VI 20 arrests in Trumps America. Here is how they looked.

New York – Ahmed knew that he faced arrest if he continued sitting in the waiting room outside the Court 34, on the 12th floor of 26 Federal Plaza. The man sitting in front of him told him.

The man, a worried federal worker who had come to the Immigration Court in his free time and compared ICE officers with a Nazi Gestapo, had practically begged Ahmed, who is being identified by a pseudonym to protect his privacy, stop and leave the room with him.

“Didn’t you bring water?” The man whispered, suggesting that Ahmed left with him to have a drink. He returned his pointer and intermediate fingers, running along his palm for Mime Ahmed leaving the room.

Since the end of May, federal agents invaded immigration courts throughout the country, arresting people who present their appointments, pass through metal detectors and identify by name in open audiences. It was my fifth day attending the court, and I had already seen many of these arrests.

“He thinks he runs the risk of being arrested,” I told Ahmed, referring to the man who tries to attract him to leave. I made a gesture to the clutch of the agents, most of them with masks, who had been looking at us from a few meters away. The waiting room was not larger than a shipping container. A few minutes before, I had seen one of them look at the name that appears in the paperwork that Ahmed was holding, reviewing it against another document. “The document they point out is a list of people to be arrested.”

Ahmed was firm. He said that he had come all this path: from Africa to Turkey, Spain, Colombia, Central America, Mexico and finally to the border of the United States, where a border patrol agent stopped him and now he was studying a claim for asylum. For two years working in a corner store in Queens, he had collected a lot of English. And was committed to following the legal process. In addition, he said, if he left now, he could face a deportation order to miss the audience. I wasn’t returning: “I came here to be able to immigrate.”

The federal worker was dejected. “That path leads to an address,” he said.

In a few minutes, the officers executed half a dozen arrests in rapid succession, almost all of them among the multitude of respondents of the Spanish -speaking immigration court that had just registered a judge and were about to leave the building. Ahmed was the following, scheduled to coincide with an Arab translator.

When a court employee entered the waiting room and asked if the Arab speech respondent was present, the agents had presented Ahmed to a retention cell on the ground floor. He had missed his audience after all.

Matt Shuham/News themezone

I witnessed 20 of these arrests for five days scattered in the immigration court this month.

There were many more that I didn’t see. Multiple corridors of vinyl tiles within 26 Federal Square and 290 Broadway, neighboring federal buildings in Bajo Manhattan, are dedicated to immigration courts. A lawyer who has worked in both buildings for years estimated that the agents have averaged around a dozen arrests per building per day since President Donald Trump began to persecute aggressively arrests in court at the end of May.

“We are not a medieval kingdom, there are no legal sanctuaries where you can hide and avoid the consequences to violate the law. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits arresting a breakwater where you find them,” writes Tricia McLaughlin, spokesman for DHS, in a long statement to News themezone.

In New York, those arrested in court are generally taken to the tenth floor of 26 Federal Plaza. Hundreds have passed the night, or Many nights – There, without beds or showers, before being transferred to other facilities throughout the country.

For some, deportation will be rapid, given the expanded use of the Trump administration of “accelerated removal”, in which people who have recently arrived in the United States can be eliminated from the country without an order from the immigration judge. According to the Biden Administration, the designation was limited to people who had reached the border in the last 14 days. Now, the time limit is two years – or even more time in some cases, According to a demand for collecting action Challenging the arrests of the court, and Trump has applied it throughout the country.

Others could languish in detention. Although Trump has so far covered almost 60,000 people in overcrowded detention facilities, with certain exceptions, millions of people with open immigration cases in the United States have been able to attend audiences without being arrested. (The overcrowding statements and high -risk conditions at ICE facilities are “categorically false,” said McLaughlin, adding that the detainees received meals, medical treatment and “opportunities to communicate with their relatives and lawyers.”

