Instead of being put on a path to citizenship, immigrants just trying to follow the rules by going to their legal status interviews are being put on a path to deportation. Documents from an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit allege that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—historically a paper-pushing federal agency that processes paperwork like citizenship applications—and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) collaborated to have unsuspecting immigrants arrested as they showed up for their appointments in the New England area.
“The ACLU, in its arguments, criticizes the efforts as a deportation ‘trap’ that violates the constitutional rights of immigrants otherwise following the rules to become legal residents,” the AP reports. Hundreds of pages of documents reveal the two agencies coordinated immigration interviews so that ICE agents could “be present to make an arrest,” even spreading them out “to ease the workload on its agents and to prevent generating ‘negative media interest’ from the arrests.” How convenient—for ICE.
“Andrew Graham, a Boston-based ICE officer, said the agency generally receives from USCIS lists of immigrants seeking legal residency who have already been ordered for deportation,” the AP continues, “had re-entered the country illegally or were considered ‘an egregious criminal alien.’” But a look at immigrants who have been arrested at USCIS offices—a trend that has surged under Donald Trump—shows that’s not always the case at all.
In January, Lilian Calderon was arrested when she and her U.S. citizen husband showed up to their USCIS interview in Rhode Island. Despite having no criminal record at all, she was jailed for weeks and nearly deported, until a federal judge intervened. “Everyone thinks that when you get detained by ICE it’s because it’s either drugs or violence or crime, like it has to be crime related,” the mom of two young U.S. citizens said following her February release from immigration custody. “But it’s not true.”
Calderon—who is still in the process of trying to adjust her status—and her husband, Luis Gordillo, are among the plaintiffs now suing. “The ACLU’s legal brief is the latest in the class-action suit filed earlier this year on behalf of immigrants who have been or fear being separated from their U.S.-citizen spouses … the case will be argued Aug. 20 in Boston federal court and names five couples.”
This administration and its defenders continue to stand by the claim that they’re not anti-immigrant because they support legal immigration, but that’s a farce. The fact is they want immigration for a select few, and mass deportation for anyone else with a tan. “The government created this path for them to seek a green card,” said the ACLU’s Matthew Segal. “The government can’t create that path and then arrest folks for following that path.”