As Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, increases its immigration arrests across the country, residents in cities and small villages – including in the Mid-Hudson Valley – have organized rapid response networks.
These groups quickly mobilize residents when immigration enforcement activities are suspected and document what they observe.
In Ulster County, the Ulster Rapid Response (URR) network is a community-based deportation defense group that mobilizes people and resources to protect immigrants from ICE. Founded in 2025, URR focuses on documenting immigration enforcement and sharing ‘know-your-rights’ information.
“Here in the Hudson Valley, the immigrant community is under a great deal of fear and stress,” said Diana Méndez, an organizer with Ulster Rapid Response. “You are afraid to do the basic things of life. You’re afraid to send your kids to school… to drive anywhere… sometimes to go to work, right?” said Méndez.
URR also organizes local actions. Organized by a coalition of local activist groups, hundreds of residents protested in Kingston on Jan. 9 to denounce the killing of Renée Nicole Good, a Minneapolis resident who was shot and killed by an ICE agent on Jan. 7. Local lawmakers including Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger and Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha were in attendance.
Méndez says they have distributed thousands of red know-your-rights cards, small bilingual cards that explain a person’s constitutional rights and protections. She hopes this will help keep residents informed to “spread information, not panic.”
She’s calling on her neighbors to look out for one another.
“I think it’s the responsibility of those of us with the privilege of more stable immigration status or being citizens to just be on the lookout,” said Méndez. “Sometimes just having our eyes open and being there can have an impact.”
You can reach the Ulster Rapid Response Hotline at 845-293-3423 or through their Instagram @ulster_rapid_response.
Please don’t publicize these groups. They get people like Rene Good killed. They think they can tell people to interfere with law enforcement and that it’s OK. That they won’t get hurt. It’s dangerous. Law enforcement is taught not to back down because there are bad people in the world and no one can tell who they are. Please don’t promote these groups. They lie to people.