But things are changing. Earl this monthThe administration declared that the people who crossed the border without authorization are not eligible for a bond audience, a policy that means Millions of people They are potentially vulnerable to detention in notoriously poor conditions while fighting their cases for months or years. At the same time, Trump now has thousands of millions in new funds of the Congress, and the extended detention capacity in Military bases and new, built in private Tent camps Throughout the country, as “Aligator Alcatraz” in Florida. And, in order of the White House, immigration agents, not only ice, but special agents in several cabinet agencies, are working every day to meet Trump’s soaring Arrest levels.

Defenders believe that the threat of detention, even for those with valid immigration cases, has motivated many immigrants to simply not present their audiences. During the Biden administration, the office of the chief judge of immigration, which, like all the immigration judges, responds to the executive branch, not to the judicial one, issued a memorandum Formalize a prohibition of arrests of the Immigration Court, except in rare circumstances.

The main immigration judge at that time, Sheila McNulty, wrote that such arrests would create a “chilling” and “discouragement of non -citizens to appear in their audiences.” When the Trump administration took power, a New memorandum He terminated that politics, saying that he had not been able to “explain why, unlike logic, aliens with valid claims of legal immigration status were discouraged by attending their audiences, even when they had no reasons to fear any compliance action of the DHS.”

All these developments are downstream of what, during the last decade, has been Trump’s central political message and the Republican party: those undocumented people They are rapists and murderers. And during his 2024 campaign, Trump promised to act on that racist generalization, asking for a “mass deportation” of millions of “illegal criminals”, even those whose only crime was attenuated a visa, which is not a crime. In office, Trump has erased The Biden administration policy that prioritized serious criminals and recent arriving by arrest and deportation. Now, ice officers do not make such a distinction, and each undocumented person is eligible to be detained simply for being in the Wrong place at the wrong time.

The result of these trends, in practice, is a massive spike in immigration arrests for people who have no criminal record at all, and a 50% increase In people in immigration detention since the end of the presidency of Joe Biden, a figure is expected to continue increasing.

“This is fishing in a supplied pool,” a federal agent involved in arrests in the immigration court told me. “You tell them: ‘Presentis in this place’, and then they show up and grab them.”

He pointed out that special agents that generally investigate complex crimes were being taken to the court’s arrest.

“If you are a criminal,” added the agent, “now it’s an easier time for you.”

Patrick T. Fallon through Getty Images

In low Manhattan, only agents take a couple of seconds to transform New Yorkers who attend detainees. I learned in the halls of Federal Plaza and 290 Broadway that people react to be arrested spontaneously quite differently.

A young person detained had a complete makeup and was designed as a modern David Bowie, with press nails, a dramatic corset tight on a white neck shirt and a red tie, and sunglasses without edge. When they left the Court 34 and saw the federal agents waiting, they casually built a brilliant battery fan at chin. They did not have a visible reaction when the officers took them out of view.

Another woman, with a white vest and heels with slippery hair in a horse tail, responded to be escorted in an elevator by masked agents with no more than a casual discomfort, even a boredom, as if she were in a long line.

Much more common were the reactions I could expect: panic, horror, screams, tears.

At the end of a large hearing of “Master Calendar”, in which a few dozen people fill the same court for a routine check-in with a judge, ICE officers gathered outside with names of names and faces. One by one, the people passed the threshold of the court and were arrested by the agents in the waiting room, an improvised control point.

A man, listening to his name, tried to retire to the court, out of the reach of an agent. But there was no place for him: the agent pounced on the threshold, grabbing him. A few minutes later, I witnessed a man trapped to the ground by four agents. “Help!” He shouted again and again. His help shouts reverberated around the hallway, they become stronger and more acute, becoming shouting: “Aid! Aid!” – Before the officers moved him away.

Photo by Charly Triballeau / News / Getty Images

Trump has commissioned the officials responsible for enforcing the law of the entire government with immigration application, and that includes the agents I saw in the New York Immigration Court. While some used civil and others had vests that simply said “federal agent”, most had an identifiable agency marker, whether it is a badge or patch.

