Despite social media postings and talk around town indicating that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had conducted raids in Saugerties and taken two individuals into custody last Friday, July 12, the agency said no such raids took place.
Following an inquiry by this newspaper, ICE press affairs officer Rachael Yong-Yow wrote in an email that “[Enforcement and Removal Operations New York] did not conduct any enforcement actions in the town of Saugerties” on July 12.
Police Chief Joe Sinagra said he thinks because members of the Department of Homeland Security were at Town Hall to prepare for an upcoming training exercise, residents could have been confused by their vehicles and jumped to conclusions.
“Most of the stuff that we do is awareness classes for police officers when it comes to improvised explosive devices, and they have training exercises like red team exercises, and they call places that sell chemicals and buy exuberant amounts of chemicals to see if the stores report,” said Sinagra this week.
“[We call] hairdressers that sell peroxide, we go to hardware stores and say, ‘We want to buy a hundred pounds of fertilizer’ — something that you wouldn’t generally see. It’s a way to test the theory behind see something say something to see if the campaign is working as intended. If not, we need to [do outreach]. There are multiple business disciplines that we do these tests on.”
Anyone with further information is urged to contact the Saugerties Times at (845) 334-8200, ext. 122, or email saugertiestimes@gmail.com.
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