Every day we are bombarded with videos of terrifying kidnappings, including of mothers and minors, carried out by immigration agents, which are part of the president’s initiative to make thousands of immigrant arrests every day.
In our city, which has implemented various protections for our fellow New Yorkers, we have witnessed in recent weeks a new strategy: detaining and seizing people who have attended their mandatory court dates in federal immigration court.
This is a perverse violation of the covenant we ask everyone to obey in the face of the legal system: if they follow the rules, they will receive a fair hearing and a ruling from an impartial judge that will be respected by other entities.
Instead, what we have seen is that federal authorities put those who attend their court dates between a rock and a hard place: attend their mandatory hearing and risk being kidnapped, or stay home, where they risk being served with a deportation order.
Furthermore, we have seen how those who show solidarity with New York immigrants are also threatened. Just this week (NOTE: 6/17/25), City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested by federal agents in lower Manhattan immigration court. While escorting a man out after his hearing, Lander was arrested when federal agents claimed he was “obstructing the process.” If our elected officials are punished for escorting community members, how can anyone expect to navigate these spaces safely?
My colleagues and I witness the terror and chaos that the presence and actions of immigration agents are fomenting in these courts. Last week (NOTE: 11/6/25), we visited the federal immigration courthouse at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, and saw groups of armed plainclothes agents camped in the hallways of the courthouse.
Almost no agents had visible identification other than their vests labeled with FBI, DEA, CBP, DHS and ICE. Some even wore vests labeled “police,” even though federal law enforcement is not technically police. Some wore masks. They seemed to be waiting for easy targets.
We saw officers grab a person who had stopped to ask a question. He was pushed into an empty elevator that we were told is used to take detainees to another floor for questioning and detention. We also saw officers surround another person who we thought was a lawyer, but who, unlike us, was not wearing a suit. He was there to file legal documents. They checked his identification and questioned him before releasing him.
A volunteer observer informed us that some immigration judges were closing their courtrooms and waiting rooms to all but litigants and their families, apparently to prevent federal agents from disrupting proceedings with their presence.
Why is this happening? First, ICE is under orders to increase its detentions to 3,000 a day. Immigration courts are an easy place to prey on immigrants with pending cases. Second, ICE prosecutors are seeking dismissal of the cases, lifting the ban on deporting a person through “expedited removal” while the case is still pending. When the case is dismissed, the person is “free” from being detained. And third, the New York state law prohibiting immigration authorities from entering municipal and state courts does not extend to federal or state administrative courts, such as immigration courts.
At LatinoJustice PRLDEF we are working to identify which legal challenges will help us protect people who are trying to comply with the rules of the law.
We know that the rules of court proceedings can change when necessary. During the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, courts rightfully prioritized people’s health and safety, allowing remote hearings, delaying appearances. In short, recognizing that appearing in person carried a severe risk. Why, then, are those same courts now failing to protect our immigrant community, when coming forward means risking indefinite detention and separation from family for months, years, or forever?
We will not accept this as the new normal and we will not give one bit to this and other unjust and terrifying persecutions of our families, friends and neighbors. It is not just about arguing about the technicalities of judicial procedures. It’s about how the immigration court system functions as an extension of a racist system designed to punish. When the courts collude with ICE to make the immigrant community easy targets for arrest and deportation, it reveals how far our system has moved away from justice.
Rex Chen is the supervising immigration attorney at LatinoJustice PRLDEF.
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