Carmel residents concerned about a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office moving into the city are taking action.
“We are told this ICE office is administrative and for some that’s it,” City Councilor Anita Joshi said. “The decision is made, and that’s the end of it. I’m here to tell you that is not how democracy works. That is not how community works.”
Joshi spoke during a town hall on the evening of March 30 to a church packed with about 200 community members. Attendees discussed plans to boycott businesses and pressure elected officials until it’s clear they don’t want ICE in Carmel.
“We may not control every decision that is made, but we absolutely control what we tolerate,” Joshi said. “We control what we normalize. We do not accept fear as part of daily life in Carmel. We do not accept a system that operates without transparency or accountability.”
News first broke in February that ICE would be establishing a presence in Carmel. City leaders at the time had minimal information on what that meant.
At a city council meeting a few days later, Carmel Mayor Sue Finkam said ICE would be leasing a privately-owned office that it would use as overflow space for administrative personnel currently working in the ICE office on Woodland Drive in Indianapolis. She did not say where the Carmel ICE office would be.
ICE has not responded to questions from IndyStar.
A WIRED Magazine article reported that ICE is expanding across the country, leasing new space in nearly every state, mostly in or just outside of large cities. The magazine reported that Carmel’s ICE location will be at an office park on Pennsylvania Parkway, called Penn on Pkwy.
IndyStar reached out to the apparent owner and leasing manager of Penn on Pkwy for comment but did not receive a reply.
Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, a non-partisan organization that helped organize the town hall, encouraged attendees to contact their Carmel city councilors to ask them to pass a resolution stating that Carmel is not an appropriate place for an ICE office.
“(A resolution) doesn’t carry the weight of law and can’t keep ICE from coming to Carmel but it makes clear the legislative body representing the citizens of this community feels that this is inappropriate and basically the message is ICE is not welcome in Carmel,” Vaughn said.
Joshi, the lone Democrat elected to Carmel City Council, was the only elected Carmel official present for the start of the town hall. City councilor Ryan Locke arrived with just a few minutes remaining of the event, and councilor Jeff Worrell sent a statement that was read aloud.
“While the federal government, and not the city council, decides whether an ICE office opens, the city does control zoning, building permits and how local services interact with any federal facility,” Worrell said in the statement. “I will continue to use every tool available to ensure full public disclosure of the offices’ intended activities.”
Worrell, in the statement, said he would hold community briefings for transparency on the ICE office and collaborate with nonprofit organizations to protect rights and family unity.
Maaike Alejandra Mora, a 16-year-old Carmel High School student, helped organize her classmates to protest ICE earlier this year. She told town hall attendees that her family has experienced real fear and have been directly impacted by an encounter with ICE.
“Undocumented immigrants are not animals,” Mora said. “Regardless of their status they should not be left in a cell in critical condition with no medical care or a stable environment. They should be able to have fair, due process. They should be able to have a standard phone call and be exposed to basic human decency.”
Sharon Cruz, an Indianapolis attorney and former Carmel resident, told town hall attendees she pivoted from her career as a prosecutor to immigration law after the 2024 election. Cruz made the career change after she started getting calls from the Philippines Cultural Community Center in Indianapolis for help with immigration law cases.
“ICE has not been a responsible law enforcement partner in the communities that they enter,” Cruz said. “I say this as a former prosecutor. I want our communities to be able to trust our law enforcement partners and they are not going to be able to do that if they are under constant threat of deportation.”
During a comments and questions portion of the town hall attendees emphasized the importance of voting in upcoming elections and joining protests. One attendee suggested crowdfunding to purchase the office space ICE plans to lease before the agency can move into Carmel.
“We need to figure out how we can coordinate, and it doesn’t have to be a political thing because I know there are Republicans who are disgusted by this,” said Josh Lowry, chair of the Hamilton County Democratic Party. “We need to protest, we need to boycott, we need to make it as public as possible so that there’s an economic reason for (owners of the office space) to not to want to rent to this agency.”
No one at the town hall spoke in support of ICE or in support of the agency moving into an office in Carmel.
Contact Jake Allen at jake.allen@indystar.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @Jake_Allen19. Click here to get Hamilton County news sent straight to your inbox and subscribe to the IndyStar North newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: ‘ICE is not welcome in Carmel’: Concerned residents rally at town hall against ICE office
Reporting by Jake Allen, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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