Judge Patrick O’Brien has made a practice in recent weeks of asking the Homeland Security attorney, in his immigration courtroom at 630 Sansome St., point blank, if she plans to move to dismiss any cases that day — a signal that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is outside and will arrest an asylum-seeker.
Thursday, she told him yes.
After a few uneventful asylum hearings, O’Brien called on two men and a woman, all attending their second hearing for their ongoing asylum cases. As O’Brien has done in recent weeks, he tried to prepare them for a likely arrest once they leave the courtroom.
DHS had moved to dismiss their cases, he said, through a Spanish interpreter. It was highly unlikely they would be coming back for further hearings, no matter how he ruled on the dismissal.
Still, two asylum seekers, a woman and one of the men, didn’t seem to know what was coming. When the man walked out of the courtroom, he seemed so shocked to see six ICE officers, five of them masked, waiting for him, that he tried to run. The officers tackled him to the ground.
“Get down!” they yelled. “Do not move!”
They cuffed him against the wall. They took him down the hall, and through a side door, likely up to an ICE processing center on the sixth floor of the building, where many asylum-seekers who are arrested are processed before being sent to detention facilities.
The woman also appeared shocked. She asked the ICE officers, in English, if she could call her family. The officers grabbed her phone, backpack and jacket. They’d let her make a phone call later, they said.
The second man seemed to figure out what was going on while still in the courtroom. He peppered O’Brien and the interpreter with follow-up questions.
“I know that being in the United States isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. A privilege that has only been granted to some of us,” he said, in Spanish. But, “I fear going back to my country. I do not want to continue to live in fear.” He wanted the court to respect “the right I have to due process,” he said.
Eventually, the man seemed to realize further protest was futile. “I hope both God and the law help us,” he said to O’Brien, and asked to have time in the courtroom to text his family before stepping outside. (Mission Local has never seen ICE officers enter the courtroom).
“Stay as long as you need to,” O’Brien replied.
When the man eventually left the courtroom he said, in English, “I will cooperate,” and held out his hands. The ICE officers did not cuff him. Rather, they escorted him down the hallway and out the same door as the others.
The fourth and final person to have their case dismissed that day was a man from China. A few things could have tipped him off: ICE officers still out in the hallway, or the motion from the DHS attorney to dismiss the case. Desperate, he tried to find a way out.
From the respondent’s table, before the judge, the man turned to where his sister and young niece were seated in the gallery, and spoke to them in Mandarin.
The sister responded in Mandarin. Then, in English, she turned to the judge.
If she bought her brother a plane ticket now, back to their native China, would he still be detained? the sister asked. She is an American citizen, she added, and their father is a permanent resident.
“That’s probably not going to change things today,” O’Brien said.
“Under normal circumstances,” he said, leaving through a process called “voluntary departure” would give “the opportunity to leave the country on your own.” But today, O’Brien added: “I’m not sure voluntary departure is going to help you.”
The sister kept asking questions, until O’Brien told her he usually did not allow family members to speak in court; today’s “unusual circumstances” were the reason he was bending his rule, he said.
After the hearing, the man sat next to his sister in court. The two whispered to each other, and texted on their phones, while his niece played in the pews, coming over for the occasional high-five. After about 40 minutes, his sister started to cry.
O’Brien continued to hear other cases.
A family of three came to the front of the courtroom for their hearing.
Did they have any questions for him? O’Brien asked.
“Just if it’s safe to go outside,” one member of the family asked.
“As far as I can tell, yes,” O’Brien said, with a slight smile. The attorney with the Department of Homeland Security had not moved to dismiss that family’s case. That family exited the building without an arrest.
After an hour, O’Brien turned back to the man, still speaking with his sister. The morning’s hearings were nearly over, so he would have to leave the courtroom within 15 minutes.
The man’s sister gave him her blazer to put over his T-shirt, probably for warmth.
There are no detention facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many people who are arrested at immigration court in San Francisco are processed at Sansome Street and then sent to detention facilities elsewhere in California. Last week, though, ICE sent immigrants as far as Hawaii and Arizona.
The man stood up, and walked out of the courtroom with his hands up, his sister and niece behind him. Outside, ICE officers immediately arrested him.
“One two three four five six seven
All good children go to heaven.
When they get there they will say
‘We were born in the U.S.A.!'”
When I was a child, I thought this ditty was amusing, now in light of everything happening, it disgusts and shames me. I was once an American. Now I aspire to be a global citizen.
Our fascist president boasts that he is making the world respect America again!
No. His actions and those of his stupid minions are sewing seeds of fear, hatred, and contempt that may never be erased.
What most people today are completely unaware of is that we are all being primed for World War Three. The lofty American experiment in democracy and liberty is broken, and it’s running on the fumes of idealized mythologies that serve only capital.
Trump is not an aberration, but the logical outcome of forces that developed over a long period of time. The Trump phenomenon is a regressive reaction against a world where populations and resources are now almost completely interdependent.
All decent people who respect the Constitution and the rule of law, the sanctity of life and the pursuit of happiness, must unite to end this nightmare by ejecting our lawless, criminal president and his administration. We must also reject all the forces that enabled it.
Trump’s war on immigrants is based on big lies. In reality, it is a war on all of us.
Thank you for your integrity and continued coverage of the unraveling of our country. The Constitution is out the window. Due process and the judiciary are optional for these fascists. When Stephen Miller gets his, he should not be afforded due process nor legal representation. The high toad is no longer available. They have destroyed it. STAND UP, SHOW UP, SPEAK OUT FOR THE CONSTITUTION — AND HUMAN DECENCY.