ICE Is Using Prostitution Diversion Courts to Stalk Immigrants

One Friday morning in June, two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tried to conceal themselves in a courtroom vestibule, where a “No standing” sign was taped to the wall. Hidden from the view of everyone in Queens Criminal Court room AP8, the agents could see and faintly hear who was being called before the judge’s bench, including a 29-year-old Chinese woman who expected to have her case resolved that day. She had no idea ICE was there to arrest her.

The woman’s Legal Aid Society attorney learned of ICE’s plans from Queens Criminal Court Judge Toko Serita. The judge was under no obligation to share this information; Legal Aid Criminal Defense Practice attorney-in-charge Tina Luongo later said at a City Council hearing that by doing so, the judge “probably broke a rule.” The woman’s attorneys had to act quickly: After Judge Serita called her case, the woman would be fair game for ICE. The public defenders made the desperate decision to ask the judge to set bail in her case, and through a Mandarin interpreter they explained the situation. In the custody of a city court or in jail, it would be much harder for ICE to arrest her. Minutes later, the woman was taken into custody by court officers. Kate Mogulescu, the Criminal Defense Practice supervising attorney, who was there that day, later told the City Council, “This was terrifying for our client and her family.”

The plainclothes immigration agents refused to produce identification, according to Mogulescu. She approached one of the agents, who she said told her his last name was Lee and that he was there for several women in AP8, though he would not say whom — nor did he produce warrants or any paperwork for those women. Later that day, Legal Aid staff said, they saw that the same ICE team had taken two other people into custody from outside the Queens courthouse. Once it appeared ICE was gone, they asked for the Chinese woman’s case to be called again. She was then released from custody.

ICE’s attempt to arrest this woman made local headlines, but the stories had few details about the agency’s target. She had been arrested by the NYPD in February in Queens and charged with prostitution and practicing massage without a license, a common allegation after police raid massage parlors. This arrest is how she ended up in AP8, one of New York’s human trafficking intervention courts, and how she came to be described in statements to the press as a victim of human trafficking — though she had made no statements of her own.

Read more: https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/07/18/ice-is-using-prostitution-diversion-courts-to-stalk-immigrants/