A Suffolk County Community College honors student. A beloved Port Washington bagel shop manager. More than a dozen people arrested by Nassau County police for low-level offenses. 

These cases are among the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehensions sparking debate on Long Island and nationwide over which immigrants should be prioritized for deportation under President Donald Trump's crackdown on undocumented people.

Trump and his top immigration aides have repeatedly said they are focusing on deporting "the worst of the worst" — people with violent criminal convictions. But the cases on Long Island underscore a national trend: Authorities are sweeping up many immigrants without prior criminal records or with misdemeanor offenses. 

Two Long Island cases have sparked local outcry and calls for the migrants' return. Sara Lopez Garcia, a 20-year-old Suffolk County Community College honors student, was detained with her mother at their Mastic apartment in May. And Fernando Mejia, 41, the popular manager of Schmear Bagel & Cafe in Port Washington, was apprehended on the job in June. 

Neither had a prior criminal record.

At the same time, Trump’s immigration crackdown has spread to local jurisdictions such as Nassau, where the police department has started to hand individuals arrested for infractions from traffic violations to petty theft over to ICE.

Nassau police have transferred 15 people into federal custody so far this year, all of whom were arrested for nonviolent, low-level offenses, according to previously unreported data analyzed by Newsday. Suffolk does not have a similar partnership with ICE.

White House adviser Stephen Miller, speaking to reporters outside of the White House in May, defended the ramped-up effort. "On a day-to-day basis, you're going to see exponentially larger numbers of illegal aliens being arrested and removed from the interior," he said.

Trump's border czar Tom Homan told Fox News in January, shortly after accepting the job, that immigration agents would focus on detaining "public safety threats first, but no one is off the table," and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Friday news conference said the agency is focused on deporting the "worst of the worst."

When asked about the cases of detained immigrants without a criminal history, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Newsday in an email: “President Trump is keeping his promise to deport criminal illegal aliens — just this week, ICE arrested multiple pedophiles and violent criminals. While criminal illegal aliens remain the Administration's top priority, anyone who is in the country illegally is eligible for removal.”

The individuals arrested by Nassau for alleged low-level crimes were released with a ticket, then transferred into ICE custody, in line with pledges made by County Executive Bruce Blakeman and Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder.

The number of Nassau residents arrested directly by ICE — picked up from inside a bagel shop or outside Home Depot — is unknown. A spokesperson for ICE declined to disclose to Newsday how many arrests the agency has made locally. Blakeman told Newsday he hasn’t been given the number.

But Nassau police have arrested at least two undocumented immigrants for more serious crimes this year, moving to prosecute them locally rather than transfer them into ICE custody. In one case, a 20-year-old man is charged with killing his 2-month-old daughter. In another, a Queens man is charged with sex trafficking and promoting prostitution.

"Serious crimes committed in Nassau County will be prosecuted in Nassau County to ensure those who commit those serious crimes are punished," Blakeman wrote in a statement to Newsday. "When Nassau County loses custody of a serious criminal there is no guarantee that the deported individual will be prosecuted and punished."

ICE has held more than 1,400 people at an East Meadow jail since January under Nassau’s partnership with the agency, Newsday previously reported. Blakeman said the county does not know the status of those detainees, including how many are charged with non-immigration-related crimes.

While Nassau police attempted to call ICE under former President Joe Biden, the agency refused to make arrests in low-level cases. But that changed when Trump took office again, and even more so in May when Miller, an architect of Trump’s mass deportation plan, increased the nation’s arrest quota from 1,000 per day to 3,000, officials told Newsday. 

"Most people who are being apprehended right now do not have any criminal record," Ala Amoachi, an immigration attorney who represents several Long Island residents detained by ICE, told Newsday. "They’re families. They’re people who are showing up for work every day. They’re people who are filing their taxes."

When Nassau formally partnered with ICE  in February, Blakeman said: "I don’t want to distinguish between violent and nonviolent crimes ... If you’re a criminal, and you’re here illegally, we will take action."

According to Newsday’s analysis, five people transferred to ICE by Nassau officials were charged with petty theft. One woman allegedly stole cleaning liquids from her job at a Valley Stream car wash. A man from Pennsylvania allegedly shoplifted from a Target in Elmont. Two men reportedly stole from a Marshalls in Lawrence.

