Agent
abandoned if in need of assistance
and to stand shoulder to
shoulder with each agent so
that they too can return home
safely to their families.”
when a local man refused to
allow them entrance for lack
of a warrant, according to a
Pix 11 report .
And, while federal judges
may issue warrants at their
discretion, history has shown
that — in the case of immigration
enforcement — they
do so only rarely, according
Shafiqullah.
“It’s up to federal district
court judges whether they will
issue the order,” he said. “In
my experience, it’s been very
rare that ICE agents have a judicial
warrant, but it’s unclear
whether they will start doing
that more in the future.”
However, Shafiqullah noted
that locals should watch out
for ICE agents attempting to
mislead them by offering socalled
“administrative warrants,”
which are not signed
by a judge and do not entitle
them to enter your home. Judicial
warrants typically feature
the name of the federal
court prominently on the document,
while ICE’s administrative
warrants do not.
Other tricks employed by
ICE include telling people
they have to open the door
without a judicial warrant, or
wearing police department
jackets, the lawyer said.
“ICE uses all kinds of ruses
to gain access and get people
to cooperate with them,”
he said.
He noted that people unsure
about their immigration
status should phone the
United States Department of
Justice’s toll-free number at
(800) 898-7180 to see if they
have a removal order against
them, adding that there is no
risk in calling.
He said that even if someone
does have a removal order
against them, they should
reach out to an immigration
attorney and that there are still
options available to them.
“The fact that someone has
a final removal order doesn’t
mean that all is lost,” he said.
“They may still be entitled to
seek asylum if they can make
a credible claim of fear to returning
to their home country.”
By Aidan Graham
Brooklyn Paper
They F’n did it!
After allegedly running
a so-called “rogue” express
F train for months through
brownstone Brooklyn, transit
honchos made the controversial
service change official
on July 10, instituting limited
express service along
the Manhattan- and Coney
Island-bound line that will
skip six stops from Cobble
Hill to Windsor Terrace in
an effort to shorten commutes
for transit starved southern
Brooklynites.
Beginning in September,
four rush hour F trains — two
Manhattan-bound trains in the
morning, and two Coney Island
bound trains in the evening
— would run daily between
Jay Street-Metrotech
and Church Avenue stations,
stopping only at the Seventh
Avenue station in between.
Six Brooklyn stops — Bergen
Street, Carroll Street,
Smith-Ninth Street, Fourth
Avenue-Ninth Street, 15th
Street-Prospect Park, and
Fort Hamilton Parkway —
will be skipped.
No new trains would be
added under the current proposal
— rather, four existing
local trains would be recommissioned
to run express.
Councilman Brad Lander
(D–Park Slope), whose district
encompasses all six stations
slated to be skipped,
blasted the Transit Authority
for playing up a service
cut as an enhancement.
“This plan adds no service
whatsoever, it simply
eliminates service at six local
stations that are already
experiencing over-crowding,”
he said. “Despite the
effort to dress this up as an
improvement for some commuters,
bypassing these stations
amounts to cutting service
for thousands of other
riders.”
Lander — along with multiple
other elected leaders, including
state Sen. Brian Kavanagh
(D–Cobble Hill) and
Assemblyman Robert Carroll
(D–Windsor Terrace)
— signed a letter sent to the
MTA in March, demanding
answers to reports of F trains
routinely skipping stops with
no forewarning.
“We write to express the
frustration of our constituents
about ‘Rogue F Express’
trains, the increasingly frequent
practice of F trains bypassing
local stations,” read
the letter. “Our constituents
report missing their stops,
waiting as trains pass them
by, being late to work or home,
and feeling immensely frustrated
with erratic service.”
Kavanagh slammed the
MTA’s decision to formalize
the ‘rouge’ F and demanded
guarantees that the
new express service would
not impose delays at skipped
stops.
