News media needs to start using the correct language. This tiptoeing bullshit is really irking me. ICE isn’t “arresting” or “detaining” or “taking into custody” these people. ICE is KIDNAPPING them.
Yes, the language they’re using suggests that there will be due process according to the law. This is not the case. They’re bypassing the law entirely to kidnap and disappear people.
I leave this here without comment.
At least some of the arrests appear to be the result of a new ICE tactic: Immigration attorneys across the country told NBC News that some of their clients on ATD were asked in a mass text message ICE sent out to show up ahead of schedule for check-ins at ICE offices, only to be arrested when they arrived.
An NBC News reporter saw seven people who had come for check-ins at a New York City ICE office Wednesday being led out in cuffs and put into unmarked cars. One, a 30-year-old Colombian man, was followed close behind by his wife, who was sobbing loudly, and his daughter, who tried to chase after him as law enforcement agents in masks led him and two other men in handcuffs into waiting vehicles.
Margaret Cargioli, the directing attorney at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, who represents the family, told reporters afterward that the man had gone “to every single [ICE] appointment. He was, you know, very cooperative with all of the requirements that were made of him.”
Veronica Navarrete was waiting outside the immigration office for a friend, an asylum-seeker from Ecuador, who had been told to report to the office Wednesday. She told NBC News she had seen immigrants pacing outside the building all day, some of them seeming to her to be contemplating whether to show up for their appointments at all.
“If you enter, there’s a possibility that they’ll take you into custody,” she said. “And if you don’t enter, you’ve missed your appointment, and that’s automatic deportation. We have no way out.”
It’s so reminiscent of Jews being rounded up by the Gestapo. They set it up to suggest you have a chance if you comply, but it’s a trick and you don’t have a chance. The cruelty of the trick is part of the enjoyment for sadistic fascists.
At this point I’d be pushing my immigration lawyer to let me appear remotely so I can’t get picked up like that.