Activists from the Community Services Organization (CSO) OC held a press conference in front of the courthouse today to demand that hearings be held online. The technology is readily available and was used extensively during COVID.
The agents’ aggressive tactics were highlighted during the press conference, where accounts surfaced of masked agents handcuffing and arresting a 74-year-old grandmother who arrived at court for an appointment. A five-year-old child is taken into custody and loaded into a van. Another man was arrested in spite of having a temporary protected immigration status. Another was asked to come in for an interview and was immediately detained and held for two days without food or water.
“I had not heard one accusation of criminal behavior to justify these abductions,” said Terry LaPage, Minister-at-Large at Irvine’s United Congregational Church. “
LaPage and other activists pointed out that these alleged injustices aren’t happening overseas in some backwater authoritarian state. They are happening at the Santa Ana Immigration Court in a nondescript office building on Dyer Rd…