It is simply not nice.

I have been doing volunteer shifts doing court observing as masked ICE agents are snatching immigrants when they come to court for mandatory immigration court appointments. Volunteers help distribute information about immigrants’ rights, collect emergency contact information so we can let someone know if they are detained, and try to bring a calm, supportive, de-escalatory presence to an incredibly tense situation. As a result, I don’t take pictures when I go to immigration court, as whipping out a cell phone works against those purposes. But I couldn’t resist taking this one in the bathroom outside of an immigration courtroom in New York the other day. Someone is making a plea, no doubt based on experience, “please do not throw papers on the floor. It is simply not nice.”

I have spent roughly 8 hours in this court building over the past few weeks, so I’m not an expert, but I have witnessed so many things that are ‘not nice’ – some things that have been introduced in the last few months and some things that were already features of our unbelievably broken immigration system.

Here are some of the things that I have seen:

• I have seen two immigrants appearing in court via Webex explain to the judge that they were not appearing in person because they were scared of being detained by ICE. I have seen the judge tell them that they must appear in person anyway and nothing bad will happen to them if they come today. I watched her tell them this while there were 12 armed men in masks in the hallway directly outside her room, waiting to pick people up who are appearing for their court date. I watch her make eye contact with the government lawyer ‘this assurance is true, right?’ and I watch the government lawyer give a small nod. I do not think the men outside are nodding. I do not think they are part of this informal pact.
• I see these men. They are large and threatening. I don’t see their faces, as they are covered with black masks. I see them in my nightmares and they are not even after me. I could look for their eyes, but I don’t want to. Instead I sail by in my flimsy dresses, trying to keep my head high and come off like I’m not intimidated by the armed men flanking either side of the narrow hallways. Accompanying the armed men are almost always a gaggle of photographers, intimidating in their own way. I walk a compa to the bathroom during a court break so she doesn’t have to walk the gauntlet alone and there will at least be a witness if she is snatched, and come back shaking with nerves.
• I see a judge who is zooming into her own courtroom (is she on vacation? is she relaxing in her own home?), who prioritizes all of the morning cases who have attorneys, leaving all of the immigrants who are representing themselves pro se and are present in the courtroom to go at the end. She suddenly announces that everyone left on the docket will all be heard as a group, but the translator present is not given a chance to translate the case numbers for the Spanish speakers in the room, so there is a moment of panicked confusion as we try to figure out who is included in this high-stakes rescheduling and who is not. When we try to advocate for basic translation, the judge is annoyed at the intrusion and tells us to trust the process. They know what they’re doing.
• I talk to a man from Haiti. I talk to a man from Ecuador. I talk to a young woman from Colombia who is there with her two children. I ask her if she’d like me to go into the courtroom with her. She says it’s ok. She says she is going in with god and she will go out with god. I tell her I understand and would like to go with her anyway.
• I see people who cannot name a single emergency contract anywhere in this country. They relax when I tell them their emergency contact can be outside of the States. I imagine what it would be like to be so alone so far away from home. I imagine the same thing but with kids. I see people who would not be here trying to make a life if they had any other options.
• I see these images that you see on social media, like NYC Comptroller Brad Lander being arrested by ICE in the hallways, but then you see them in real life and it hits differently when you see: oh yes, it’s exactly like this. It’s exactly as terrifying and undemocratic and unjust as it looks on the internet and it’s really happening every single day. (This is what it actually looks like in the hallways and waiting rooms and elevators.)

-----

I started looking for ways to volunteer after coming back home from an explore-your-roots kind of journey to Louisiana. At the time I was planning the trip in the spring, ICE detention centers in rural Louisiana were all over the news due to high profile detentions of student activist Mahmoud Khalil and grad student Rümeysa Öztürk, among others, who were shipped thousands of miles away from their legal representation and communities. I started reading everything I could find, which wasn’t a lot, about what these facilities are like. What was available about conditions inside was horrifying. I connected with an immigrant advocacy organization based in Louisiana that visits immigrants in detention, helps connect them with resources, and can help with transportation if someone is released.

Towards the end of my visit in the state, I got a call asking if I could pick up an individual who was being released and take him to a social services organization a couple of hours away. I drafted a family member to help me drive, raided another family member’s kitchen as we had been told that people being released are often very hungry (and might need medical care), and drove to a detention center. We picked up our new acquaintance and I did my best to explain who we were and what we were doing there. He hopped in our car with a heartbreaking trust and I have never seen a person so happy to see a banana, apparently the first fresh food he had seen in months. I couldn’t remember the word in Spanish for ‘slippery’ so I couldn’t properly warn him about the deviled eggs slip-sliding in the Tupperware, but they were gone before it was a real issue.

I don’t think I can tell you more about that particular encounter right now, but one thing has stayed with me that does feel important to share. In addition to meeting these people most directly affected and being altered by those meetings, I have been able to see Louisianans organizing mutual aid for people in detention, just as I see New Yorkers acting to mitigate the impacts of these horrific detentions. Just as there is a pipeline of oppression, there are people working against that oppression at every stage possible. I have seen them at two junctures, and this thought is one of a few that buoys me as I grit my teeth and head into the court building first thing in the morning. As ICE continue its “breakneck expansion” in the months and years to come, this counter-chain of organizing and mutual aid will need to be expanding and coordinating as well.

-----

If this situation is upsetting to read about and you have some extra dollars, you can send them to community organization Mi tlalli, which is distributing funds to families who have lost their income earners and helping immigrants who are in ICE detention centers with prison commissary funds for food and phone calls. This is an organization I have seen in action and trust.