Many were from ICE, but that included both branches of the agency: application and removal operations, which generally enforce the immigration law, and national security investigations, which are generally occupied seeking complex criminal investigations that include an immigration component, such as arms trafficking. Many agents were from the border patrol or its parent agency, customs of the United States and border protection. (News themezone recently reported In a memorandum of the Trump Administration marked “sensitive”, which detailed the deviation of approximately 2,000 CBP agents and officers of the application of interior immigration).

Other agencies represented included the ATF, including an agent with an “ATF Police negotiator”, and at least one agent with an badge in the Treasury department that refused to explain more. Some agents I saw were the diplomatic security service, the agency to apply the law of the State Department that, at least in New York, has the task of protecting foreign dignitaries in the United Nations.

None had their names easily visible. Most wore masks, but some did not; An agent who coordinated several arrests told me that he thought it was important that people saw their face while stopping them. Most wore weapons, but some didn’t. Some carried other articles, such as tournaments. The rear pockets of a few bulky with the contours of the Zyn containers. One, with a hat that said “Goober”, showed a fixed leaf knife in his belt.

“Where I work, I need it,” he told me when I asked him about it. “I’m not going to take something out of my belt just because I’m working in a new place.”

Most made a small talk with lawyers and journalists. Some let their true feelings slip.

“I am here for a month,” a diplomatic service agent told me, after explaining that the standard rotation in the immigration court was two weeks. “My office must be angry with me. ‘A month for you!'”

Another said he had just returned from Chad, where he was doing the embassy and help in the refugee fields. I asked him what he thought about the fact that some people who arrested could end in dangerous and unknown countries If they received a final elimination order.

“Apest in general,” he said. “I would not like to be left in Chad, much less in South Sudan or Somalia.” The Trump administration, in accordance with a third country agreement with South Sudan, recently sent eight American immigration detainees to the country, although only one was South South. Several other countries have also accepted non -national detainees, especially El Salvador, and the Administration has followed similar agreements with more dozens.

Once, I recognized an ATF agent in the duty of the Immigration Court with his mask off. I said that I had heard of others that they would prefer to be doing their real jobs.

“I think it is a good way to say it,” they said, after noticing that they had not offered themselves as volunteers for rotation.

Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for the Immigration Review Executive Office, the Department of Justice that supervises the immigration courts, declined to comment on a detailed list of questions and directed News themezone to DHS “with respect to its application operations.”

McLaughlin said that the arrests of the court were beneficial because the agents of the law “already know where an objective will be” and because the people who attend the Court “have gone through security and have been examined not to have weapons.”

Seeing agents in action made me think of a recent Atlantic Article, which quoted ICE agents that describe how the impulse of thousands of arrests by immigration application had eliminated complex investigations agents.

“Without cases of drugs, no people trafficking, without child exploitation,” an agent told the publication. And another: “[Homeland Security Investigations] The personnel are being eliminated from the research squads, and there are only so many people to which they went … There are threats of security and public safety that are not being addressed. “

It is difficult to know how common this dissatisfaction is. Obviously, none of the agents who had observed to stop people unfortunate enough to be on their list had renounced their work on the task. But some seemed conflicts. On July 14, the agents remained when a mother took two children to the elevator bank after a judicial hearing. They were not on the list and allowed them to leave. A border patrol agent who generally used a mask and a baseball hat, and that I had not kindly answered to my click questions, bent down at the level of the children’s eyes, removed the mask and smiled at the children before the elevators swallowed them.

Another agent, Hell Gate informedI had announced aloud a hall of journalists: “If I had to describe the last two weeks, I would say ‘Sunshine’ but later, at a time without guard talking to a colleague, he was more frank:” Every day I put my alarm for 5, and every morning I still find my phone at 4:50 “.

Matt Shuham/News themezone

After an arrest, family members persist.

On July 3, there was a mother with a stroller and two children, maybe 1 and 4 years. Many respondents of the Immigration Court are new parents, and waiting rooms are often full of baby and young children. The mother was short, with a kind face that strives under anxiety. She waited along with the Bank of Elevator with the children while her husband went to her audience. He worked to keep his children busy, circles with the stroller while traveling. Occasionally, the older child played with the youngest, moving a toy.

