Pair of Immigration Raids Disrupt a New Jersey Shipping Hub

A maze of warehouses winds through this New Jersey suburb, where highways assure easy access to New York City and beyond.

In Edison, thousands of immigrant workers toil in hundreds of warehouses, sorting millions of boxes arriving from nearby ports before being sent by trucks across the United States. But this summer has delivered something else.

Immigration raids a few weeks apart at two warehouses have unsettled the daily rhythms of this busy corridor, where Amazon, FedEx and UPS have a large presence. The second raid happened Wednesday and resulted in the arrests of 29 workers, among the largest sweeps in the region since President Trump took office.

Warehouses have been left short-staffed and behind schedule as detained workers were sent to immigration jails and others stopped showing up.

Business owners, who often rely on staffing agencies to verify the immigration status of workers who are hired to operate forklifts and load trucks, are alarmed.

And immigrant workers are rattled. Documented and undocumented, they power a critical cog in the country’s delivery network from Edison, an immigrant-rich township of 100,000 people a short drive from Staten Island.