For years, in the shadow of lower Manhattan’s towering federal courthouses, law-abiding immigrants have sought legal status through routine hearings. Now they find themselves thrust into a surreal, Kafkaesque nightmare that is the Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown.
I’ve now visited 26 Federal Plaza more than a dozen times. Twice, I have been arrested: once while escorting a migrant, the other time alongside state and local officials after we asked to inspect holding cells on the building’s 10th floor. But I have returned again and again to bear witness to the lawless cruelty occurring inside. Every day, in the heart of this city millions of us call home, masked ICE agents are lawlessly abducting our neighbors.
These are not sites where the rule of law presides.
To call 26 Federal Plaza a building where justice is administered is, these days, sadly incorrect. These are not sites where the rule of law presides. There is no due process. Instead, what plays out in these buildings is a cruel game of “justice roulette.”
Immigrants who are lawfully seeking asylum show up for their court dates, as ordered. For many, it is their first appearance. Few have an attorney. In most cases, the judge has a brief conversation with them, explains their rights to seek asylum under the Convention Against Torture and then gives them a next hearing date, often a year or two in the future, at which their asylum application will be considered. The last thing they get is a printout with their next court date on it.
If you stopped the tape there, you might think the system was working. But the tape does not stop there.
Right outside the courtroom, ICE agents lurk in the hallways. They cover their faces with masks to limit accountability. And they lay in wait to detain people as they leave their hearings.
The ICE agents don’t identify themselves. They don’t present a warrant or give a reason for the arrest. It feels more like kidnapping than like the rule of law.
Take Carlos Lopez Benitez, for example. On July 16, he showed up to his immigration court hearing on his asylum claim, at which he was granted a follow-up hearing slated for 2029. Despite that, I witnessed masked ICE agents right outside the courtroom tear the 27-year-old from Paraguay out of his sister’s arms and abduct him.
Often the asylum seeker will try to show the ICE agent the paper the judge has just given them, with their next court date. How are they going to show up? Where are they being taken? Why did the judge just praise them for attending their hearing? The ICE agents don’t care about any of it.
A few weeks ago, I witnessed ICE agents grab an individual who was standing with his attorney, without even asking his identity. It turned out to be the wrong person. They released him later — but not before violently dragging him into a stairwell and detaining him with no legal justification.
When I was arrested, I had a lawyer. But most of the individuals who are detained don’t.
They’ve abducted pregnant women. High school students. U.S. citizens. A 6-year-old. These courthouse arrests, overwhelmingly concentrated in New York City, increased dramatically through the spring and summer.
Often, agents use aggressive, unnecessary force, shoving witnesses and ripping people out of the arms of their loved ones. Many times, there are kids nearby, watching their parents be kidnapped. In one case, a woman who was eight months pregnant, who had her husband ripped violently from her arms, asked my wife, Meg, who was with her: “Are they going to kill him?”
In other words, 26 Federal Plaza isn’t functioning as a courthouse. It’s functioning as an abduction trap. And as an inhumane de facto jail.
I’m just one of a much larger crew of volunteers who are showing up to document abuses — and to do what we can to advise people of their rights. Volunteers from Immigrant ARC, the New Sanctuary Coalition, the New York Immigration Coalition, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, and some remarkable lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group, Make the Road New York and The Door, are demonstrating how New Yorkers stand up for their neighbors.
Our collective presence is making a difference. We helped Carlos Lopez Benitez get a lawyer, and thanks to a habeas corpus petition filed by Make the Road New York, he was returned to his family after two awful weeks in detention. A handful of others have similarly been released as a result of habeas motions.
In response to a lawsuit brought by immigrant rights groups, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to improve the conditions for those detained at 26 Federal Plaza. Another federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump’s expansion of “expedited removal” — deporting people without giving them a chance to make their case in court — is illegal.
As you read this, immigrant advocates like the New York Civil Liberties Union are suing to stop the Trump administration’s courthouse arrests altogether. If that lawsuit is successful, it could help to end the lawless cruelty we’ve witnessed day after day.
When I was arrested, I had a lawyer. But most of the individuals who are detained don’t. So it’s critical to ramp up the number of lawyers protecting these folks. Both New York City and New York state allocated $50 million in their most recently adopted budgets for legal services for immigrants. We need to get the money on the ground.
Unfortunately, we have a mayor who has said little about the lawless deportations of New Yorkers on his watch. I’d love for him to come witness what’s happening — it’s just steps from City Hall.
In the meantime, we’ll continue showing up to 26 Federal Plaza, bearing witness, trying our best to escort our immigrant neighbors to safety and standing up to Donald Trump’s ICE. I invite all New Yorkers to join me. We won’t stop until they stop abducting our neighbors.