“It’s disappointing that the
MTA has decided to reduce
service to stations that thousands
of New Yorkers use during
peak hours,” he said in a
statement. “We will be seeking
assurances from the MTA
that the scheduled reduction in
frequency of local trains will
not be compounded by routine
disruptions in local service
at stations on our communities.”
Lessons Learned
While On The Beat
By Eric L. Adams
Protecting Homeowners
When I bought my first
house, where I still reside today,
I felt a mix of pride of fear.
Homeownership is a tremendous
privilege and responsibility – I
had scrimped and saved to get
to this point, but I knew that
many challenges, financial and
otherwise, still lay ahead.
Making a house into a home
is a process that often takes
several years. Some people
undertake ambitious floor-toceiling
renovations, while others
are comfortable with adding a
few personal touches but leaving
everything else intact. But it is a
labor of love – we make a home
because we are investing in our
future. We envision settling down,
raising a family, and growing old
in a place we call home.
Even with the effort we put into
building a home, homeowners –
particularly in Brooklyn - are under
increasing stress today. Some have
fallen behind on their mortgage
payments, others have lost their
homes altogether. Foreclosures
in Kings County last year reached
their highest level since the
housing bubble burst. And on top of
that, a new epidemic of deed fraud
has hit vulnerable homeowners
in gentrifying neighborhoods,
accelerating displacement and
leaving many homeless.
The kicker? The City may
unintentionally be playing a role.
The Third Party Transfer
program (TPT) allows the City
to foreclose on “distressed”
properties and hand them over
to developers to fix up and
rent out at affordable prices.
The program began in 1996,
and is administered through
the Department of Housing
Preservation and Development.
In theory, it sounds like a good
idea. Using all the tools at our
disposal to restore properties that
have fallen into disrepair and
increase affordable housing stock
are noble goals. But the reality is
much more complicated. Despite
the City’s best intentions, TPT
seems to be doing more harm
than good. Often, the City deems
properties “distressed” over
something as trivial as an unpaid
water bill.
In November of 2018, after
hearing from multiple people and
sitting down with stakeholders
throughout the borough that had
firsthand experience with the
program, I wrote a letter with
Council Member Robert Cornegy
to the Mayor outlining our
concerns. We communicated our
belief that TPT had unfortunately
become tainted by fraud, and that
homeowners were being stripped
of their equity without the proper
recourse. We also demanded
that the City, State, and Federal
government conduct a “full-scale,
forensic audit” into the program.
Eric L. Adams
Our concerns turned out to
be justified. In March of this
year, Brooklyn Supreme Court
Justice Mark Partnow ruled
against the City and restored
properties to six homeowners
who had their properties seized
through the TPT program. In his
decision, Justice Partnow wrote,
“While the Third Party Transfer
Program was intended to be a
beneficial program, an overly
broad and improper application
of it that results in the unfair
divestiture of equity in one’s
property cannot be permitted.”
There is still a lot of work
to be done. In July, the City
Council held a hearing on the
TPT program, and our office
submitted testimony. In the
testimony, we reiterated our call
for a full-scale investigation, and
urged the Council to pass Public
Advocate Jumaane Williams’ bill
imposing a two-year moratorium
on the program until we could
implement the necessary reforms
and strengthen oversight.
In the coming weeks and
months, we plan to roll out
an ambitious, comprehensive
agenda formulated with the input
of experts and advocates that
combats housing theft and rein
in the excesses of TPT. I am also
encouraging the Governor to sign
S1688, a bill the legislature passed
in the most recent session that
would return stolen properties
to their original owners.
After all the time spent making
a house a home, it is almost
unimaginable that it could be taken
away from you over arrears or a
bureaucratic error. Unfortunately,
that is how TPT is currently
structured. We have an obligation
to homeowners throughout
Brooklyn and the City to ensure the
homes they spend years cultivating
remain in their hands.
Eric L. Adams is borough
president of Brooklyn. He served 22
years in the New York City Police
Department (NYPD), retiring at
the rank of captain, as well as
represented District 20 in the New
York State Senate from 2006 until his
election as borough president in 2013.
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