According to authorities, Abraham Caban, 56, was arrested at his home in Ridgewood at around 11:30 a.m. for illegally possessing “a ton of guns and weapons,” the New York Post reported. Caban was also accused of converting handguns into semi-automatic or fully automatic machine guns. Agents reportedly found 32 guns in his home.
Caban was arraigned in a Brooklyn federal court and released on a $50,000 bond.
The Lenco BearCat is an armored personnel carrier used by military and law enforcement agencies.
However, the sight of the military vehicle upset locals in the area, with many people assuming it was linked to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid.
The Ridgewood Tenants Union shared a photo of the vehicle on their Twitter account with the caption, “NEVER open your door to ICE.”
“Extremely cool that ICE is just riding around Southwest Queens in military grade armored cars intimidating pedestrian[s],” another Twitter user wrote.
Anti-immigrant raids by ICE over the last few months have spread fear in immigrant communities across the country, especially as the Trump administration continues to roll out new, hard-line policies that make it more difficult for people to apply for asylum.
"The trauma that these raids have caused is something that will outlast the legal cases and maybe even the lives of those detained," Mississippi community organizer Lorena Quiroz said Thursday during a US House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee hearing, noting how local Mississippi communities are still affected by the widespread raids that took place in August.
"I have heard about children who did not sleep for days after the raids and still cry every night because their mom is not there to put them to sleep," she added, Newsweek reported.