Within the span of about eighteen months, two well known Collingswood area restaurant families have found themselves at the center of federal immigration enforcement actions, prompting community fundraisers, a municipal resolution, and now a family’s public plea for the release of a local chef held at a detention facility that has recorded two deaths this year. Collingswood is a small Camden County borough known for its walkable downtown and a restaurant scene that punches well above its weight for a town of roughly fourteen thousand people. In the past year and a half, that same restaurant scene has twice become the backdrop for a much larger national story, as two separate immigration enforcement actions against local business owners have pulled the borough into a debate over how federal agents are tracking down residents whose legal status remains unresolved. The most recent case involves Iemad Saifo, the chef and owner of Zena’s American Mediterranean Cuisine and Catering on Richey Avenue. Saifo, a 65 year old Syrian asylum seeker who has lived in the United States for nearly 25 years, was detained on July 31st while attending what his family describes as a routine, voluntary check-in appointment with immigration authorities, despite having an active immigration case still working its way through the system. He is currently being held at Delaney Hall, the federal detention facility in Newark, and his children have spoken publicly about their fear for his wellbeing given his existing health conditions and the facility’s recent history, which includes a detainee death from a medical emergency just days after Saifo arrived there. His family and supporters have organized a public campaign calling for his release, describing him as the primary caregiver for one of his children, who is autistic, and a fixture of the local community through his restaurant. Saifo’s detention was administrative rather than a raid. He was taken into custody during a scheduled check-in with immigration officers, not during an unannounced operation at his restaurant. A Different Kind of Enforcement, and a Case Collingswood Already Knew Saifo’s detention is a distinct case from the one that first drew national attention to Collingswood’s restaurant community, but the two are frequently mentioned in the same breath locally because of how closely they mirror each other. That earlier case involved Jersey Kebab, the Mediterranean restaurant now located on Haddon Avenue in Collingswood, whose owners, Celal and Emine Emanet, were arrested directly inside their restaurant when it was still located in neighboring Haddon Township. Federal agents carried out that operation in late February of 2025, catching the community off guard and prompting an immediate wave of public support, including handwritten messages of encouragement taped to the restaurant’s windows. The Emanets had entered the United States legally from Turkey in 2008 on religious worker visas tied to Celal’s employment at a New Jersey Islamic center, and the couple has said their green card application has been pending, essentially in limbo, since 2016. Celal was released the same day fitted with an electronic ankle monitor, while Emine spent roughly two weeks in detention before a federal judge set her bond and ordered her release. In the time since, the family has relocated Jersey Kebab to a larger space in Collingswood with the help of community fundraising, even as both parents’ deportation cases remain active in immigration court. Their son, Muhammed Emanet, who now helps run the restaurant, has since become a visible advocate for immigration reform in New Jersey, testifying before a State House committee and describing an ongoing fear that agents could return to the family’s business at any time. Two Cases, Two Very Different Enforcement Methods What distinguishes the Saifo and Emanet cases from one another, beyond the restaurants and families involved, is the method federal authorities used to make contact. The Jersey Kebab case unfolded as a physical, unannounced raid carried out inside the restaurant itself, catching both owners and customers by surprise in the middle of a business day. The Saifo case unfolded very differently, through an administrative detention carried out during a scheduled check-in appointment, the kind of routine meeting immigration authorities have long used to monitor people with pending cases and that many attorneys have historically treated as low risk precisely because attendance is voluntary and cooperative. Immigration advocates locally have pointed to that shift as evidence that enforcement tactics in South Jersey have broadened beyond workplace raids to include check-ins that were previously seen as a formality rather than a point of vulnerability. A Borough Responds The cumulative effect of these cases, combined with a separate joint FBI and ICE operation that led to four arrests in Collingswood last summer, pushed the borough’s elected leadership to act. In late April, the Collingswood Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution restricting immigration agents from using borough owned property, including municipal buildings, parks, and vehicles, as a staging area, processing site, or base of operations, unless agents present a valid judicial warrant or court order. The measure, which followed a similar move by the Camden County Board of Commissioners days earlier, does not prevent local cooperation with criminal investigations and explicitly applies only to civil immigration enforcement, aligning the borough’s policy with the state’s existing Immigrant Trust Directive and a related executive order from the governor’s office. In its own language, the resolution states that the borough is committed to ensuring residents can access municipal services and facilities without fear, and that borough property and resources are meant to serve the community rather than any single enforcement agency. For a town of Collingswood’s size, the through line connecting a bustling Mediterranean restaurant strip, two high profile detention cases, and a formal municipal resolution reflects a broader tension playing out in immigrant heavy suburbs across South Jersey and the country, between federal enforcement priorities and the daily texture of small business life in towns that have, in many cases, embraced these families as neighbors long before their legal status became a matter of national debate. With Saifo still held at Delaney Hall and the Emanet family’s cases still pending in immigration court, Collingswood’s restaurant scene remains, for now, at the center of a story far larger than the food itself.