The New York Times published this story from Patricia Mazzei, their Miami bureau chief, who covers both Florida and Puerto Rico, earlier this month, on why the Puerto Rico raids hit differently:

Immigration raids have been so rare in Puerto Rico that its only detention facility, in an office building next to a mall, can hold only about 20 detainees. Yet federal authorities in the U.S. territory have detained more than 500 people since President Trump took office in January. […]

Nearly three-quarters of the detainees have hailed from one country, the Dominican Republic, which lies 80 miles west of Puerto Rico by boat. Many Dominicans share the same ethnic background, language and culture as Puerto Ricans, and the detentions of Dominicans have felt to many Puerto Ricans like an affront.

“It’s a historical aberration,” said Néstor Duprey, an associate professor of social sciences at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico.

Generations of Dominicans, as well as some Haitians, have migrated to the Puerto Rico archipelago on rickety boats from Hispaniola island, starting families and filling critical jobs in housekeeping, home health care and construction. Other than interdictions at sea and occasional raids in the capital, San Juan, federal authorities largely avoided mass immigration enforcement on the island before now.

The Times interviewed Rebecca González-Ramos, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Juan, who was quick to deny that racial markers play a role in who to nab:

Federal authorities have faced criticism in Puerto Rico since the recent round of raids began on Jan. 26. A 52-year-old Dominican construction worker died at a job site in March after he fell from a roof where he had been hiding from immigration agents. He fell after the agents left, following the detentions of 13 other workers at the site; Ms. González-Ramos’s office said it did not learn of his death until May.

Some detainees and their families worry that they have been targeted for having darker skin than most Puerto Ricans, under the assumption that Dominicans are more likely than Puerto Ricans to be Black. Ms. González-Ramos denied that federal agents consider skin color or accent in deciding whom to detain.

There are folks on the island disputing her denial, calling the ICE arrests racial profiling, Caribbean Television Network reports:

Dolores Espiritusanto, a Dominican-born naturalized American citizen, lives in Barrio Obrero, one of the neighborhoods most densely populated by immigrants.

Outside her home, she admits to living in constant fear of arbitrary checks: “You think there are just a few of them? There are many,” she says, referring to ICE agents. She explains that despite her years in Puerto Rico, her accent still reveals her origins. “When I speak, people know I’m not Puerto Rican,” she says with a laugh, but the concern is real, NPR reported. […]

For José Rodriguez, president of the Dominican Human Rights Committee, there’s no doubt about it: “80% of Dominicans are Black. That’s why they’re victims of racial profiling. Because they’re Black.” He closely monitors ICE operations and reports numerous cases of individuals with legal status being arrested simply because they weren’t carrying their resident cards. Some were only released after verification. […]

Pastor Nilka Marrero, who leads a church in the Dominican neighborhood, shares her perspective. As a light-skinned Puerto Rican with blue eyes and blonde hair, she notes, “I walk through the barrio, I’ve never been stopped. Nobody even looks at me.” For her, the reality is stark: “If you’re Black, if you walk like a Dominican or look Dominican, they’ll pick you up.”

This reality forces her to have difficult conversations with her congregation. “I tell them to try to mask their origin, to speak Puerto Rican Spanish, not Dominican Spanish, to blend in a little so they won’t be noticed.” She reluctantly acknowledges the necessity of such advice. “Do you really need to style your hair that way? When you go to the grocery store, do you have to wear that headscarf?” She concludes resignedly: “I hate telling them to hide who they are, but I don’t want them to get arrested.”

NPR correspondent Adrian Florido, who covers race and identity in America, pressed González-Ramos on the issue, which she continued to deny:

NPR: I’ve been speaking with people in the Dominican community who say they feel they’re being targeted because they’re Black and because they have Dominican accents.

González-Ramos: I don’t agree with that at all. That would be very irresponsible of us to intervene with individuals just because they have a Dominican accent. I want to say maybe 80 percent of the agents that I have are from Puerto Rico. So they know that a large number of our Dominican population are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. The majority are not here without status. There’s been people detained from all sorts of countries. It’s not just Dominicans. Most of them have been Dominicans because they are the highest population here from a foreign country (About 60 percent of Puerto Rico’s foreign-born population is Dominican).

NPR: Are your agents as likely to question on the street a white person with a Puerto Rican accent?

González-Ramos: If we are looking for an individual with a final order of deportation in a group of four, all four are going to be asked the questions. It doesn’t matter if you have blue eyes and blonde hair, or if you have a Puerto Rican accent. Here in Puerto Rico, we’re of all colors. Moving on accents and moving on people’s color, first of all, it’s illegal. And second of all, it’s not the way HSI does business. We work based on intelligence and executing either arrest warrants or final orders of deportation. And everybody in that group is going to be asked, no matter how they look or how they sound.

A Puerto Rican woman in Florida, who goes by the handle Divadee25, had some thoughts about González-Ramos and a recent raid on a construction site:

I discussed how this racial profiling not only affects Dominicans, but also Afro-Puerto Ricans in an earlier post in  this series. The Minority Rights Group notes that there are still many issues around racism for Afro-Puerto Ricans:

Persistent inequalities reinforce the low social status of Afro-Puerto Ricans. Sociological studies from the 1950s onwards have suggested that Afro-Puerto Ricans are disproportionately present in deprived urban neighbourhoods, low-paid informal-sector employment and youth detention centres.

They are also affected by enduring anti-black racist attitudes deeply embedded within Puerto Rican society which although never acknowledged are nevertheless routinely practised. In Puerto Rico as in other parts of Latin America it is still common for people to be referred to by their colour hence the prevalence of terms like Negro (a) or Negrito (a) although some argue that these are really terms of endearment devoid of animosity or conscious malicious intent.

However racial profiling and stereotyping identifies Dominicans as being overwhelmingly black and ‘mulatto’ illegal foreigners, and therefore a threat, consequently the Puerto Rican authorities often arrest Afro-Puerto Ricans who have no identification, assuming them to be illegal Dominican migrants.

Coverage of the current situation in Puerto Rico from reporter Paola Nagovitch at El País in English didn’t mince words:

What for years had been the beating heart of the Dominican community in Puerto Rico is now a city under siege. At ten in the morning on a hot, idyllic May day, the streets of Barrio Obrero — located in San Juan, the capital of the U.S. territory — are nearly empty. “Before, by this time you could already hear the velloneras,” laments Pastor Nilka Marrero, who has spent over a decade serving the area’s immigrants. She’s referring to the record-playing machines in the businesses surrounding the neighborhood’s main square, once a lively gathering spot that today stands deserted. “They used to play salsa: ‘Del Barrio Obrero a la 15, un paso es…’” she sings, quoting Puerto Rican salsa artist Willie Rosario, as she taps out her own rhythm on the table. But not anymore. Months of immigration raids ordered by the Trump administration have silenced this neighborhood, where the fear of being detained or deported is overwhelming.

“This is a city under siege — you never know when they’re going to come and arrest you, sometimes without a warrant or any explanation. It’s terrifying,” adds the reverend of the San Pablo Methodist Church, located on the corner of the Antonio Barceló Plaza in Barrio Obrero. On Wednesday morning, she is coordinating a team of volunteers gathered in the congregation’s dining hall to bag food — canned vegetables, beans, various types of cookies, juices. In the afternoon, they’ll distribute the bags throughout the neighborhood, going directly to the homes of immigrants who, out of fear of being detained, have given up even going to the supermarket. Some of the volunteers say that the community is so terrified that sometimes people don’t even want to open the door of their homes to receive the food.