Under the Trump administration, the deportation of New York City area immigrants with no criminal record, including vulnerable asylum-seekers, have skyrocketed 226 percent, the New York Times reports. “That is the largest percentage increase of any Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in the country.”
In some cases, unshackled Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have targeted asylum-seekers who have lost their cases—the denial rate was nearly 62 percent in 2017, up from nearly 57 percent in 2016, according to the National Immigration Forum—but were then allowed to stay and work here so long as they continued checking in regularly with the agency.
One man who was targeted by ICE, Indra Sihotang, literally clung to a chair as officials tried to load him onto a flight back to Indonesia, where “the persecution of Christians like him” has “intensified,” the New York Times continued. Like a number of other immigrants, he was arrested during what he assumed was a routine ICE check-in. Immigrant rights advocates have dubbed these sort of arrests “silent raids.”
Following the scene at the airport, neither Sihotang nor ICE were allowed to board the commercial flight. ICE yet again attempted to deport him, and he was sitting in a van on the way to the airport when the agents got a call halting the removal. While Sihotang had lost his asylum case five years ago, “a judge had determined Mr. Sihotang faced credible fears of persecution in Indonesia and reopened his asylum case, which remains unresolved.”
Once again, ICE doesn’t have to carry out these sort of arrests. The Obama administration, for example, attempted to prioritize resources and target people who posed a danger to communities. But those priorities went out the window following Donald Trump’s inauguration. What could also explain the surge of deportations in New York City is that ICE has plainly stated it wants to target people in localities with pro-immigrant policies. The cruelty is the point.
