Rev. Brian Strassburger, Director, Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries:
Yes, thank you for the invitation to be here and to share the story.
In early July, I went to the immigration court in Harlingen because I had heard that, just like in courtrooms across the country, migrants at immigration court were being targeted for detention and deportation. And I wanted to witness it with my own eyes.
And so while I was there that morning, a migrant walked in, Carlos. He’s been in the country for five years. He’s fleeing persecution in Nicaragua, where he was politically active against the government. And he went to his court date and followed along with the judge who was giving him instructions around the next steps of his legal process.
This is someone, for the five years he’s been in the country, has followed the law and done everything as instructed to him. At the end of his conversation with the judge, she turned to a representative of DHS, who was also sitting in the courtroom, who leaned into his microphone and said: “The government moves to dismiss the case.”
And so despite, Carlos’ protestations, saying, “I’d like to continue my case, I have a case for asylum, I’d like to present it in a court of law,” the immigration judge accepted the motion from the Department of Homeland Security and said, “Your case has now been closed.”
So now Carlos is walking out of the courtroom. I’m accompanying him, and he no longer has an active court case in immigration. Outside the courtroom, there were two ICE agents waiting for him for exactly this reason. They had their faces covered with masks. They called him aside, took his possessions and handcuffed him in place of an unmarked vehicle to put him in a form of fast-track deportation called expedited removal, simply because of the fact that the judge had allowed his immigration court case to be closed just moments before.
