New York leaders and a number of advocacy groups both filed lawsuits against Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday, seeking to block the out-of-control mass deportation agency from sweeping up immigrants at the state’s courthouses. "ICE's enforcement actions undermine the effectiveness of the court system as a whole,” said New York attorney general Letitia James, “making it harder for the state to carry out its critical law-enforcement function, and it makes our communities less safe.”
James, who filed the lawsuit with Brooklyn district attorney Eric Gonzalez, echoed past statements from judges, attorneys, and immigrant rights advocates, who have said that the Trump administration’s escalation of courthouse arrests “disrupt court activities and the lives of those seeking justice.” Data from an immigrant rights advocacy group paints a disturbing picture of ICE’s radicalism under Trump: “In 2016, the Immigrant Defense Project documented 11 arrests or attempted arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents around the state.” Just a year later, that number “spiked by 900%, with most in New York City.”
The advocacy groups who filed a lawsuit separate from James and Gonzalez said that “ICE's tactics have made John Doe, a Venezuelan and Spanish citizen, afraid to get an order of protection against his abusive ex-partner from state family court.” This trend has been seen in other states like Texas, where in 2017 a transgender woman was swept up as she was leaving court, where she was attempting to obtain a protective order against her abuser. Advocates believe he may have tipped them off to her location.
This stifling of justice has been condemned by nearly 70 judges, who last year called the former acting ICE director to designate courthouses “sensitive locations,” like hospitals and schools, that should generally be off-limits to mass deportation agents, saying that “Surveys of law enforcement and legal service providers confirm that ICE’s reliance on immigration arrests in courthouses instills fear in clients and deters them from seeking justice in a court building.”
“In April, the Office of Court Administration issued a rule intended to prevent immigration agents from making arrests inside courthouses unless they had a judicial warrant, making New York the first state to issue such a directive,” The City reported. But with an administration not only looking away from immigration abuses but actively encouraging them, localities and states must take every action possible to rein in out-of-control federal immigration agencies.