‘We are hiding on the roof. I love you.’ An ICE raid in Montco has left families bereft after 14 were arrested.

Erika Moreno was awakened by a call from her partner, José Vázquez, phoning from his job at the Super Gigante food market in West Norriton.

“ICE is here,” he whispered. “We are hiding on the roof. I love you.”

Then the line clicked off.

Inside the popular market near Norristown, shortly after 8 a.m. on July 16, undocumented workers were frantically searching for places to conceal themselves.

Some hid within stacks of empty boxes, while others attempted to crawl under shelving units. Those who made it to the roof lay flat and turned off their cell phones. Below them, more than a dozen Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had swarmed the store.

At home in nearby Norristown, Moreno paced the couple’s bedroom. Her sister-in-law phoned — video on social media showed a ladder set against a market wall and ICE agents taking people off the roof.

“I felt myself dying,” Moreno said.

She quickly found other footage that showed Vázquez, 30, her partner of nearly three years, handcuffed and lined up with his coworkers. He looked defeated, she said, as if hope had fled.

“I was so scared they would send him with the gators. I kept praying, ‘Please not Alligator Alcatraz,’” Moreno said in an interview with The Inquirer.

Vázquez, who worked in the store’s fruits-and-vegetables section, is being held not at the federal government’s new Florida facility in the Everglades, but at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.

The ICE operation in tiny West Norriton that saw 14 workers arrested on immigration violations came amid an agency surge in communities across Montgomery County. All those arrested were taken to the Philadelphia detention center, family members said.

Video posted by the immigration-advocacy group Project Libertad showed rifle-carrying federal agents in masks, helmets, and military gear. They were confronted by onlookers who shouted “Nazis” and “Gestapo” and asked the officers if they tell their children what they do for a living.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, who earlier briefly described the circumstances of the raid, did not respond to requests for additional comment — including whether charges have been placed against the store owners for hiring undocumented workers.

Agents who conducted the operation were accompanied by others from Homeland Security Investigations and the IRS.

Penalties for hiring undocumented people can be steep, including huge fines and potential jail time, but business owners are not often punished. Renewed efforts to reach the head of the company that owns the market were unsuccessful this week.

This week reports of ICE activity and arrests continued to swirl across Montgomery County, named by President Donald Trump’s administration in May to a long list of so-called sanctuary jurisdictions.

Trump said he would withhold federal funding from those places to compel them to help enforce federal immigration laws.

The Montgomery County seat of Norristown has been an ICE target, with more than 20 people arrested there during the end of May and beginning of June.

Inquirer interviews with three family members of workers taken into custody during the July 16 raid offered new details of what occurred at the supermarket. And they revealed that roughly three workers had been arrested by ICE at the store during two actions in prior weeks.

At the market this week, the impact of the raid hung heavy.

Foot traffic had dwindled, with many shoppers afraid of encountering ICE agents. One out of three residents of nearby Norristown is Latino, and the market draws heavily from that community.

A help-wanted sign hung at a market exit.

“We are hiring,” the notice said in Spanish. “Open positions.”

Longtime customer Noe Fonseca, 40, walked out of the market with bulging grocery bags in hand, thinking about the workers who were arrested.

He didn’t know any of them personally, he said, but over the years they had come to recognize one another and say hello when they met.

“I feel bad for their families. They are being destroyed,” Fonseca said.

At the Grandmaster barbershop next to the market, the owner sat in a salon chair that normally would have been filled by a customer. Now people call not for appointments, but to ask if it’s safe to come in, said owner Nuñez, 27, who declined to share his first name for fear of repercussions.

When he goes next door to the market, he said, “it looks empty, like no one is left.”

Fears of ICE and the life-altering implications of immigration arrests have spread through communities across the Philadelphia region, causing people to skip church, forgo doctors’ appointments, and stay out of school. Some businesses have had to close at times because their workers were afraid to leave their homes.

The number of people arrested by ICE in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware has surged since the agency reportedly implemented a 3,000-a-day national quota in late May. Arrests doubled from an average of 26 a day, from the time Trump took office through May 21, to an average of 51 a day between May 22 and June 26, according to government data.

