New York state has became the latest locality to push back against federal immigration agents’ presence in courthouses.Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez and New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman held a press conference Thursday to urge ICE officials to consider courthouses sensitive locations and therefore off-limits for immigration arrests. Law enforcement officials in other states, including Connecticut, California, Oregon, and Washington, have done the same.“Targeting immigrants at our courthouses undermines our criminal justice system and threatens public safety,” Schneiderman said. “If the Trump administration continues to arrest people in the heart of our justice system, immigrants will be less likely to serve as witnesses or report crimes — and that leaves us all at risk.”While courtrooms are safe zones, courthouses are public spaces. That means plainclothes ICE officers are free to make arrests in hallways. In cities whose police departments don’t hold arrested undocumented immigrants indefinitely for ICE — dubbed sanctuary cities — courthouses are a prime venue for agents looking to apprehend people, especially since visitors are usually screened for weapons. But state and local authorities say ICE presence is deterring some immigrants from reporting domestic violence and coming to court to testify.In a statement, ICE spokesperson Rachael Yong Yow said “particular attention” is paid to domestic violence and human trafficking victims when officers consider a courthouse arrest. “ICE officers will take into consideration if an individual is the immediate victim or witness to a crime, in determining whether to take enforcement action,” Yow said in an email.Under President Trump’s immigration crackdown, ICE has arrested people in courthouses across the country, from Oregon to Massachusetts. In February, officers arrested a domestic violence victim in the hallway of an El Paso courthouse after she attended a hearing for a protective order against her alleged abuser. Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan called that a “solid arrest” at a White House press conference in July.From January through June of this year, ICE made 74,998 arrests — an increase of nearly 40 percent from the same time period in 2016, according to ICE data provided to VICE News.Along with the uptick in arrests, especially at courthouses, Denver, Houston, and Los Angeles officials all observed a decrease in reports of crime associated with domestic violence this year. After Denver prosecutors had to drop four domestic violence cases in January and February because victims were too afraid to come to court to testify, Mayor Michael Hancock sent a letter asking ICE to stop coming to courthouses as well. ICE, however, said it would continue.A month earlier, U.S. Representatives from Oregon, New York, and Virginia proposed a law that would prohibit ICE arrests in courthouses nationwide. So far there has been no movement on the bill.
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