Advocates and elected officers on Thursday demanded the discharge of a Brooklyn highschool scholar detained by ICE.
Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
Advocates are demanding the discharge of a Brooklyn highschool scholar who was arrested by ICE after a routine immigration listening to final week.
Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, a 20-year-old asylum-seeker from Guinea, was detained at 26 Federal Plaza on Aug. 4. Diallo’s asylum case — he’s reportedly searching for Particular Immigrant Juveniles standing, which applies to migrants underneath age 21 who’ve been abused or uncared for by a father or mother — was nonetheless pending.
He’s not less than the third New York Metropolis public college scholar to have been detained by ICE since Could.
One rallygoer held a photograph of Diallo. Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
“Mouctar has followed every single rule. He has done things exactly the right way,” mentioned Council Member Lincoln Restler at an Aug. 14 rally. “He is seeking asylum here in the United States. He has become deeply enmeshed in our Brooklyn community … and yet, Donald Trump and his goons abducted him last week when he was doing the right thing by showing up to his immigration hearing.”
Below Trump’s orders, masked federal brokers have for months arrested immigrants leaving their court docket hearings at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, no matter their case standing.
ICE has held dozens of these detainees in “squalid” holding cells contained in the federal court docket constructing. Others have been moved to federal prisons, just like the Metropolitan Detention Heart in Brooklyn.
Diallo has been moved to a correctional facility in Pennsylvania, ICE data present, practically 90 miles from New York Metropolis.
ICE brokers within the corridor at 26 Federal Plaza, ready for immigrants to exit their hearings. Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
Trisha McLaughlin, a public affairs workplace at ICE, mentioned Diallo illegally crossed the border into the U.S. in January 2024, and was apprehended by Customs and Border Patrol brokers together with 51 different migrants. He was then launched.
“He will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings,” she mentioned.
Diallo has been in contact along with his lawyer, Restler’s spokesperson confirmed, and DOE chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos mentioned the division was “standing with the students family, working closely to connect them with legal support and other critical services.”
Restler mentioned Diallo, who attends Brooklyn Frontiers Excessive Faculty — which serves college students who’re “over-age and under-credited” — lately accomplished a culinary internship and safety guard coaching, and was trying ahead to attending to work. He doesn’t have household within the U.S.
“What we don’t allow, what we’re not going to allow, is our young people — the future of this city, kids without their families, trying to make it here — to be abducted by people purporting to be government officials and then to be put in conditions that none of us would tolerate our own children being placed in,” Comptroller Brad Lander mentioned.
Native politicians mentioned Diallo had adopted the principles and was unfairly arrested. Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
The primary New York Metropolis excessive schooler to be detained by ICE, Dylan Lopez Contreras, remains to be in ICE custody practically three months after his arrest. In July, an immigration choose dominated that the Division of Homeland Safety had wrongly moved to dismiss Contreras’ case, resulting in his arrest.
One other scholar, Derlis Snaider Chusin Toaquiza, who was arrested after a court docket listening to on June 4 and held in ICE custody in Texas for over a month, returned to New York Metropolis in July after he was granted bond.
“We continue to see, day in and day out, the lawlessness of the Trump administration executing their family separation and mass deportation agenda,” mentioned Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams urged New Yorkers to face in opposition to ICE and President Donald Trump. Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
Keith Fuller, an organizer at Make The Highway New York, mentioned there may be “something truly wrong happening in our city.”
“Our students’ lives, our students’ safety, our students’ freedoms are on the line,” he mentioned. “It is shameful that our federal government is forcing our students to live on a what-if basis. What if ICE is at my train station? What if ICE is at my bus stop? What if ICE is outside my corner store?”
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams mentioned it was “stunning” to see what is occurring to immigrants within the U.S., and urged New Yorkers to face in opposition to it.
“To be clear, we are under an authoritarian regime,” he mentioned. “This is an authoritarian president. He hasn’t been able to do all the authoritarian things he wants to yet, but he’s working. To all the people watching, to the people of faith, to the people of good conscience, at some point you have to say ‘God damn it, enough.’”
