"It is happening right now, right on Broadway, every weekday. Undocumented immigrants line up to enter 26 Federal Plaza. They walk to the elevators, pass the death-stare portrait of President Donald Trump, and hit the button for the federal immigration courtrooms located on the 12th and 14th floors. When the doors open, they enter harshly lit hallways where ICE agents mill around in black balaclavas waiting to take people away."
"The agents who haunt the hallways seem to follow their own secret rule book, staying out of the way of the immigration judges, who go about their legalistic business in drab little courtrooms as if nothing were amiss. (The judges are Justice Department employees, not members of the judicial branch, so they can be fired and, under Trump, sometimes are.) The rulings the judges make seem to have little bearing on who is arrested, anyway. ICE is invoking a sweeping - and legally shaky - interpretation of its right to detain people as their cases work their way through the system."
Undocumented immigrants regularly arrive at 26 Federal Plaza for federal immigration court hearings and are being apprehended by ICE agents in the building. ICE agents, often masked and armed, wait in hallways outside the 12th and 14th-floor courtrooms and arrest individuals who present themselves for proceedings. Immigration judges continue routine hearings inside courtrooms, while ICE invokes a broad interpretation of detention authority to remove people whose cases are pending. Many arrestees are asylum seekers and non-criminals who had court papers and hoped for due process. The enforcement strategy prioritizes visible enforcement at courthouses rather than only targeting serious criminals.
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