Immigration rights activists rallied Monday outside Fort Snelling Immigration Court to call attention to arrests of immigrants seeking asylum.
Many arrests target immigrants who have been in the United States for less than two years who are appearing at scheduled court hearings; in their cases, activists say, judges are rapidly dismissing cases and denying appeals.
The result is that many immigrants are afraid to show up to court hearings.
At least four men were arrested by plainclothes agents after attending their court hearings last week, according to the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), which organized Monday’s news conference.
“We know that people are being taken every day based on the number of reports that we get and our eyewitness accounts,” said Erika Zurawski, co-founder MIRAC.
The four men were present in the United States for less than two years and seeking asylum, Zurawski said. MIRAC said they did not have permission to share the names of the men.
At the court hearings, Zurawski said she saw Immigration Judge Brian Sardelli dismiss immigration cases at the request of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security attorney to place respondents in expedited removal, allowing federal agents to detain them at immigration court. She said respondents attempted to object to the dismissal request, but the judge ruled in favor of the federal attorney.
MIRAC is calling on judges to give defendants opportunities to appeal dismissals. They also want the court to hold all master calendar hearings, which are part of the first stage of removal proceedings, online.
“We demand an end to this terror,” Montana Hirsch, a MIRAC organizer, said. “While we are horrified by what we saw in that building, we are not demoralized.”
Kathryn Mattingly, press secretary for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is a federal agency that conducts removal proceedings in immigration court, referred all questions to the Department of Homeland Security and declined to further comment. DHS had not responded at the time of publication.
Immigrants showing up in court are also facing a new, and confusing, round of fees to file routine paperwork, after passage of the Trump budget bill.
Community groups, like MIRAC, are seeing an increase in donations and volunteers interested in offering to fill in gaps for services. Some of the services include accompanying immigrants to court hearings, transportation to court hearings or quickly verifying reports of federal immigration agents making arrests.
The Immigrant Defense Network, a statewide group of advocacy organizations that provides direct services and legal resources, recently launched a new program to train people for responding to federal immigration agents making arrests and documenting whether or not constitutional rights have been violated.
Observers will also share information about the constitutional rights of immigrants and legal resources to the arrested individuals or their families at the scene, said Ryan Perez, director of organizing at Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina (COPAL), which is part of the network.
Since the beginning of the year, organizers say they’re growing more concerned about their safety as immigration enforcement ramps up.
“If things get worse, which seems likely, we’ve had discussions about how much risk we’re willing to take and how that might change eventually,” said John Benda, an ICOM member. “We’ve had some discussion about what we’d be willing to do if a volunteer was apprehended, which seems like it could happen.”
Zurawski, from MIRAC, said organizers will continue making calls and sending emails to push for their demands. They also plan to keep observing court hearings to better understand how judges make decisions in immigration cases “because at the end of the day, it’s [about] whether or not the judges had a heart,” she said.
