A toddler in a red and white dress told me she was four years old. Her family told me she was here for her court date.
A series of young men were granted a court date by a judge, a moment of relief, only to be ambushed by a gang of ICE agents before they’d even cleared the doorway. One was violently manhandled. Another collapsed into the corner, head in his hands.
These men were pulled down an unmarked hallway and into anonymity, possibly to be trafficked toward a deadly prison in El Salvador or South Sudan or Florida for the crime of coming to America for a better life, and expecting better of us.
And lining every hallway, a masked force of anonymous goons looming over the proceedings and ready to pounce, under the guise of “just doing my job” and the cover of a total lack of accountability. Who care more about keeping order than keeping a conscience.
It’s not clear whether the people being seized always know what’s being said to them in these moments of arrest, and very clear they don’t know why. They are being thrust unaware into the most traumatic experience of their lives – alone.
A frantic woman was asking anyone she could for any sign of her partner who had come for his lawful hearing. Forty-five minutes later, her six year old daughter heard the truth – her father had been kidnapped by the government, without cause or a chance to say goodbye. Still she asked us, “Where is my daddy?” up to the moment of an anxiety attack that sent her to the hospital.
Words can’t convey the panic of a New Yorker suddenly pinned to the wall, the dread that hangs over the waiting room, the desperation of a mother and daughter begging for information about their family.
I can’t get these sickening sights and sounds out of my head – and maybe that’s a good thing.
I witnessed these scenes in Manhattan over a matter of hours – but what I saw is happening on a constant loop in buildings just out of sight of the Statue of Liberty.
And I don’t blame people for not knowing that.
Intentionally or not, our minds and media are often vague about the Trump administration’s crimes against our neighbors and rights. People hear about an “immigration crackdown,” maybe one that’s gone far beyond the so-called “criminals,” but it is in the details that the grotesque reality is revealed.
These aren’t vague issues –they’re specific cruelties. It’s not just an abstract overreach or a constitutional question. It’s an extra-legal abduction racket, the kind we’d hope the government would root out – but the government are the perpetrators.
It’s not all as obvious as what I witnessed. For everyone in a balaclava manhandling a mother, there’s someone in a suit simply adding names to a list. Following orders that stem from the White House and infiltrate federal buildings across the country with bureaucratic evil. And everyone involved – every perpetrator, every supporter of this agenda – should know what they’re defending and executing.
One DHS official hoped that deportations could be carried out like Amazon ships packages, and he’s gotten his wish – the court has become a shipping facility, with people as the product.
The bureaucratic apathy of it all is horrific. In the lobby, immigrant New Yorkers enter one door for an ICE check-in while their families wait out of sight at the other end, only hoping their loved one emerges. Inside, people wait for their chance at the window to make their case. We’ve created a DMV of deportations.
I constantly hear some version of the argument that people would support immigrants if they did it “the right way,” and followed “the process.” As thin as that stance usually is, it crumples completely when struck with the reality of our country’s actions – literally pulling people directly from “the process” and into a cell.
For the crime of having outdated documents, or seeking asylum from persecution with a government known for perpetrating it, we are sentencing human beings to conditions we would rightly call crimes against humanity in the countries that people are fleeing. We seem to think that being born within these borders makes us morally or ethnically superior, while our every action toward those born beyond those borders demonstrates the opposite.
Citizenship grants us the right to vote, to access certain government services, to run for office. But it doesn’t confer human rights or decency. Humanity is not conditional on citizenship, and right now, I can only describe what’s happening in our city and across the country as inhumanity.
Advocates – clergy, lawyers, elected officials, deli workers on their lunch break – are coming to these public courtrooms to watch what’s happening to our neighbors. Maybe another pair of eyes makes it a little harder to anonymously abduct someone. Maybe another pair of lips speaking about it afterward will make a difference. I have to believe that anyone who knows the specific, unsanitized truth of what’s going on will join in the moral outrage against it, the moral obligation to stop it.
So I invite New Yorkers to join us in these spaces – to use our privilege of documentation to aid the families and lives being destroyed. Bear witness to what’s happening. Tell everyone what’s being done in the name of our nation: beyond the lies, the innuendo, the cage doors. I have to credit the faith leaders, the advocates, and the comptroller, who have shown up and seen the suffering again and again, then worked to stop it.
Because be warned: Once you know–and now you do–you can’t be silent or inactive. You can’t look away. You can’t pretend you don’t know.
