"In online photos, she sports a wide smile. But on this day, as she covered one of some 60 immigration courtrooms housed in labyrinthine federal buildings in lower Manhattan, she seemed to churn with angst. Repeatedly she touched her hands to her mouth, then under her glasses, then back to her mouth, and then she rubbed and rubbed her eyes."
"Rodriguez and I were calling into court via Webex, a platform for virtual appearances that resembles Zoom and is used by immigration courts nationally. Inside the physical courtroom near Broadway Street sat eight immigrants, all from Latin American countries. Some were minors, teenagers, including a 10th-grade girl the immigration judge addressed as ma'am. None had lawyers. The presence of two volunteer court watchers, at the ready to accompany them to the street, suggested that masked ICE agents lurked in the hallway."
An ICE prosecuting attorney displayed visible distress while covering a busy immigration courtroom in lower Manhattan. The attorney appeared anxious during a Webex virtual session that connected to a physical courtroom holding eight Latin American immigrants. Several attendees were minors and none had legal representation. Two volunteer court watchers waited to accompany migrants after proceedings, and masked federal agents were observed in the hallway. Some migrants had crossed from Mexico months earlier and sought asylum. The proceedings occurred in a setting of constrained access and heightened enforcement presence.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]