ICE is out of the news, but it's still abusing immigrants

Hello! Some breaking news: The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood announced today that it’s giving Profile in Courage Awards to Fed Chair Jerome Powell for resisting Trump’s pressure, and to the people of Minnesota who risked their freedom and lives to protect their immigrant neighbors from ICE attacks. The awards will be made at a ceremony on Sunday, May 31; you can watch live on the library website here.

RECENT FAST FORWARD ISSUES

👺 ICE attacks haven’t stopped

Daily arrest quotas. A special custom-made app that directs ICE agents to certain “high-value” neighborhoods — such as those with large Latino populations. Dossiers on people targeted for deportation.

We haven’t heard much lately about ICE assaults on both documented and undocumented immigrants, but don’t be fooled; it’s still happening. The massive surge in Minneapolis, which led to the murder of two US citizens, may have eased because of national outrage, but rogue agents continue to terrorize immigrant communities there and across the country.

Here’s a snapshot of what’s going on:

• A class-action lawsuit in Oregon challenging ICE’s policy of detaining people without warrants or probable cause revealed widespread racial profiling and unconstitutional arrests across the state.

ICE teams of 9 to 12 agents have a quota of 8 arrests per day, and they use an app especially designed to locate places likely to have large numbers of immigrants.

In one example, ICE agents targeted an apartment building in a city south of Portland and started checking license plates to determine the owners. A van caught their attention, so early the next morning they followed it as it stopped to pick up men along the way.

ICE stopped the van, smashed the windows, dragged out the occupants, and arrested them. One agent claimed he was suspicious that there was human trafficking or smuggling going on, especially since the occupants spoke only Spanish.

Oh, those tricky Latinos, picking up grown men who were waiting for the van and willingly got in.

Turns out they were migrant day workers heading to a local farm. Were they here legally? Who knows? They’ve disappeared into detention somewhere. I can only hope their families can find them.

• Also in Oregon, the pressure of quotas is leading the agents to racially profile and violate constitutional protections, grabbing people with no warrants and no probable cause. Nothing new, right?

Recently, agents pulled over Juanita Avila, a shop owner in Cottage Grove in western Oregon who has been a legal permanent resident for nine years, and started questioning her about where she was born. She told them she had her green card in her pocket. It didn’t matter. They violently tackled her to the ground, knelt on her back, handcuffed her, and threw her into the back of an ICE vehicle.

Fortunately, her daughter was nearby; she filmed the agents while screaming that her mother was here legally. They finally uncuffed Avila so she could retrieve her green card, and eventually let her go after 30 excruciating minutes.

Makes you wonder if they have to detain somebody for a set amount of time so that it counts as an “arrest” toward their daily quota.

They roughed up Avila so badly that she thought they had broken her shoulder, so she went to the hospital. (It’s unclear whether it was broken.)

An investigation by the nonprofit Marshall Project found that ICE’s deportation of thousands of families with children under age 18, while first holding them in bleak detention centers, has deeply traumatized those kids.

ICE snatches the families, giving them no opportunity to make plans, sell items so they have money to bring with them, contact friends or relatives in their native country, arrange for housing and schooling so they are in place when they arrive, etc.

Instead, under Trump’s policy, these families are deported so abruptly that they leave behind sentimental keepsakes, vital medicine, beloved pets, cars, and homes, sometimes leaving the US with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Before we go any further, let me remind you that most of the immigrants that ICE is arresting and deporting entered the US legally. In fact, more than 75% of immigrants arrive that way. They could be temporary visa holders of some sort, including those who have requested asylum and are awaiting the disposition of their case in immigration court; lawful permanent residents (aka green card holders); or those who have become naturalized citizens.

Most undocumented immigrants are here illegally because they have overstayed their allotted time; their temporary visas have expired.

But that is not a crime. It is a civil offense, and those who violate it are supposed to be fined and given a chance to argue their case before an immigration judge as to why they should be allowed to stay. Sometimes they make a credible case that their home country is too dangerous, that their son was being recruited to sell drugs, or their daughter was in danger of being kidnapped by gangs. Or they present evidence of abject poverty, unstable governments, religious or political persecution.

If they lose their case and the judge orders them deported, they are supposed to be given time to settle their affairs, pack their belongings, and leave the US with their dignity intact.

When undocumented immigrants are treated this way, they are less likely to try to return to the US.

Violating building codes in construction or polluting a waterway are other examples of civil offenses. But those who commit those civil offenses aren’t thrown to the ground, handcuffed, and shipped off to jail. They’re allowed to argue their case in court. The same should be true of undocumented immigrants. Instead, even those who are following the law and making regular appearances to check in with immigration officials while their case is being considered are being nabbed by ICE agents and deported without a hearing or due process.

It’s inhumane and immoral. It’s Trump.

By the way, as of February, there have been 201,878 new immigration cases brought to court since Oct. 1 (start of the federal fiscal year), and Homeland Security was seeking deportation because of alleged criminal activity in only 1.83% of those cases according to TRAC, a data gathering and research organization based at Syracuse University.

So yes, Donny, tell us again how you’re ridding the streets of criminals. I’d be happy if just the White House was rid of criminals, especially those who’ve been convicted. Clean House!

Immigration judges issue removal or voluntary departure orders in about 80% of cases. So 20% of those folks get to stay. But the odds aren’t in the immigrants’ favor: Sadly, only about 1/3 have an attorney to help them — including children with no parents with them. Unlike criminal court, where an attorney is assigned to you if you can’t afford one, there is no such allowance in Immigration Court.

The heartless crackdown has another effect: There’s a backlog of 3.3 million active cases in Immigration Court, of which 2,322,671 are asylum cases.

We’re not hearing much these days about ICE’s abuses and the mistreatment of undocumented immigrants, from the detention centers to Immigration Court, for a simple reason: Trump’s chaotic style of governing, if you can even call it that.

There is so much incoming with this administration that it’s exhausting. Foreign incursions like Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba. The failure to secure the Strait