Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is also feeling the heat following Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents detaining Rosamaria Hernandez, a 10-year-old child with cerebral palsy, in Texas last week after her emergency gallbladder surgery. “ICE doesn't make arrests at sensitive locations like hospitals, schools, or churches,” the agency tweeted the day after the child was taken into custody, “except in the case of a serious public safety threat.” This, of course, is a lie, because ICE has been testing the limits of its “sensitive location” policy for years, and now that federal immigration agents under Border Patrol and ICE have been unshackled by Donald Trump and his former Department of Homeland Security chief John Kelly, the agency is openly skirting it. Just weeks after Trump took office:
A group of men were reportedly arrested by immigration agents as they left a church-run hypothermia shelter last Wednesday, hinting that federal officials may be targeting houses of worship as they continue a recent wave of deportation raids.
According to NBC Washington, the incident took place in Alexandria, Virginia outside a hypothermia shelter owned by Rising Hope Mission Church, a United Methodist congregation. A group of men exited the shelter around 6:45 a.m. last Wednesday and stopped in a 7-Eleven next door, a ritual they say they do every morning.
But as soon as they crossed the street, the men say they were suddenly surrounded by a police vehicles and a team of shouting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who forced them to stand against a nearby wall. Officials then allegedly began questioning the men and scanning their fingers to determine if any had criminal backgrounds. Witnesses told NBC Washington that six men were ultimately arrested and hauled away in two vans.
ICE insists the agency didn’t violate the “sensitive locations” policy because agents weren’t inside the church. Yup, they only stalked some homeless undocumented immigrants seeking shelter from the freezing cold by parking across from the church and just waited until the group of “bad hombres” crossed the street in order to make their move and sweep them up. “They were clearly targeting the church because they knew that they stayed here in the hypothermia shelter,” the church’s pastor said following the arrests. “So they were waiting for them to cross the street and then jump on them.” And, ICE has flouted its policy in other “sensitive locations” since.
Days after they stalked undocumented immigrants seeking shelter from the freezing cold in a church in Virginia, ICE agents in California also stalked and arrested an undocumented immigrant dad who was dropping two of his children off at their schools. Agents again flouted the “sensitive locations” policy by arresting the undocumented dad after he drove off from the first school and before he arrived to the second one:
A 13-year-old girl on her way to school wailed as immigration agents took her handcuffed father away in a black car.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulled Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez's vehicle over Tuesday about a half mile from a school where the undocumented immigrant from Mexico had just dropped off one of his daughters.
The dad, 48, was driving daughter Fatima Avelica to another school in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park when ICE stopped them. Left behind in the car with her mother, Fatima wept inconsolably as she captured video of her father's detention. Rosary beads hung from the rearview mirror. A palm-frond cross rested on the dashboard.
At nearly the same time, ICE agents yet again flouted the “sensitive locations” policy to swoop in and arrest an undocumented woman “who was awaiting emergency surgery for a brain tumor” at a hospital in Texas:
Sara Beltran-Hernandez, 26, a mother of two young children, was bound by her hands and feet and removed by wheelchair from Huguley Hospital in Fort Worth late Wednesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who brought her to a detention facility in Alvarado, Texas.
“It is heartbreaking and inhumane,’’ said Chris Hamilton, a Texas lawyer who tried to visit the woman Wednesday night at the detention center, where he was threatened with arrest for trespassing.
“This is unacceptable under our Constitution, and unacceptable from a standpoint of basic human rights,” Hamilton said. “This woman is critically ill and in severe pain.”
While courthouses are not “sensitive locations,” ICE agents have also ignored pleas from legal experts and advocates to not make arrests at or near these locations. New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote earlier this year that “when individuals fear that they will be arrested for a civil immigration violation if they set foot in a courthouse, serious consequences are likely to follow. Witnesses to violent crimes may decide to stay away from court and remain silent. Victims of domestic violence and other offenses may choose not to testify against their attackers.” Mother Jones:
Ervin Gonzalez, an undocumented transgender woman from Mexico, was arrested in a courthouse in El Paso, Texas, in mid-February, just minutes after leaving a hearing in her domestic-violence case. Gonzalez, who had filed police reports for three incidents of alleged abuse, had been granted a protective order against her accused abuser. “We were stunned that ICE would go to these lengths for someone that is not a violent criminal,” Jo Anne Bernal, the county attorney, told a local news station after the arrest. “I cannot recall an instance where ICE agents have gone into the domestic-violence court, specifically looking for a victim of domestic violence.” An ICE spokesperson said the agency had been tipped off about the woman’s whereabouts by another law enforcement agency, and that she had already been deported six times. She is currently being held in a local detention facility under a federal ICE detainer.
And as the Washington Post Editorial Board stated in an op-ed calling for the release of Rosamaria from detention, “the harm done extends beyond Rosa Maria and her family to other parents who now will have to think about the risk of detention and deportation in deciding whether to seek medical treatment for their children.”
What’s happened to Rosamaria is not just criminal, it’s child abuse, and ICE, CBP, and mass deportation collaborators should be feeling ashamed and deserve to be shamed. That includes Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, who have publicly ignored commenting on a ten-year-old girl with cerebral palsy getting detained in their state.
“Under the direction of President Trump and General Kelly, DHS is indiscriminately targeting ordinary immigrants who pose no threat to society,” said immigrant rights leader Frank Sharry. “This includes the disabled and caretakers; moms and dads; and Good Samaritans and witnesses. In our name and with our taxpayer dollars, they are engaged in a massive operation to sow fear and separate families by deporting as many people as they can.”
“Now, they are asking Congress to give them billions of more dollars to hire new agents and fill more detention facilities. We must demand accountability before additional taxpayer dollars are shoveled towards an out-of-control deportation force. Congress should demand answers, not write a blank check.”