In a victory against the Trump administration’s racist agenda, a federal judge has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to immediately stop detaining immigrants in and around courthouses in New York state, calling the sweeps “illegal.” The ruling is a result of a lawsuit launched by state attorney general Letitia James and Brooklyn district attorney Eric Gonzalez last year following a surge of detentions targeting immigrants going to court for reasons as minor as a traffic violation.
“By allowing federal agents to interfere with state and local cases, the Trump administration endangered the safety of every New Yorker, while targeting immigrants,” James said in a statement. “All New Yorkers—immigrant or not—can sleep better tonight knowing justice can continue to be carried out.”
In their lawsuit, James and Gonzalez echoed past statements from judges, attorneys, and immigrant rights advocates who said that the administration’s escalation of courthouse sweeps “disrupt[s] court activities and the lives of those seeking justice.” Data from an immigrant rights advocacy group in the state has has painted a disturbing picture of ICE’s radicalism under Trump.
“Eight individuals—including a domestic violence survivor with no criminal history—were arrested en masse outside a town court in Rockland County,” Immigrant Defense Project said in a report put out earlier this year. “Approximately 20 plainclothes ICE agents were seen in the parking lot and stationed outside of the entrance to the court.” Plainclothes agents have even been following immigrants into the restroom, the organization said.
Under a state directive, ICE isn’t allowed to detain someone inside a courthouse unless they have a judicial warrant, which many agents never do and blatantly lie about. So according to the Immigrant Defense Project, ICE has simply gone around it.
“From April 2019 onward, ICE used tactics that skirted the Directive by moving their arrests to court entrances and exits, while still surveilling people inside courthouses,” the report continued. “In some cases, ICE violated the Directive outright—refusing to identify themselves as required, failing to wait for a supervising judge to review a warrant, and escorting an individual out of the courthouse to handcuff them outside. ICE’s use of force has resulted in injuries, broken glass doors, and crippling fear of attending court.”
ICE, of course, likes to tout itself as a protector, an agency of law and order. Hilarious. In fact, it’s ICE that’s endangering the public, James and Gonzalez said in their statement. “By targeting witnesses and victims for arrests, noncitizens and immigrants are deterred from assisting in state and local law enforcement efforts or protecting their own rights in court. As a result, valid prosecutions have been abandoned—or never pursued—making communities less safe.”
“ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment,” CNN reported, and it’s unclear whether the administration will challenge it. But in a ruling that’s a major victory for immigrant communities and justice, it’ll be no surprise if that changes in the coming days.
“Recent events confirm the need for freely and fully functioning state courts, not least in the State of New York,” Judge Jed Rakoff wrote in the ruling. “But it is one thing for the state courts to try to deal with the impediments brought on by a pandemic, and quite another for them to have to grapple with disruptions and intimidations artificially imposed by an agency of the federal government in violation of long-standing privileges and fundamental principles of federalism and of separation of powers.”