Two people were charged with major theft and another two for prostitution. In one case, a woman allegedly helped steal $1,500 worth of merchandise from Victoria's Secret. In another, police arrested two Queens women for "illegal massages" at a spa in Hicksville, charging them with prostitution — a crime that police and prosecutors have largely stopped pursuing, instead targeting sex traffickers and businesses that employ sex workers.

Supporters of stricter immigration laws say these low-level offenses could lead to more serious crimes, such as in the case of Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan native who entered the United States as an asylum-seeker and was later convicted of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley in 2024. Ibarra had been arrested by the NYPD in Queens on charges he endangered a minor and later was arrested but released in Athens, Georgia, on shoplifting charges before the killing.

Immigrant advocates counter that multiple studies show immigrants living in the United States without legal status are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens. And while entering the United States unlawfully is considered a crime, living here after the fact is treated as a civil violation.

About half the 15 people Nassau police transferred into ICE custody this year had an outstanding deportation warrant, meaning they lost their immigration case, missed a court hearing or overstayed their visa — giving ICE the legal authority to deport them at any time. The others did not.

Jill Snider, a retired NYPD officer and resident senior fellow for the Criminal Justice and Civil Liberties Program at center-right think tank the R Street Institute, told Newsday that the new quotas under Trump signal a stark shift from the last two decades, when police calls to ICE about low-level crimes did not lead to action.

"We’ve come to a point now where local law enforcement has to work in partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even if they don’t ideologically agree with what’s going on," Snider said.

On Capitol Hill, the images of ICE agents raiding fields, factories and parks across the country have revived calls for comprehensive immigration reform to address the reportedly 11 million immigrants living and working in the United States without legal status.

Rep. Laura Gillen (D-Rockville Centre) has signed on as a co-sponsor of the bipartisan "Dignity Act," which would create a path to legal status for certain groups of immigrants, including those who were brought to the country as minors. She told Newsday when she first met with  ICE officials after taking office in January, she was told the agency would focus on deporting those with criminal records.

But Gillen recently learned of the case of a South Side High School student who withdrew from the school because his father was deported by ICE.

"This is someone who spent all of his time in the Rockville Centre school system, had friends, built a whole life here, and is leaving," Gillen said. "There’s real fear in our community from people who are trying to do their jobs, they haven’t committed any crimes, they’re contributing to our society ... working in all kinds of different professions and paying taxes." 

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), who in 2019 proposed a bipartisan immigration reform plan, told Newsday "any reasonable person" would support deporting those who have committed violent criminal offenses. But he said people are starting to see "people they consider their friends and neighbors" getting detained.

"If they just go down this enforcement route, they're going to continue to make some bad decisions that will hurt innocent families and will be bad for the economy, because a lot of people will lose a lot of good employees," Suozzi said about the Trump administration. 

Reps. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) and Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport), who voted for the recent mega spending and tax bill that includes $170 billion in additional funding for immigration enforcement and border security, have lauded Trump’s crackdown for reducing illegal border crossings.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reported 25,228 encounters between agents and migrants nationwide in June, the lowest number ever recorded, according to the agency.

Garbarino, who has reached out to the White House about Lopez Garcia’s case, told Newsday in a statement: "The deportation of gang members, drug dealers, and criminals should be prioritized before a college student," but added immigration enforcement is a critical national security issue.

LaLota, in a statement to Newsday, wrote, "Congress must face reality: America has both an immigration crisis and an opportunity to improve our labor market and fabric of our communities. That’s why I would support legislation that offers long-term work visas — not citizenship, Medicaid, or SNAP — to the best of the best nonviolent non-citizens who are here unlawfully but are willing to come forward, pass a background check, pay a fine, and get on a taxable payroll."

Trump has at times expressed support for shielding certain worksites from immigration raids. In a June 12 Truth Social post, the president said he would revisit some of his immigration policies after hearing from agriculture and hospitality industry leaders, who told him his "very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, longtime workers away from them."

Two days later, Trump took to social media to call on ICE "to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History."

Newsday's Belisa Morillo contributed to this story.