Immigration officer tactics inflame tensions in New York
USA
A U.S. immigration officer shoving a woman in a New York City courthouse to the floor. Protesters dispersed with tear gas outside a Chicago detention center. A woman injured during an arrest in the Boston area.
The incidents on Thursday and Friday highlight the growing tensions in major U.S. cities over President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown days after a shooting targeting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas left one detainee dead and two others seriously wounded.
Trump, a Republican, aims to deport record numbers of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, framing the push around criminals but arresting many without criminal records. Residents in New York, Chicago, Washington, and other Democrat-leaning metro areas have pushed back in recent months as ICE has ramped up enforcement.
Some Hispanic residents have said they are being stopped solely because of their appearance, allegations rejected by the Trump administration. The Supreme Court earlier this month lifted a lower court injunction that had restricted ICE from stopping a person based solely on ethnicity, language or other factors in the Los Angeles area.
Milagros Barreto, a worker advocate with La Colaborativa, a pro-immigrant group in Chelsea, Massachusetts, said she witnessed ICE throw a Guatemalan woman to the ground on Friday despite her being a permanent resident.
Reuters captured images of the woman on the ground, her hands pinned behind her back, being detained by federal agents while her son stood nearby crying. Further images showed her in distress as she was taken away by emergency responders.
The woman was accompanying an extended family member to a court hearing when ICE officers stopped their pickup truck, smashed two of the windows, and took the family member into custody, Barreto said.
The woman’s shoulder was scratched and she aggravated an existing back injury, requiring her to be hospitalized, Barreto said. She gave the woman’s name only as Hilda.
