A crowd of about 85 protesters gathered outside Rhode Island Hospital on Thursday afternoon in response to an alert, sent out by local activists, that federal agents tased a person they were trying to apprehend. The alert said the detainee had been taken to the hospital for their injuries.
According to Providence Mayor Brett Smiley’s office, the Providence Fire Department responded to “a call for service for an individual who had been tased.” A spokesman said he was unaware of any details regarding a federal investigation.
“Our community said they weren’t going to put up with it, and called us, and so we came to respond to try to prevent ICE from detaining this person without due process,” said Sophia Wright, an organizer with the immigrant assistance group Alliance to Mobilize our Resistance, or AMOR.
Wright went on to explain that they were alerted to the tasing of a currently unidentified man in Providence’s Dexter Park neighborhood by a community member who called into AMOR’s “defense hotline.” Wright explained that the hotline’s objective is to verify and share news on potential ICE and Department of Homeland Security activity in the community. AMOR launched the hotline in response to the first Trump administration back in 2017.
“The use of the line had really dwindled down until this February when Trump took office again and started detaining people in our community,” Wright said.
Rhode Island Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos said in a statement Thursday she and her office are “closely monitoring reports that ICE agents may be refusing a Rhode Islander their right to due process by preventing them from speaking with their lawyer.”
“We are still learning all of the facts involved in today’s events, and I cannot speak with certainty about every detail of this incident. However, there are no circumstances under which we can tolerate the erosion of the Constitution,” Matos said. “If this man is being prevented from speaking with his attorney, then I call on ICE to immediately to allow him access to counsel.”
Matos said, “The rights enshrined in our Constitution, especially the right to due process, are our only safeguard against authoritarianism.”
The protesters gathered for hours outside the hospital’s emergency room on Thursday, making sure the authorities inside could hear them.
“We’ve been here all afternoon, kind of in a holding pattern, because for hours and hours they were denying him legal counsel,” said Kate Hao, a coordinator with the Rhode Island Deportation Defense Coalition. “The update we just heard was that he has been taken into ICE custody and they basically smuggled him out of the hospital because they didn’t want to face us out here.”
Later in the day, protesters received word the detainee had been moved to a detention facility. ICE did not respond to requests for information.
Hao said local organizers plan a “immigrants unite” rally this Sunday in downtown Providence, meant to display solidarity among Rhode Island’s different immigrant communities.
