ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Elected officials, religious leaders and community activists gathered Tuesday in City Hall to condemn recent “aggressive” and “appalling” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the resort town.

“The reason I’m here is because just last week, our community was attacked,” said Alexander Mendoza, a community organizer with advocacy group El Pueblo Unido of Atlantic City. “Fathers, friends, family members, hardworking people were taken away from us by an inhumane system called ICE.”

El Pueblo has been highlighting recent ICE activity in Atlantic City on its social media, including a car stop Dec. 12 that led to the detainment of two men, one of whom subsequently missed the birth of his daughter earlier this week after being taken to Delaney Hall. The group called the car stop illegal and said the Mexican Consulate is working to provide the man with legal help.

“He and his partner had just moved into a new apartment and were ready to begin a new chapter in their lives,” Mendoza said. “That morning changed everything. He was taken by ICE and is now being held at Delaney Hall.”

Mendoza said this and other recent activity, including ICE agents establishing a base of operations at the city’s Bader Field, the former municipal airport, have left community members fearful and officials alarmed and outraged.

“There’s a lot of hysteria, a lot of fear in our community, rightly so,” said Cristian Moreno-Rodriguez, executive director of El Pueblo. There were rumors this week that businesses, particularly laundromats, would be targeted this week in Atlantic City and Pleasantville, he said.

“We strategically placed ourselves throughout different traffic hubs where our community is, our immigrant working-class community,” he said.

Moreno-Rodriguez said his organization has tracked some of the same ICE vehicles conducting activity in Bridgeton, Cumberland County.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding activity in the area.

El Pueblo has been educating community members of their rights and training volunteers to document and respond to reported ICE activity. He said the response time in Pleasantville is about two minutes; in Atlantic City, it’s 45 minutes.

Atlantic County is home to about 12,000 undocumented immigrants. Moreno-Rodriguez said the volunteers include non-Hispanic allies and young Latinos, “children who are standing up for their parents and neighbors.”

City Council Vice President Kaleem Shabazz said the council adopted a resolution last week condemning the ICE activity, which he said had made his constituents wary of leaving their homes without carrying documentation of their citizenship. He said police had not been informed about the raids or the use of Bader Field.

Moreno-Rodriguez said the city is about 33% Latino or Hispanic, and about 29% immigrant, with most Spanish-speaking immigrants coming from Mexico and the Dominican Republic, and smaller numbers from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Nearby Pleasantville is about 50% Hispanic and has a sizable Haitian population, he said.

Both Moreno-Rodriguez and Shabazz called on businesses, which employ many immigrants, to support their workers. Moreno-Rodriguez said one man who self-deported after being picked up by ICE had worked for one of Atlantic City’s iconic bread bakeries.

“If you go into any of the small businesses of Atlantic City, they are powered by immigrant labor,” Moreno-Rodriguez said. “And we want to put out a call to action to all the business owners of Atlantic City that if you employ immigrants, please be there for them when they are detained. Please be there for them after they’ve given you hours of labor, years of blood, sweat, and tears to your business.”

Also attending the news conference were the Rev. Collins Days, an Atlantic County commissioner, and religious leaders Imam Amin Muhammad of Atlantic City’s Masjid Muhammad mosque, Cantor Jackie Menaker of Ventnor’s Shirat Hayam synagogue, and the synagogue’s president, Joe Rodgers, a criminal defense attorney.

“I am appalled at what’s been happening in our community by ICE,” Days said. “We stand together because an attack on one group is an attack on all groups.”

“When we see the harms of our government, we are obligated to speak out,” Muhammad said. “We need engagement in the political process to make a change.”

Mendoza said activists believed the targeted raids of last week were “the beginning of a large raid on our community ... a major escalation.”

“When we drove down Iowa Avenue, we saw an ICE agent and a Border Patrol agent questioning a woman, attempting to extract information in order to detain her,” he said. “When the agents noticed us, they allowed the woman to walk away.”

One of the agents claimed to be looking for a fugitive, he said.

Activists followed the man to Bader Field, where they saw a transport van and eight other vehicles. “That’s when we knew this wasn’t a small operation,” he said. “As soon as the agents realized they were being watched, they left quickly and quietly. It just took two Latino organizers standing by, holding cameras, for ICE to retreat from Atlantic City. ICE operates in the shadows. When people know their rights and when there is accountability, they scatter.”

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