As President Donald Trump and his administration increase arrests and deportations across the nation, some immigrants fear that regular check-ins with immigration officials are increasing their risk of being imprisoned.
A 30-year-old Venezuelan immigrant was unexpectedly arrested during a routine appointment this week, according to his mother, who told NBC Miami that the man had been routinely checking in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in South Florida as part of a process to remain in the United States.
He was invited to appear at an immigration monitoring office in Delray Beach on Monday afternoon to follow up on his immigration application and “fix something… and, that was a lie,” according to the mother, whose identity is being concealed to protect her son.
The mother claimed that after waiting five hours for her son to complete his checkup, she witnessed immigration officials escorting him out.
She claimed that her son, who has been in the country since he was six years old, was not given a fair chance to contest a deportation order against him even though he showed up for his appointment.
The mother stated, “Look, you have a deportation order, we want you to be removed by February or something,” but they didn’t allow us the chance to at least say that.
Thousands of unauthorized immigrants across routinely report to ICE each year. As immigrants look for legal ways to stay in the United States, these regular meetings assist immigration officials in keeping track of people who are not a priority for deportation.
Additionally, immigration officials have other supervision schemes in place that enable them to monitor undocumented individuals via phone, GPS ankle monitors, and other means.ICE reports that these operations are monitoring around 179,000 individuals nationally.
After Trump was elected president in November, two immigration lawyers in New York, whose identities are being kept anonymous to protect their clients, said they began to notice a change. They stated that in scores of cases, their clients were detained and deported because people in the state who had previously been engaged in one of these immigration supervision programs or who had been checking in with ICE once or twice a year were ordered to report sooner.
NBC News was directed to ICE’s national office, which did not immediately reply, after the New York City ICE Field Office declined to comment.
‘A lot of fear’
Some immigrants who attend ICE check-ins are attempting to change their immigration status and do not have deportation orders. Other people might have similar orders, but they are either contesting them or are unaware of their deportation order until they arrive for their regular check-in.
According to one of the lawyers, such is what occurred to a mother who was deported this week with her small kid just one day after showing up for her check-in.
Before the mother arrived for her planned meeting with her daughter, she was unaware that she had lost an appeal in her immigration case. Rather, she found out about it at check-in, and by then, the mother was powerless to defend herself, the lawyer added.
The Trump administration recently issued a memo that increased the discretionary authority of immigration agents. This enables them to expedite the deportation of anyone with a removal order, regardless of whether they are deemed a priority or not, and circumvent standard immigration rules.
According to the lawyers, they anticipate seeing more cases like this one around the country. Deportation orders are still pending for around 1.4 million people. The immigration lawyers in New York reported anecdotally that they have witnessed a rise in the number of individuals who have been ordered to leave the country without a hearing. According to them, this suggests that more immigrants might be attending their ICE check-ins without being aware that they might be subject to a deportation order.
However, immigrants have little choice because missing a scheduled ICE meeting might result in a deportation order and negatively impact their prospects of staying in the country.
According to one lawyer, they want to comply and attend the appointments, but there is a great deal of anxiety and terror.
Maria Bilbao is a member of the Miramar Circle of Protection, a group of local residents who meet every Wednesday outside the ICE field office in Miramar, South Florida, to offer assistance to immigrants who are attending regular appointments.
The 30-year-old Venezuelan immigrant was held on Monday at the immigration supervision office in Delray Beach, where Bilbao met a Cuban man and a Colombian woman who arrived for their regular ICE check-in in Miramar on Wednesday morning and were instructed to go there instead.
A private corporation hired by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE to conduct an intensive supervision appearance program is in charge of the immigration supervision office in Delray Beach, which is not an ICE field office. The program’s goal is to provide an alternative to imprisonment.
However, Bilbao claims that the current situation is peculiar.She stated in Spanish that they are being imprisoned more frequently rather than receiving regular monitoring visits.
Bilbao has hardly heard of someone being held for deportation at that facility in her eight years of helping immigrants with their ICE check-in visits.
When NBC News emailed the Miami ICE Field Office to inquire on the number of people held in Delray Beach on Monday and whether or not those detained are subject to deportation, the office did not reply. At least six people were arrested that day, according to an NBC Miami reporter.
She told NBC Miami that she thought her cousin was duped into going to see their immigration officer, as they have done repeatedly, but this time they were caught off guard and taken away. The woman accompanied her cousin to his regular appointment at Delray Beach on Monday morning and witnessed him being removed by immigration authorities.
The acting assistant director of ICE Field Operations in Miami, Garrett Ripa, responded to the accusations by telling NBC Miami that there was no truth to them.
“Every individual in the United States that is either removable or inadmissible from the United States, regardless of whether they have a crime or not, is potentially an individual that we could take an enforcement action against,” Ripa responded when asked if undocumented immigrants would be detained or deported regardless of whether they have a criminal record.
Does that inevitably imply that we will place that individual under immigration custody? “Not necessarily,” he responded, “there are other paths we can take.”
‘It’s a nightmare’
Detentions of individuals during ICE check-ins are not new. Numerous prior administrations have experienced it, including Trump’s first term in 2017, which Bilbao claimed resulted in the establishment of the Miramar Circle of Protection.
“We referred to them as’silent raids’ back then,” Bilbao stated.
“So, we expected something like that to happen again this time around, because it is the easiest way for them to deport people,” she continued. “It’s a nightmare.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reaffirmed Trump’s pledge to implement the most extensive deportation effort in American history on Tuesday.
“If you are an individual, a foreign national, who illegally enters the United States of America, you are by definition a criminal,” Leavitt stated.
Being undocumented is not a criminal, but rather a civil offense. However, it is illegal for an undocumented immigrant who has been deported to return to the United States without authorization.
These folks aren’t criminals or evil people, according to the woman who witnessed her cousin’s arrest in Delray Beach on Monday. They took away a member of my family today, yet they are not criminals. He’s never been incarcerated.