Protest in Albion speaks out against ICE arrests, ‘No Kings’
Photos by Tom Rivers
ALBION – Betty Garcia Mathewson of Albion speaks during a protest today on Main Street in Albion focused on many local people being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The protest also was timed by nationwide “No Kings” rallies speaking out against executive overreach by President Donald Trump and an erosion of democratic principles and rights in the country.
Mathewson has long been an advocate for farmworkers. She said many of those workers in Orleans County recently have been detained by ICE.
“This is not the America I grew up in,” Mathewson told a crowd of about 30 people carrying signs. “All people deserve due process.”
Mathewson said the ICE arrests are disrupting families and dividing the country, falsely blaming immigrants for economic hardships.
“The people they are taking have been our neighbors for years,” she said.
Some of the protestors had signs against “No Kings” to highlight opposition to Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and expansion of executive powers.
Gary Kent holds a sign, “Democracy Dies In Silence.”
Many of the “No Kings” rallies urged people to use early voting in the upcoming midterm elections and try to empower a new Congress to rein in the president’s powers.
Trump has expanded ICE in his second term, with ICE officers more than doubling from about 10,000 when Trump’s second term started in January 2025 to over 22,000 now. The daily ICE detention population is up from about 40,000 at the start of Trump’s second term to about 70,000 people now.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” signed in July 2025 infused tens of billions of dollars into immigration enforcement, authorizing an additional $45 billion specifically for detention through 2029.
Librada Paz of Brockport has been outspoken for many years about labor rights for farmworkers. In 2012, she received the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Award for her work to improve the lives and working conditions of farmworkers.
Paz said ICE has stepped up raids in Albion and the surrounding communities in the past two months. She said people are being picked up by ICE at the laundromat, while waiting at farm fields, and at their housing in the community.
She said they are often held at the federal detention facility in Batavia before being transfer much farther away, where it becomes more difficult to fight their cases legally because they are away from a support system.
“The citizens of Albion may not realize that a lot of people are being taken,” Paz said.
Betty Garcia Mathewson and her daughter Sienna stand near the intersection of Main Street and East Park Street to show their support for immigrants.
Garcia Mathewson said the country has long failed to update its immigration policies putting many people in vulnerable position even if they have no criminal record and years of contributing to the community.
She said many families are mixed with one spouse having legal standing to be in the country while others were kept out of the legal system.
“We are here telling the immigrants that there are people who care and are pissed off they are doing this to you,” she said about the ICE enforcement actions.
