When ICE came for Jeremy, Syracuse’s underground railroad helped him escape the country

Rick Reina had a strange feeling Tuesday morning about the SUVs parked outside the Liverpool home he shares with his husband, Jeremy Dottin-Reina, a French citizen with an expired visa.

Still, they packed their lunch, put their two big dogs in the car and drove to work at the Hawley Green gift shop, where they have been selling handmade soaps for more than a decade.

The unmarked cars followed, even when Rick took some intentionally odd turns.

Rick pulled into the parking lot next to Syracuse Soapworks, and Jeremy hustled. He unlocked the door and pulled it shut moments before ICE officers approached from the other side of the building, their doorbell camera shows.

“He was one or two arm lengths away from being grabbed and put in plastic cuffs, thrown in the back of the car and taken to Batavia,” Rick said two days later, still wearing the same clothes he wore to work on Tuesday.

Rick flipped through the doorbell footage on his phone. It shows ICE officers milling around the parking lot, waving a piece of paper they claimed to be a warrant. After they left, the camera shows neighbors, friends, activists and elected officials showing up to surround the building and strategize an escape.

What would happen over the next 48 hours is the story of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement and the pushback from a community that celebrates its 200-year-old history as a human railroad to Canada.

Friends, activists, politicians and a network of total strangers collaborated to keep one Syracuse husband from the clutches of an increasingly heartless federal government. They used misdirection the way a smuggler might. There were decoy cars. A chain of human shields. Movement under darkness. And finally, sympathetic Canadians. They found refuge after hours of frantic planning.

Since Trump took office in January, ICE has arrested dozens of people in Central New York – farm workers, Chinese restaurant owners, a woman with the bad luck to crash into a deer and ask for help. In recent months, ICE has detained asylum seekers when they come to check in with the federal government.

“They’re going after the visible, which would be us, and the vulnerable,” Rick said. “The people that just can’t defend themselves. They do not have the support that we had. We are so so grateful.”

Jeremy has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. He spends his days walking the dogs, weaving textiles and making labels for bars of soap.

Jeremy’s “fiancé” visa expired along with his first marriage. Getting a second visa and continuing his life with Rick would have required a long absence from the U.S. and a risk that the country would not continue to recognize gay marriage, Rick said.

So Jeremy chose to stay underground, at least on paper. He had no job. No driver’s license. No presence on social media.

“We could not get on a bus. We could not get on a plane. We could not get on a train,” Rick said. “So we traveled by vehicle and we didn’t go very far.”

No. We’re not going.

On Tuesday, Jeremy would have to go far.

With ICE on his tail, Jeremy locked himself in an old apartment under construction above the gift shop and soap production area. It smells like lemongrass.

Rick locked the dogs in the car and walked toward the building. He saw flashing lights on the grill of a vehicle and an ICE agent waving a piece of paper. The agent asked Rick if he knew Jeremy and if he could go get him.

“If we don’t get him today, we’ll get him tomorrow or later in the week,” Rick said the man told him.

Rick went inside and locked the door.

“We just decided no. No. We’re not going down there,” he said.

He couldn’t see the ICE officers from inside the building. It’s an old liquor store built with few windows for safety. The agents left.

That’s when the neighborhood showed up.

Rick called Michael DeSalvo, who runs Hairanoia salon across the street. DeSalvo has a long history of helping people in the spirit of the Catholic Worker movement – starting with AIDS patients and then with immigrants and victims of violence.

DeSalvo posted a bright red message to his 4,300 Facebook friends. It said, “People please get here to Hairanoia immediately ice is trying to take someone across from Hairanoia.”

DeSalvo got dressed and ran across the street. He kept calling people. Activists from the Syracuse Immigrant and Refugee Defense Network arrived. Gay rights activists showed up. City Auditor Alexander Marion came. State Sen. Rachel May shared DeSalvo’s Facebook post and said, “I’m here, too.”

“There’s strength in numbers, so ICE, typically, if they’re going after one person and there’s a massive amount of support around them, they’re going to back off,” DeSalvo said. “People came to use their bodies, to keep their bodies in the way.”

Then, DeSalvo said, he came up with a plan to get Jeremy out of there.

People offered to help Jeremy get to a safe house.

Rick was adamant from the start. His husband was not going to be handcuffed and taken to an ICE detention center like Batavia, where he could wait for months for a hearing. They have read the stories of isolation and mistreatment.

“My thing was to get him out of the country,” he said. “And the time to do it is now.”

The Syracuse airport was not an option. There is no direct flight from Syracuse to any foreign country. And any layover at a major U.S. flight hub would be risky.

May came into the apartment above the store to help and offer moral support. May is a Democrat in a Democratic state. She is in no position to negotiate with ICE.