After one or two hours, she got serious. What was happening? The press photographers, from the scrum that spend the time in the hall, began to show their photos they had taken from men who had been arrested that day. The second photographer he approached moved through his photos, reviewing his reaction. Finally, she contracted and began to cry. One of the photos showed her husband being arrested. She had lost it. He turned around and looked at the ground, collecting his children and making a direct line for the exit.

The corridor full of people, who had been full of meaningless talk throughout the day, witnessed the entire exchange and remained silent.

A similar situation was developed on July 8, when an effusive 6 -year -old girl, with bright eyes and braids that fell in the middle of the back, joined her mother in the middle of a waiting room. About 20 feet away, a group of federal agents leaned on the wall by the court door, making a small talk between them. Several volunteers and the clergy remained close to the mother and the child, sitting in the damping seats closer to the agents while providing the family with any company.

A volunteer had suddenly provided, as by magic, a paper pad and a large crayon package. “Draw where your favorite place would be, if we weren’t here,” the volunteer suggested. The boy drew happily. Finally, more agents appeared outside an adjacent hall, joining others through the court door a few meters away. A man, not related to the girl or her mother, left the courtroom and the officers quickly put it in their hands, carrying it under arrest and carrying it in custody.

The girl stopped coloring and took the scene. His eyes launched after the action and leaned forward in his seat, grabbing the edge with both hands. Their eyebrows crowded the concern in panic. The man was taken out of sight. The girl’s mother got with a stone face, paralyzed. Finally, the volunteer made a soft smile and offered the girl the crayons again. The girl stopped, then took them.

The minutes pass. The agents spoke between them, the girl colored. “You have a lot of confidence in your drawing,” said the volunteer. The mother was worried. He approached Father Fabian Arias, a one year presence In these halls, and together they walked to one of the unmasked agents, who asked for their partner’s name. She said it. “He has been arrested,” said the agent. He has been arrested.

As the woman’s life changed, the agents continued to chat at the bottom. “It’s the first day!” One exclaimed.

The detainee’s wife made some quick phone calls in Spanish and then broke crying. The girl did not seem to realize, and moved only when the volunteer gave her the news that it was time to stop coloring.

On the sidewalk outside the federal square a few minutes later, the mother and daughter joined several politicians who had observed the judicial procedures that day, including the comptroller of New York City Brad Lander, who had been arrested For these same agents only three weeks before, and the public lawyer Jumaane Williams. Temperatures hovered in the mid -90s, and someone produced a strawberry ice cream bar for the girl. He vomited it on the sidewalk before being taken to a SUV with air conditioning.

Spencer Platt through Getty Images

The logic behind the arrests was inscrutable. I heard that several cases of people were arrested despite the fact that the judges assigned another appearance months in the future. For the most advanced people in the asylum process, an arrest could mean be transferred throughout the country and appear before new judges in different courts that have no idea of their case history, after months or years in a different region.

On July 3, a man with a white robe that flows was arrested despite not progressing in his case of immigration that Day because there had not been a translator available for Wolof, the language of West Africa, said Julie Won, a member of the New York City Council who sat at the audience.

Presumably, the man was on the lists that the federal agents walked through the halls of the New York Immigration Courts periodically verified, full of names and sometimes images of their objectives. I had heard of at least one agent dressed in a civilian, waiting in court to confirm the assistance of a specific objective and let others know how to prepare for an arrest. Sometimes people approached the agents who asked for help to find their courtroom, without realizing the agents the opportunity to verify the name in their paperwork.

But nobody seemed to know how these lists joined. Were all the ones I saw arrested posed an urgent public security risk? That seemed unlikely. Was it just a matter of catching the people who described for “accelerated extraction” and, therefore, were easier to deport?

