Clergy bear witness to ‘horrific’ ICE abductions at immigration courts

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

These are not hardened criminals who are being kidnapped and abducted by armed masked, unidentified agents of the state. These aren’t arrests for people with warrants. These aren’t arrests for people with criminal convictions. These are people going to their immigration court hearing, trying to follow the law, who are being trapped by this government.

Nancy Mace:

One of my favorite things to watch on YouTube these days are the court hearings where illegals are in court and ice shows up to drag them out of court and deport them.

Maximillian Alvarez:

The most vulnerable people are being trapped, vilified, brutalized, kidnapped, disappeared. That’s the reality of what’s happening here.

Mona Darwish:

I went to the immigration courthouse and saw someone be taken right in front of me as soon as I got here on Tuesday last week. And when I came here, I saw a group of three or four men in masks just quietly surrounding a man who I didn’t really know what they were doing. And it was a really weird encounter for me, and I asked them who they were. One of them finally told me, but they took him into an unmarked civilian car, no license plates, and they just took him away. That was the day that I saw a woman have a panic attack. That was the day that I saw a woman and her little boy who I had waved at earlier just be pulled aside. And I just see the mom start crying. And there’s been a lot of really consistent observers or clergy members from Clue who’ve been doing a lot, and they’ve been here to show support to the people here. The woman was crying. They were praying for her, and they were trying to get her contact info. And I just remember seeing that little boy that was, he looked so cute and happy when I saw him like an hour before just dissociating and just rubbing on his coloring book. And they took them through the back of the stairs, and that was the last I saw of them.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I went to the Federal Immigration Court in Santa Ana, California to see it for myself and to speak with Reverend Dr. Jason Cook and other members of the group Clue Clergy and Laie, United for Economic Justice, along with the Orange County Rapid Response Network. Clue members have been showing up regularly to immigration courts to document and bear witness to the crimes that the government is committing in order to entrap and disappear immigrants who are showing up to their own court hearings

Rev. Dr. Jason Cook:

For myself and for other people in faith communities as we to get the word that ICE agents were appearing here in the courthouse and whisking people off without due process, without identifying themselves. We wanted to be witnesses. We wanted to see what was happening and we wanted to be here for folks who didn’t have anybody else here on site for them. So we have clergy, we have lay people, we have people from a variety of Christian communities. We have people from Jewish communities. We have people like me from a Unitarian Universalist community, Muslim folks. We have people representing a wide variety of faiths and no faith who are simply here to try to witness what is happening behind closed doors. It’s been dangerous. Sometimes it’s been tense. We have witnessed a lot of pain families ripped apart people without warning being essentially abducted and pushed into the white vans that they have behind this building and whisked off. We don’t even know where

Rev. Dr. Terry LePage:

This courtroom is, a branch of DHS. So they are obligated to work with ice if they’re higher ups tell them to, but the court staff don’t like it. They want to do their jobs. They want to get people moving in their process and not have them scared to come to court. So in the time that I’ve worked here, because the word has gotten out about ice being here, many people are not showing up for their hearings, and that puts them at risk of being marked for deportation. Of course, if they show up for all they know, they’ll be arrested and deported.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So they’re really damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Rev. Dr. Terry LePage:

So they come and ask me what should I do? And I’m like, there is no good answer.

Rev. Dr. Jason Cook:

What we’re seeing in the courtrooms are folks are going in, they are somewhere in the process. They might have temporary protected status, they might be somewhere else along the way. They have shown up here in good faith with the belief that the system will work for them as they should. And the judges here have been pressured to dismiss as many cases as they can. And when those cases are dismissed, as these folks walk out of the courtroom, ice agents are waiting to pounce. So no judge has said to them, you’re going to be detained. No one has told them that that’s going to happen. What’s simply happening is their case for some technicality, for one reason or another, is being dismissed while they’re here in good faith doing what they’re supposed to do. And they walk out of the courtroom and they are abducted, they’re taken no warning, nothing. And it’s horrific.

Maximillian Alvarez:

People around the country are being told that these are hardened criminals. These are the worst of the worst. Is that what you’re seeing in the courtroom?

