NEW YORK (RNS) — Since the start of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting and prayer, once lively group chats among New York’s West African Muslims have grown quieter. Fearing immigration enforcement operations, mosques have scaled back gatherings — even encouraging some congregations to stay home.
“Imams have warned congregants that it might be better for some people, if they have any issues with immigration status, to actually just conduct their prayers at home,” said Husein Yatabarry, executive director of the Muslim Community Network, which hosted “Know Your Rights” sessions ahead of the holy month.
Like many Muslims across the country, members of New York’s West African community say this Ramadan has been overshadowed by fear of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and rising anti-Muslim rhetoric, complicating communal traditions and nightly gatherings at mosques for tarawih prayers.
“They have to choose between their safety, their freedom, their livelihood versus their religious right to practice,” Yatabarry said.
“Black and African Muslims, we’ve been a target in the Canal Street raids,” he added, referring to ICE sweeps last October targeting street markets in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood. The operation, which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said was aimed at curbing the sale of counterfeit goods, led to the arrest of 10 West African vendors from Mali, Mauritania and Senegal. Three of them were released mid-February after federal judges deemed their arrest unlawful.
Husein Yatabarry. (Photo courtesy of Muslim Community Network)
But the raids left the community fearing they would be targeted again, said Yatabarry, and pushed West African Muslims to take greater precautions in preparation for Ramadan.
Afrikana, a Harlem-based nonprofit that serves West African and Muslim migrants, posted an advisory on its Instagram page with its recommendations for interacting with ICE agents — including seeking an interpreter and checking arrest warrants.
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At some mosques, imams have asked community members who are American citizens to serve as door ushers during congregational prayers, said Imam Ammar Abdul Rahman, the Muslim life director at Fordham University in the Bronx.
“They definitely are anxious and concerned, and so we are meeting with different faith leaders in the community to see what it is that we can do to protect our brethren,” he said. “The tension is very high. There’s a lot at stake.”
Though attendance at Friday’s jumah prayers remains high, immigrant mosques have witnessed a decline in attendance at other community and social events, with many congregants trying to avoid unnecessary outings, Abdul Rahman said.
These are crucial activities for immigrant communities, he said, which often struggle with isolation. “We try to create pockets of moments where people will come together for an event or program in the mosques,” he said, but these days “people don’t really show up to those programs.”
In the Bronx, at the Ansarudeen mosque, which welcomed hundreds of West African migrants at the peak of the city’s asylum crisis in 2022, this year’s Ramadan brought a new set of anxieties.
After ICE agents’ arrest of one of Ansarudeen’s co-leading imams, El Hadji Hady Thioub, at his home in the Bronx in November, the community has feared its members would be the target of a raid, Imam Omar Niass told Religion News Service.