In New York City, immigrants who show up to 26 Federal Plaza for scheduled hearings in immigration court are being arrested by ICE and held in a closed off “detention center” on the 10th floor for days and even weeks in filthy, overcrowded rooms with no beds, no showers, and no access to food, medical care, or legal representation. People are forced to sleep on the floor or metal benches with only a foil blanket.
ICE insists this is a ‘processing center’ not subject to Congressional oversight, but it is in fact a holding cell for immigrants who have been kidnapped from immigration court hearings.
Journalist Jacob Soboroff reported from inside 26 Federal Plaza, “In just five hours I spent inside 26 Federal Plaza I saw armed and masked federal agents apprehending five different migrants who had appeared for their immigration hearings.”
Michelle Goldberg writes in the New York Times, “In New York, ICE arrests seem to be concentrated in immigration courts, where agents have been snatching people after their asylum hearings, even when judges ask them to come back for further proceedings…Because ICE’s efforts in New York have largely revolved around the courts, that hideous system has been hidden from much of the public.”
Yet we cannot say we don’t know what’s happening. The scapegoating and disappearing of immigrants is the battering ram of Trump/MAGA fascism and it is the people who must stop it. Urgently needed: mass noncompliance and nonviolent resistance, preparing for the day that must come soon when millions are in the streets demanding the removal of the Trump fascist regime.