Mona Darwish:

No. Since I’ve been here, I’ve find myself seeing a lot of women and small children being picked out. There was a woman with a 11 month old baby from Nicaragua, and she was by herself, and I just asked her, she was waiting for a case and she didn’t have any family here. She didn’t have any support system and she had no idea what was going on. And that just broke my heart because when she told me that her asylum case was, she had been here for less than two years, I was like, they could take her. And that’s just heartbreaking. There’s so many things like this happening.

Rev. Dr. Terry LePage:

And just for the record, I want to be clear that I’ve watched dozens of cases. I’ve sat in the courtroom and I have not heard of one crime committed. I’ve heard of people entering without their papers in order. That’s a misdemeanor and it’s a civil thing, and because of that, it doesn’t make them eligible to have a court appointed attorney.

Rev. Dr. Jason Cook:

It’s just unimaginable to see it and witness it, to see an elderly couple being split apart, and one of them hauled off down a back stairway to see a child ripped out of their mother’s arms and the mother being taken away. It’s just something that you think would never happen here in the United States, and it’s happening right now behind the doors of that nondescript building.

Mona Darwish:

It’s not just the Latino community in Orange County. It’s the Vietnamese, Cambodian, Iranian. Everyone is being affected

Rev. Dr. Terry LePage:

When they take people on the street. They are profiling a hundred percent when they take people from this courtroom, they have taken that. I know of Koreans, they have taken people from Russia. They’ve taken a variety.

Rev. Dr. Jason Cook:

And I can tell you that the folks that I’m watching being snatched are not criminals or anybody dangerous that we need to be worrying about. Again, these are folks who showed up in good faith trying to do what they thought was the right thing and that’s why they’re here. Criminals don’t do that. But also, I have to imagine

Maximillian Alvarez:

There’s a force of moral shame that these ice agents have to feel when they just see you, when recoil, when they see you and other clergy there, do they feel shame for what they’re doing or does it appear like they’re feeling shame?

Rev. Dr. Jason Cook:

That’s a great question. And of course we never fully know what’s in another human being’s heart. What I hope is for every one of those ice agents that sees people who are willing to be present at this time, that there’s just a little part of their brain and their heart that just, even if it just kind of just a little worrisome little itch there that says, maybe this isn’t right what I’m doing, maybe I should be doing something else. Maybe the story that I’m telling myself about all this is, is not really the whole story. I can’t know that that happens, but we feel like it’s more likely to happen with our presence there than not, because otherwise there’s no one there that is offering that sense of witness. And we all know that when things are hidden and they’re out of sight, that’s often when the worst and most egregious things happen

Maximillian Alvarez:

With the Trump administration continuing to escalate. It’s all out assault on immigrants and on the rule of law. The sobering reality is that these immigration court abductions and deportations are not going to stop anytime soon. But Reverend Dr. Cook and other clue members say that they’re going to keep showing up to bear witness and to provide whatever support they can and they urge others to do the same.

Rev. Dr. Jason Cook:

We are organized to the point that we have all of our people who come here as witnesses, get training. We have a schedule, we have shifts. We have two people at a time so that nobody’s here alone. This is a lot to cover. We don’t know how long this will go on. We’re going to do this as long as it needs to be done, and we realize we’re potentially in for the long haul here.

Rev. Dr. Terry LePage:

These people are human beings. They deserve to know that there’s danger in the room that they’re walking into. They deserve someone to witness their imprisonment. They deserve to not disappear. In all through the Hebrew and Christian Bible. It says, to care for the stranger, to honor the stranger, to welcome the stranger. And I’m just doing what Jesus said.

Rev. Dr. Jason Cook:

You have to find a reason each day to wake up and keep going. And I think we each potentially play our part and you’re doing what you can at this moment. And I think we’re all trying to find that place. And what I would encourage folks who are hearing this at the moment is anybody, whoever you are, there’s something you could do right now. Again, what we’re doing doesn’t require a degree. It doesn’t require a huge amount of special training. It just requires the ability to witness and be present in a particular way. There are so many things like that that people can do right now. The worst thing we can do is turn away and ignore what’s happening that we can’t do.