On Tuesday morning, masked federal agents detained an individual outside the Rhode Island Superior Court on Benefit Street, according to a video of the incident reviewed by The Herald.
The seizure comes after several months of increased federal immigration enforcement in the state, which began at the start of President Trump’s second term in January.
The detained individual is a Rhode Island man, but not a student at Brown nor the Rhode Island School of Design, claimed Etta Robb ’26, an organizer with the Defense Line Against Deportation and Police Brutality. Defense Line is coordinated by the Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance, or AMOR — an organization that provides legal support to families of detained individuals.
Robb claimed that the man was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while he was with his son. Defense Line declined to share further information about the detained man.
The detainment came one day after Mayor Brett Smiley signed an executive order affirming that the Providence Police Department would not proactively collaborate with ICE or other federal immigration agencies. The order, titled “A Safe Providence for All,” followed a July incident where PPD officers assisted ICE agents, violating an existing ordinance and PPD policy that prohibited PPD officers from helping ICE efforts.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the PPD was not aware of any ICE presence in Providence at the time of the detainment, according to City Spokesperson Josh Estrella.
Celia Peña ’28, a student leader for Brown Dream Team, called the incident “heartbreaking” and recent detainments in the state “demoralizing.” Dream Team is a student group that supports undocumented students, students with undocumented relatives, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and others.
The Rhode Island Deportation Defense Coalition — a group comprised of AMOR, the Olneyville Neighborhood Association and the Party for Socialism and Liberation R.I. — has reached out to the individual’s lawyer to notify them of the detainment, according to Caroline Cordts ’28, who began working with Defense Line this summer.
Detainments outside courthouses have taken place across the country, Robb noted. “Court hearings are public record, so (ICE) can see where and when certain people are going to be,” Robb explained.
Cordts added that Defense Line has noticed a similar trend in local communities.
Before the detainment occurred on Tuesday, Defense Line had alerted community members about ICE vehicles on Benefit Street, opposite the Providence Athenaeum and just down the hill from the John D. Rockefeller Library. The group, Cordts said, maintains several “neighborhood alert channels” to notify community members when ICE is spotted in the area. The aim is to “put a ton of eyes on the situation,” she said.
But “there’s only so much that students or other folks in our community can do to patrol the courthouse,” Robb said, adding that Defense Line receives “so many calls that are half an hour late.”
She added that while Defense Line has been able to place pressure on immigration enforcement agents, she worries that these efforts may not be sustainable.
Peña said she was “a little surprised” to hear of the detainment on College Hill. While she had been aware of ICE activity in local neighborhoods with high immigrant populations, she hadn’t heard of any incidents so close to campus until Tuesday.
For Cordts, ICE presence on College Hill was also “unexpected.” Members of Defense Line were returning to campus from a patrolling shift downtown when one of their members “just happened to catch the ICE vehicles,” she said.
Robb explained that in the last month or so, there have been at least 12 instances in which the network has successfully pushed immigration enforcement out of local neighborhoods by showing up to sites of reported detainments and making their presence known to ICE agents.
We “make them know that they’re being watched, and they leave,” Robb said. “We have a proven capacity to be able to stop things like this.”
But Robb said that the detainment “potentially could have been stopped if our networks were strong enough.”
According to Cordts, the group has been “having conversations” since the Tuesday incident about reorienting their efforts. Defense Line’s College Hill neighborhood group is also hosting a meeting this Sunday to provide students with more details about the group’s organizing. Brown Dream Team, PSL R.I. and AMOR are also helping coordinate the event, Peña said.
“It’s an issue that’s in our backyard,” Cordts said. “How can we involve Brown students more in this?”
Annika Singh is The Herald’s tech chief and a metro editor from Singapore. She covers crime, justice and local politics, but mainly she stands in line for coffee and looks up answers every time she attempts a crossword.
