If you’re looking for an example of how a newly unshackled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is terrorizing immigrants in the Trump era, just look to New York state. In just the first six months of 2017, federal immigration agents have arrested 53 immigrants in or around courthouses, compared to 11 arrests in 2016. The Trump regime has continued to ignore the pleas of four state Supreme Court chief justices to make courthouses “sensitive locations” off-limits to immigration enforcement, and acting Brooklyn district attorney Eric Gonzalez said the sweeps are having their intended effect to sow fear into immigrant communities: “Witnesses are not willing to come forward and cooperate.”
But, as the New York Times reports, “there’s a new game afoot”:
In New York City, judges, defense lawyers and clients have been on high alert for months, watching to see if immigration enforcement officers, many in plain clothes, are in a courthouse. If a pair of people look suspicious, lawyers from the Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services and the Legal Aid Society send an internal email alert. Defendants duck into bathrooms or race to another floor.
When officers for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, are thought to be in a courthouse, a sympathetic judge might reschedule a defendant’s appearance, or, in a seemingly perverse move, set bail that could send a defendant to Rikers Island — keeping the person out of ICE’s hands because the jail complex does not turn over undocumented immigrants to the agency.
“What does it mean that they will be safer in Rikers than being released?” asked Lee Wang, an attorney with the Immigrant Defense Project. “I think it means we’re in an ugly place.”
ICE agents are not allowed to make arrests inside courtrooms themselves, but they’ve been documented to lurk in hallways, oftentimes in plainclothes, and directly outside courthouses. In May, a bystander filmed ICE agents tackling a Denver immigrant who had been at a courthouse to address a traffic violation. In Texas this past February, ICE agents arrested a transgender woman who was attending court in order to secure a protective order against her abuser.
Her advocates believe he may have tipped off the agents. “I am asking ICE to reconsider their policy and treat the courthouse with respect,” said Gonzalez:
The clash over authority was evident recently at the Queens Human Trafficking Intervention Court, where women charged with prostitution are supposed to face restorative, not punitive, justice. Those arrested can take part in counseling sessions in exchange for dismissal of their charges and the sealing of the records. Undocumented immigrants may be eligible for visas as victims.
On June 16, ICE officers went to the court looking for several individuals, including a 29-year-old woman from China who had been charged with unlicensed practice of massage and prostitution; she had overstayed her tourist visa.
Court officers, as per union policy, told Judge Toko Serita that ICE officers were in the hallway near the courtroom. She told the defense counsel and the assistant district attorney. Judge Serita set bail at $500 and the woman was held in the jail behind the courtroom — with Rikers Island her ultimate destination — where she met with her lawyer.
Later that afternoon, Judge Serita released the defendant on her own recognizance. The ICE agents had left, apparently in search of another target.
Another immigrant, however, wasn’t so fortunate:
As it happened, ICE officers arrested another woman as she left the court and was walking toward the subway, her lawyer, Sheldon Glass, said. Rachael Yong Yow, a spokeswoman for the New York ICE field office, confirmed the arrest.
Rather than focusing on real “bad hombres,” it’s the Trump regime that is actually making communities less safe through anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. Just yesterday, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III threatened to withhold funding that would address gun violence from a number of cities unless they collaborate with the administration on anti-immigrant policies. Make America safe again, indeed.