Meanwhile, the proportion of those arrested who have no criminal record or pending charges has grown by two-thirds.

Recent national polls have shown slipping support for Trump’s handling of immigration and deportation issues.

Miguel, 48, runs a separate food business that is located inside the market. He happened to be late to work that morning — everything was over and his colleagues were missing by the time he arrived.

“This place no longer feels the same. The hallways feel sad and empty,” said Miguel, who did not want his surname published. “It feels like I lost part of my family.”

Miguel said the July 16 raid marked the third ICE action at the store in the last four or five weeks. At least two workers were taken in the first, and one more in the second, he said.

Many family members of those arrested on July 16 learned of the raid via the internet, as immigration activists shared news and videos on social media while events unfolded.

One woman interviewed by The Inquirer said on that morning, she saw an internet alert posted by activists that said ICE agents were in the county and immediately phoned her husband at his job at the market.

Her warning came too late. Agents were already at the store.

“I’ll call you back,” he whispered, then quickly hung up.

The woman grabbed their daughters, ages 4 and 7, and hurried from their Norristown home. When they got to the market it seemed to be surrounded. She prayed with her daughters, but soon learned her husband had been arrested.

“It broke me,” said the woman, 29, who feared additional harm to her family if her name was published.

Her husband, 36, worked at the market for the last 12 or so years, she said, in charge of handling arriving food shipments.

He has no legal permission to be in the United States, having come here from Guatemala at age 17 to seek a better future, his wife said.

Now, every day, the couple’s daughters, both U.S. citizens born in this country, ask where their father has gone. Their mother tells them he’s on a trip and will be home soon — she has hired an attorney to seek bond — but that doesn’t lessen their worry.

“I gave birth to them,” she said, “but they’re attached to him. They always fell asleep in his arms at night.”

Others whose loved ones were arrested feel similar distress.

Lucia, 75, traveled from Mexico to Norristown on a visitor visa in early April, longing to hug the sons she hadn’t seen in more than a decade.

Then all three were swept up by ICE at the market.

She was cooking breakfast at her sons’ home on July 16 as her youngest, Adolfo Medrano del Rosario, 41, prepared to head to work, bagging vegetables at Super Gigante.

“Mami, I am leaving,” he said, “give me your blessing.”

Her middle child, Rubén Medrano del Rosario, 45, was already at the market that morning. He worked dawn shifts as a cleaner, and took on extra hours in the evening to help move produce.

Neither son came home that day.

A third and eldest son, Ricardo Medrano del Rosario, 53, had been arrested at the store in June and deported to Mexico that month.

ICE sent Rubén and Adolfo Medrano del Rosario to the Philadelphia detention center after the raid. Adolfo Medrano del Rosario was quickly deported, arriving in Mexico on Sunday. Rubén Medrano del Rosario has a court appearance scheduled for Monday.

Now Lucia, who did not want her surname printed for fear of retaliation, struggles to eat and sleep, planning to return to Mexico next month and feeling that she regained and then immediately lost her sons.

“I feel like crying all the time,” she said, wiping away tears. “They took both of them and there was nothing I could do.”

Erika Moreno came to the United States three years ago from Nicaragua and has legal permission to live and work in the United States.

Her partner, Vázquez, came here from Guatemala about five years ago and had worked at the market since 2021. They met when she took a job in the plaza that surrounds Super Gigante.

She doesn’t understand why he was arrested, she said, because he has a work permit — it arrived a week before the raid.

An immigration lawyer offered hope that her partner’s permit and absence of criminal record could allow him to come back to her, Moreno said.

ICE did not clarify the circumstances around Vázquez’s permit and arrest.

Moreno said she has been emotional, upset with fear and sorrow. All she can do, she said, is keep her phone close and await her partner’s calls.

“Before, we dreamed of working hard to help our families and build a life,” Moreno said. “When they handcuff your loved ones, it feels like your life is now under arrest, too.”