By Crescenzo Vellucci
Vanguard News Editor
SACRAMENTO, CA – While thousands of local and state police, national guard and federal military troops fill the streets in Los Angeles this week in the wake of immigration rights protests, at least five more people have been yanked out of Sacramento federal courtrooms and taken away by federal agents.
The Sacramento immigration actions are similar to thousands of other ICE detainments happening around the nation, according to news reports, after, as the Sacramento Bee wrote, “the Trump administration has rescinded guidance that told agents to avoid making arrests at places of worship and has taken people into custody for showing up to immigration appointments.”
The Bee reports “at least” two men attending hearings in Sacramento Immigration Court Wednesday, and three others Tuesday, were “handcuffed and detained” by plainclothes ICE agents dressed in baseball caps and T-shirts, and not identified as agents.
They were “stationed around different floors of the courthouse,” added the Bee, noting the actions “appeared to be a continuation of the new and controversial practice that has troubled attorneys, angered activists and increased fears for immigrants.”
When asked if they represented ICE, or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the Bee, one agent “deflected and said he was waiting for an attorney while standing by an elevator on the first floor where the ICE office is located. He later went to the fourth floor, where court proceedings take place. He was overheard using a radio to ask if he was able to leave where he was stationed,” said the Bee.
A volunteer with NorCal Resist told the Bee one Venezuelan man was handcuffed and led away after leaving his asylum hearing.
Earlier in the week, the Bee reported Jessie De Haven, a lawyer who provides free legal advice to immigrants at the court, said, “If they can just arrest people coming out of court that still have proceedings going on, they can just arrest anyone they want. That, to me, is the scariest part.”
De Haven said volunteers provide freed legal aid to immigrants, and the men taken by ICE hailed from Venezuela and Haiti, adding it was “unlikely,” in her Bee interview, those detained had been taken to “Golden State Annex, a detention center near Bakersfield.”
Kevin Johnson, a professor and former dean of the UC Davis School of Law, told the Bee, the ICE arrests in Sacramento challenge immigrants to either show up at their hearings and risk detainment, or if they don’t appear at the hearing, a judge may order their removal.
ABC 10 reported lawyers are shocked by ICE’s actions, quoting Julian Sanchez Mora, an immigration attorney at Immigrant Crime and Justice, who stated, “I have been practicing for about 10 years now, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Say what you want, they’re here. The law says that they’re afforded the protections of our Constitution, and when they are stripped of Constitutional rights of due process, it should be alarming to everybody, regardless of what your political leanings are,” said Thomas Baker, an immigration attorney with Capital Gateway Immigration, in an ABC interview.
Baker said the government’s tactics now include dismissing people’s deportation cases, and then, when the person leaves, ICE takes them into custody, and “they do what’s called an expedited removal, which is basically deporting them without a hearing.”
ABC reports Baker and Sanchez Mora claim clients are detained “even though they were doing the right thing,” adding most immigrants enter the U.S. legally, but often don’t have legal representation.
“Very importantly, make sure that you have an attorney. Show up with an attorney. If you are represented, then your attorney can oppose any motion from the government to try to dismiss your case, which is what they have been doing recently,” Sanchez Mora said to ABC.
