A Brooklyn church is demanding answers after they say one of their leaders was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents this week.

Church leaders said Deacon Sebastian Ordonez had no criminal record and was a prominent figure in the community for 17 years.

ICE operation targeted Bensonhurst apartment building, community leaders say

According to local officials and faith leaders, Ordonez was taken into custody early Thursday as he stepped out of his Bensonhurst home.

Community leaders said he was among a half dozen residents swept up in the morning operation that targeted an apartment building on Bay Ridge Parkway.

"He lived here. He was just going to work," Bishop Erick Salgado said. "And they were waiting out there with a coffee, picking up everyone who was coming out of the building."

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to CBS News New York's request for comment on Ordonez's case.

"They're coming after everyone"

Councilwoman Susan Zhuang, who represents the district where this happened, said her office is trying to make sense of why the deacon was targeted.

"The hand should be on criminals, but right now, the story we hear is our neighbors," she said.

"It is not true that ICE is coming for people who have criminal records. They're coming after everyone," Salgado said.

For months now, concerns over ICE activity have been growing in Bensonhurst, where immigrants make up more than half of the community. Community leaders said ICE has intensified operations in the last two weeks.

"They go to the train station on New Utrecht and 18th Avenue, waiting at 6 o'clock in the morning and following a profile," Salgado said.

"Those people, they want to follow the law," Zhuang said. "Now, no one knows what is the law."

CBS News has obtained internal DHS data that shows throughout the United States, ICE has more than 70,000 people facing deportation in its custody – the most in the agency's 23-year history.