“I can’t and I don’t know who can. I don’t think the governor can,” she said. “The kinds of things we were spitballing were, could they get a state police escort to the border? Because the fear was, as soon as he went outside, that he might get picked up.”

May said she asked the governor’s office for an escort.

At the same time, lawyers on the phone with Rick and Jeremy said they thought that wouldn’t be necessary. If he could get to the border unnoticed, he could use his French passport to cross.

There was no time to pack for a weekend, much less forever. Jeremy said goodbye to the dogs – Cooper and Jack.

There was no time to say goodbye to friends.

He will never see his aging cat again.

“He just packed a little bag and we left,” Rick said.

The rescue

Outside, activists also had ideas. And opinions.

Law enforcement operations are not a cheap endeavor for the federal government, said Marion, the city auditor.

“We are sending vans full of masked, armed federal agents to rip away the soap guy out of his house for something that could probably have been an email or a letter,” he said. “This is a paperwork problem, not a vans-of-agents kind of problem.”

As many as 30 people came in and out from about 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.

As night fell, they came up with a plan to get Jeremy safely out of the building.

About a dozen people formed a human chain to hide Jeremy as he slipped out of the building and got into a car.

“I will never forget the look on his face as he was leaving and getting into the car,” said Kevin Bailey, an activist for the gay community. “He looked absolutely drained of any color and completely terrified.”

Then, the activists launched the second part of their plan.

Eight other cars left at the same time, scattered in different directions. After a short drive, the car with Jeremy pulled into a parking lot and he hopped into a different car.

Other drivers escorted the car with Jeremy and Rick up Interstate 81 to the Thousand Islands and the Canadian border.

It was not yet time to breathe.

Rick and Jeremy decided to take a chance: They told the truth to Canadian Customs officials.

“We figured, OK, we’re not going to bullshit our way out of this,” Rick said. “We have to be honest. And when we were, the agent said, ‘I understand.’ ”

Canadian agents were sympathetic. But they wanted proof that Jeremy was not going to stay in Canada. The men had booked a hotel in Ottawa. But customs agents wanted to see a ticket for a one-way, non-refundable flight out of Canada, Rick said.

“What if I book an airline ticket right now?” Rick asked.

The agent said yes.

So Rick left the building on the season’s first snow day and searched his phone for a flight to France.

“I was nervous, shaking, trying to do this with a sketchy signal,” Rick said. “I just grabbed the first one I could find. I just wanted a flight.”

It cost $1,300 and left Wednesday, from Ottawa to Toronto to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. He typed in his credit card number, got some kind of code to punch in and it was declined. He called the credit card company to sort it out.

“You can’t imagine how horrible this was and with all the pressure,” he said. “Without this, we don’t know if he gets sent back across the border, with his hand ties and off to Batavia.”

It worked. They got the flight, a pass through the border and a restless night at an Ottawa hotel. The next day, Jeremy boarded the flight.

Rick watched the little plane symbol on the Flight Aware app as Jeremy’s flight hopped to Toronto. Jeremy was the last person to board the connection to France. Rick had begged the airline to wait for him.

On Thursday, a friend who accompanied the couple to Canada drove Rick back to his car, still parked at the store in Syracuse.

Home, alone

Rick’s phone buzzed Thursday afternoon as he recounted the story for syracuse.com. It was Jeremy. He had arrived at his sister’s home in France – a place he had not visited in more than 20 years.

“I love you,” Rick said into the phone.

It was late at night in France.

“He’s crying. He’s all alone,” Rick said. “Which is what I’ll be doing when I get home, except I have the two dogs.”

Rick looked around his shop. It is filled with handmade pottery, glass, knit scarves and holiday ornaments. Friends and other artists have already offered to work there through the holidays.

He could hear a friend’s voice leaving a message on an answering machine: “I love you. I really do love you guys.”

Rick said he plans to sell everything – the soap, the building, their home and most of their belongings. He has already started the paperwork he hopes will allow France to recognize their marriage and extend to him a long-term visa.

The fear has subsided now that Jeremy is safe, he said. Now, there is shock. And thinking that goes around and around about what could have happened.

“I’m going to talk about race a little bit,” Rick said.

The couple always knew this could happen, he said. But everyone would say not to worry. Jeremy is white.

Other people who are not white and have fled persecution in their home countries are in a much more difficult situation, the men and their friends acknowledge. Those undocumented immigrants do not have friends with the governor’s office in their contacts. They cannot reach a member of the state Senate so easily. They do not have the money for a lawyer or a quick flight to France.

They also cannot risk telling their story. That’s why Rick and Jeremy will keep telling theirs.

“It is not the hardened criminals that they are going after,” Rick said. “It’s important that people know this. They need to know that these are their friends and neighbors that this is happening to.”