TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SUED FOR ARRESTING PEOPLE AT IMMIGRATION COURTS
A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups – including the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Legal Education and Services (RAICES), National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), Democracy Forward and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCRSF) – filed the suit on behalf of 12 plaintiffs, the majority of whom were seeking protection in the US from anti-LGBTQ+ violence or female genital mutilation.
In May, federal authorities began arresting people at US immigration courts from New York and Arizona to Washington state in what appeared to be a coordinated operation. The following month, New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested while attending immigration court with one migrant. Since then, the supreme court has granted the Trump administration permission to deport migrants to countries they are not from, including to conflict-ridden places such as South Sudan.
“The Trump administration has cast an unconscionably wide net to ensnare people and families who attend immigration court hearings in compliance with their legal obligations, only to face life-threatening imprisonment, swift removal and the prospect of indefinite family separation,” said Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer at RAICES. “The egregious and unprecedented coordination amongst government agencies that we are witnessing not only inflicts irreparable harm upon infants and adults alike for seeking refuge in the US, but also establishes a chilling precedent in which law and order are abandoned in favor of stoking widespread panic and fear – leaving the entire American public at risk, regardless of immigration status.”