Court arrests had begun in May with ice lawyers asking immigration judges to dismiss The existing case of a specific person, clearing the way for ice agents to arrest and pursue accelerated elimination. But from what I saw, the arrests of the court these days are not limited to people whose cases the ice has moved to dismiss. A class action lawsuit Challenging the arrests of the courts filed this month included several pseudonym accused who have been in the United States for more than two years and were arrested in the immigration court, although they should have been eligible for the elimination issued, he argued the lawsuit. The same lawsuit indicated that the administration was studying accelerated elimination even in cases where immigration judges do not give dismissals immediately, a measure that the plaintiffs argued that it was illegal.

Even more confusing, the lists of the agents did not seem to be the last word about whether someone was arrested.

Last week, a young couple and her little son were arrested at the door of the waiting room by an agent who demanded that the man identify. Benjamín Remy, a lawyer from the New York non -profit assistance group that is a fixed element in the Immigration Court along with his colleague Allison Cutler, told the family in Spanish that they had the right to remain silent.

The agent threatened to stop the man until he was identified, and urged him to pass his son to his partner, who refused to interact with the agents. Amid the brief confrontation, the child stroked his father’s face with love and the father tried to correspond to attention.

“Just see,” I heard someone say. At that time, the family seemed simply to go through the agents, and apparently it was allowed to leave. I got up to follow them to the elevators bank, but they folded a corner the more arrests they were ongoing behind me. I couldn’t confirm that they could leave, but it seemed that they had done it.

“Absolute authority executed in the most arbitrary and unpredictable way possible,” Remy sent me a text message later, describing the confrontation and arrests of the court in general. He said he had seen unique cases of agents who let people go before, if they had serious medical conditions or if they were the only suppliers of children at home. But these were extremely rare exceptions.

That trend has continued for those behind bars.

“Personally I have not seen anyone go out in any type of probation of ice since it began” at the end of May, Remy said.

He added that the agents were especially rough with the court respondents led in the first days of the court arrest wave, but that the violence had decreased a little after the volunteer observers and the photojournalists began to align the steps of the immigration court. And for that purpose, the presence of sometimes dozens of volunteer observers in the bass Manhattan provides a real public service to the respondents in the immigration court.

Beyond that, observers, of groups, including the new sanctuary coalition, make the New York road and the Jews for racial and economic justice, offer basic information on legal rights, reminding people of people who have the right to remain silent and who do not have to sign anything, as deportation documents.

Once in detention, this information can really make a difference. Indigent immigration detainees are not guaranteed to a lawyer, and those who have one often only allow them to talk to them for a few minutes. It is common for detainees to be pressed to sign enormously significant documents.

I saw volunteers delivering flyers of their rights in several languages and, sometimes, eliminating the information of an emergency contact with which they could follow up in case a surveyed outside.

“It is important to witness and tell the story of what is happening,” the New York Episcopal Bishop Matthew Heyd told me one morning, when he and others in a group of Fees leaders were present to observe the court. “This should be a safe place, a place of sanctuary and, on the other hand, our government has made it a place of chaos and cruelty.”

Remy said it would be useful to have more multilingual people, such as those who speak French, Haitian, Arab, Mandarin or Cantonese Creole, as well as lawyers, especially those who are multilingual, in the halls of the court.

And I saw why. During my days in the immigration court, the volunteers and the lawyers were numerous, but they could not follow the rhythm of the arrests. Many people who saw arrested had not interacted with any of the volunteers in advance. Like thousands of other immigration detainees before them, they went to a Byzantine and dehumanizing system without many people in their corner. Seeing his arrests felt like a dirty secret that could not be washed soon.

An image of July 17 persecuted me. While I sat with Ahmed, I looked inside the court 34. The doors of the court were open to the waiting room, where federal agents waited. The people inside could not have known who was on arrest, but they seemed to know that anything was possible. They nervously looked at the agents, trying to stay focused on the judge.

“Damn it if you do, damn if you do not,” a lawyer had told me before, referring to the dilemma that these respondents faced: appear and face a potential detention during the duration of their immigration procedures, perhaps a few hours, maybe years, or omit the audience and risk

Those like Ahmed, who appear despite knowing about the ongoing arrests in the buildings of the Court, are betting on the United States, which will respect their legal rights and that may also have space for them.

Having seen what happened to many of them, I’m not so sure.