ICE raids spark protests in Puerto Rico amid colonial rule

Federal Raids and Local Resistance

On a Saturday evening in November 2025, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended upon the Río Piedras neighborhood of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, according to ZNetwork. Agents yanked people’s hands behind their backs in a tussle that resulted in a pregnant woman falling to the ground. This violent operation snatched more than a dozen Dominican residents, prompting the people of Puerto Rico to demand that ICE leave the island, ZNetwork reports.

In our assessment, this brutal intervention lays bare the everyday reality of state repression under Washington's boot. Federal immigration enforcement acts as an extension of an occupying apparatus, terrorizing migrant workers while local populations are denied any real say over their lives and communities.

A Century of Colonial Extraction

The intersection of immigration enforcement, federal policing, and the broader decolonization movement cannot be understood without examining the structures of US imperial rule. As Tribune reports, the United States has ruled Puerto Rico for longer than the British Raj in India, having invaded the island in 1898. Although Puerto Ricans were granted US citizenship in 1917—conveniently making them eligible for military conscription ahead of World War One—those living in the colony remain unable to vote in elections for the legislature that exercises sovereignty over them.

Tribune notes that this democratic deficit deepened when the Obama administration responded to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis by imposing an unelected fiscal board known as PROMESA. This board controls the island's finances and deprives Puerto Rico even of the bankruptcy protection afforded to US cities. Arializa Ávila Chevalier, the candidate for New York’s 13th District, points out in Tribune that US corporations make billions on the island while half of Puerto Rican children live in poverty, all while an unelected board rather than the Puerto Rican people decides the island’s future.

Profit, War, and Plunder

Colonial domination serves clear economic and military interests for the United States. According to Tribune, Puerto Rico has functioned as a major military base and a test bed for weapons, while its economy was shaped to supply sugar, pharmaceuticals, and electrical goods using low-wage labour. In recent years, prime Caribbean coastal land has been plundered for development, pricing Puerto Ricans out of their own communities, Tribune reports.

Studies show that the gap between the wealth the island creates and the income it retains has grown since the 1960s, with around a third expatriated annually since the 1980s, according to Tribune. The outlet notes that just two years’ worth of this surplus value would be enough to clear Puerto Rico’s bond debt. As ZNetwork reports, the resistance on the ground against ICE operations in San Juan meets this multi-layered system of extraction, militarism, and colonial subjugation head-on.

This piece was generated automatically by an AI model from the sources listed below. It has not been reviewed by a human editor.

Sources

• In Puerto Rico, the People Demand “ICE, Go Home!” — ZNetwork
• Decolonise Puerto Rico — Tribune