Mayor Adams, NYC ask court to stop ICE arrests at immigration court hearings
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is siding with the city's 3 million immigrants, filing suit to stop the Trump administration's campaign of courthouse arrests.
He's calling for an immediate stop to the actions by ICE agents.
"These situations are tragic"
The steady stream of arrests - one day a 20-year-old high school student, another day a 6-year-old child and her mother - has the city filing a friend of the court brief to stop the practice once and for all.
"You can't snatch people off the courthouse steps anymore. That's wrong. Don't do it. And we're asking a court to say they can't do that anymore," First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro said.
Mastro said the city is simply fed up with the heavy handed actions of ICE agents arresting people who show up for court hearings.
Mastro was moved by pictures that show a sign reading "Mom" in pink glitter, along with a play kitchen and other toys, that were left behind by three members of an Ecuadorian family who left for a recent immigration hearing and never returned. Martha, a mother, and her 6-year-old daughter Dayra, were sent to an ICE detention center in Texas and feared deported.
"These situations are tragic," Mastro said.
"We have to allow people to go through the legal process"
The suit, filed as an amicus brief, or friend of the court, seeks an immediate halt to courthouse arrests by ICE, saying the practice has taken a "heavy toll" on a city where 3 million - 40% of the population - are immigrants.
"The sheer number of individuals detained is remarkable: in just a two-week period between late May and early June, federal officers arrested more than 130 people in a lower Manhattan immigration courthouse building," city officials wrote in the suit.
"We have to allow people to go through the legal process, and that's why we filed the amicus brief," Adams said.
"The 7-year-old and her mother have not committed any crimes. You know, the 7-year-old was gearing up to go back to school in a couple of weeks," said Murrad Awawdeh of the Immigration Coalition.
CBS News New York previously spoke to the child's brother, who said his sister is 6 years old and will turn 7 in October.
Awawdeh, the Immigration Coalition's president and CEO, is happy the city filed the suit, but he says the city and the mayor should be doing more.
"I want to see him say that the NYPD is not going to collude illegally with the Department of Homeland Security or ICE. I want to make sure that he's investing more resources into immigration and legal services. Additionally, making sure that's he's protecting our sanctuary policies," Awawdeh said.
"Nothing in the constitution prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them. The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense. It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be. It is also safer for our officers and the community. These illegal aliens have gone through security and been screened to not have any weapons," a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement. "Further, illegal aliens are NOT 'New Yorkers,' and trying to shield them from law enforcement poses a threat to the actual American citizens and legal residents of New York City. Mayor Adams should know that; his sanctuary policies enabled the shooting of a CBP officer in Manhattan by two illegal aliens just last month. This Administration is once again implementing the rule of law. We encourage all sanctuary politicians to stop the chaos, join us, and side with the American people instead of criminal illegal aliens."
The city was not the only one to file suit. Attorney General Letitia James wants a judge to stop ICE from holding immigrants at their Lower Manhattan field office in what she claims are inhumane and unsanitary conditions.
Immigrants "caught in a trap laid by immigration authorities"
"While the City does not set immigration policy or decide who enters this country, it must govern with an eye to the reality that asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants have made the City their home. The tactics employed against many of the individuals represented here— using their appearances at court for routine immigration hearings as opportunities to detain them—threaten to deter people from accessing the court system on which local governance depends. The implications threaten to reach well beyond the immigration arena and reach countless other matters affecting public welfare," New York City Corporation Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant wrote in the brief.
Goode-Trufant wrote that immigrants heading to court have been "caught in a trap laid by immigration authorities" which presents them "with an impossible choice: risk detention by attending future court proceedings or run the same risk by not attending. To put it mildly, this undermines the public interest."
The New York City Council recently passed an additional $33.6 million in funding for pro-bono legal services, saying the crackdown has led to an increased need for legal support.