As the Trump administration gears up efforts to deport immigrants en masse, asylum seekers at immigration court who thought they were playing by the rules were abruptly swept up by ICE agents in lower Manhattan Wednesday.
In frightening scenes on the 12th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, more than a dozen masked and armed agents for Customs and Border Patrol and other agencies spent hours lining a narrow hallway, quietly waiting for asylum seekers to haul into custody as they walked out of court.
City Comptroller Brad Lander, who observed the morning’s proceedings, described the situation as surreal and disturbing.
“Today’s hearing felt like, honestly, a murderous reality show,” Lander said. “It really felt like some kind of hideous game of like Trumpian roulette.”
President Trump’s departments of Justice and Homeland Security have dramatically sought to speed up and maximize the number of people being expelled from the country in a rapidly escalating crackdown, which has even targeted immigrants with legal status.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had eliminated bond hearings, meaning asylum seekers can now be jailed without appearing before a judge for an indefinite amount of time. President Trump’s budget includes a massive financial boost, with $170 billion going toward immigration enforcement and around $75 billion specifically for ICE.
One of the new mass deportation measures in the clampdown has seen DHS and DOJ attorneys, in recent weeks, moving to outright dismiss asylum seekers’ claims with immigration judges’ approval, subjecting people to a quick deportation by virtually getting them wiped from the system. Immigration judges and DHS and DOJ attorneys all fall under the executive branch.
Lander said that he witnessed agents target two men just minutes after a judge had indicated they were safe in the country for the time being. Later Wednesday, four men and one woman were taken into custody within seconds of stepping out of their hearings. None had lawyers present.
Lander said Immigration Judge Theodora Kouris had just granted the men he saw hearings on their asylum applications under the Convention Against Torture. The judge took the time to explain how they could legally demonstrate the fear they had of persecution were they to be deported to their native countries, setting dates for them to appear before her again.
Moments before he was seized outside Kouris’s courtroom, one of the men, Carlos Lopez, related to the judge dangerous situations he’d experienced with the police in his native Paraguay.
“The judge said, for example, if you have documentation or affidavits about your interactions with the police, you should provide those as well, as though they were going to get a genuine, credible fear hearing on their quite credible applications,” Lander said.
“But it is just a charade, it is just a charade,” Lander said.
Lander said Lopez’s distraught sister had blamed herself for urging him to appear in court — rather than risk facing a removal order — only to be punished for doing so.
It’s not clear where the people taken into custody Wednesday will be jailed. Last month, members of Congress were blocked from observing the holding facility on the tenth floor of 26 Federal Plaza, amid claims of unbearable heat, overcrowding, and detainees being forced to sleep on bathroom floors.
Lander on Wednesday lauded the near-constant presence of volunteers at the immigration courts but said a broader and more coordinated approach was “urgently” needed, one that could effectively communicate to asylum seekers how to secure legal representation, apply for remote hearings, and challenge deportations in federal courts.
He called on the city and state to immediately release $100 million in funds earmarked for legal assistance for immigrants at risk of deportation.
“We’re all pretty poorly tooled to provide assistance. We’ve got these little ‘know your rights’ cards in multiple languages, and we’re doing our best to communicate with people as best we can to prepare them for what’s going to happen,” he said.
“But it is an utterly haphazard process.”
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