Masked, armed, they prowl in the courts in the courts: American agents arrest asylum seekers at the end of “traps” audiences in New York, a sign that the Trump administration campaign against immigration knows no respite.
The American president erected the fight against illegal immigration in absolute priority, evoking an “invasion” of the United States by “criminals from abroad” and communicating abundantly on the expulsions of immigrants.
But his massive expulsion program was thwarted or slowed down by multiple court decisions, in particular on the grounds that the people targeted should be able to assert their rights.
In recent months, internal security agents have adopted the tactics of waiting, the face often covered with a mask, in front of the courtrooms of the immigration courts and to arrest migrants as soon as they left.
An AFP photographer saw armed agents in a New York court on Wednesday and Thursday with shields, and employed by various federal agencies including the border and immigration police (ICE), prowl before the audience rooms, with documents on targeted migrants in their possession.
Photo Charly Triballeau, agency France-Presse
Federal agents The border and immigration police (ICE), border protection (CBP) and diplomatic security service are waiting in a corridor outside a courtroom in New York.
Agents arrested nearly a dozen migrants from different countries in just a few hours at 12e floor of a federal building in southern Manhattan.
Brad Lander, financial controller of the city and figure of the local branch of the Democratic Party, which had also been briefly arrested and handcuffed last month for “hindering” to agents on the spot, qualified these “trap” audiences.
“It seems to be legal hearings, but they are in fact traps to encourage (migrants) to go to the scene,” he said on Wednesday, reporting on several arrests, including that of a Paraguayan whose asylum application was, according to him, under examination.
“The judge carefully explained to him how to present his file, in order to provide additional information on his interactions with the Paraguayan police and to justify his right to asylum under the international convention against torture,” he said.
After his hearing, agents “without mandates or badges allowing to identify them caught it”, he said, adding that agents had tackled the sister of this asylum seeker on the ground, who accompanied him to the hearing, and denounced “erosion” of the rule of law in the United States.
Migrants arrested in these operations are most often imprisoned in ICE retention centers while waiting for their possible expulsion from the United States. In recent months, the authorities have opened new centers of this kind, including “Alcatraz of the Alligators”, built in the middle of Florida swamps.
