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Every weekday, immigrants walk the halls of 26 Federal Plaza, often past federal agents waiting to arrest people seemingly at random, to get in front of an immigration judge and have their day in court. Usually, even these days, the court proceedings themselves are fairly standard—setting up future hearing dates to go over their asylum applications, seeing if an immigrant has found a lawyer to help them with their case. The time in court is not the stressful part—it's escaping the federal agents hanging out beyond the courtroom doors once the hearing is over.
But starting last Thursday, many asylum seekers in immigration courtrooms in Lower Manhattan began having their routine hearings turned completely sideways, according to immigration attorneys. Instead of Department of Homeland Security lawyers arguing against their asylum claims, they were instead telling judges that the asylum hearings themselves were totally irrelevant, because DHS was now moving to deport asylum seekers to third countries like Uganda, Ghana, Eswatini, or El Salvador, and directing them to seek asylum there instead.
"All of a sudden, in every single case, the DHS attorneys all at once began filing motions to have asylum seekers sent to countries they have no connection to and often don't even speak the language of. It was unnerving to say the least," said one immigration attorney who has been witnessing that scene play out in Lower Manhattan since last week. (He asked not to be named because he is worried about possible repercussions from the federal government for his clients.)