Subscribe as a monthly Hell Gate Supporter for just 99 cents for your first month during our 99 cent hat sale, and you'll also get our gorgeous, very in-demand, union-made Hell Gate hat! Note: Only for new subscribers! Are you a subscriber who wants a hat? Become a Believer-level subscriber!
By the way—have you been listening to the Hell Gate Podcast? You can find it here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Since masked federal agents began kidnapping thousands of immigrants at immigration courthouses across Lower Manhattan and in cities across the country this spring, lawyers and immigrant rights advocates have been trying to find a way to put a stop to the new, unprecedented practice of detaining people who are just showing up for their day in court.
The most effective way to do this would be to file a lawsuit on behalf of some of the people now ensnared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and getting a federal judge to order a stop to the practice. One major challenge to actually finding those plaintiffs? ICE has been holding immigrants incognito for days and sometimes weeks at a time, not letting families, or lawyers looking for plaintiffs, know where they are being detained. When immigrants would finally show up on ICE's detainee locator system, they'd sometimes be thousands of miles away from where they were arrested.
On Wednesday however, lawyers from immigrant rights groups, including the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Legal Education and Services (RAICES), filed a class-action lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, D.C. aimed squarely at stopping these courthouse arrests. They're arguing that the short-circuiting of due process when immigrants, who are just following what the immigration courts have been asking them to do, find themselves in an ICE gulag after ICE moves to close their cases and end their asylum claims, is unconstitutional. They're also arguing that the very presence of ICE at courthouses, which was banned under the Biden administration, violates the agency's own policies.