A person is approached by ICE at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan.
Photograph by Dean Moses
Chaofeng Ye, a Queens resident, was arrested in Pennsylvania again in January for alleged bank card fraud. As a result of he was a Chinese language nationwide, he was transferred into ICE custody and locked up in a Keystone State detention heart.
On Aug. 5, Ye was discovered hanging inside a bathe on the Mohannon Valley Detention Heart. His household again in Queens has been working for months with attorneys to study the circumstances of his loss of life. Up to now, neither ICE nor its mum or dad company, the federal Division of Homeland Safety, has supplied any solutions.
Ye’s brother and household attorneys sought to deliver consideration to their case throughout a press convention outdoors 26 Federal Plaza, the Decrease Manhattan immigration court docket the place for months, ICE brokers have apprehended law-abiding immigrants obeying court docket orders to attend mandated hearings about their immigration instances. ICE has largely stored the general public at nighttime as to why the people had been detained, together with the place and the way they’re being detained.
The shortage of transparency from ICE and the DHS about immigrant detentions is unprecedented in trendy American historical past. It has solely served to boost the general public worry of each companies spurred by months of movies of masked ICE brokers roughly accosting immigrants, photographers and politicians at Federal Plaza, on the streets of Chinatown and Washington Heights, and in different American cities.
Yanfeng Ge holds a photograph of his brother Chaofeng Ge, who died in ICE detention.Photograph by Dean Moses
In response to inquiries about Ye’s loss of life, the DHS issued a boilerplate assertion by which it feigned regret and intolerance of in-custody deaths, and that the company was nonetheless trying into it. ICE’s actions converse far louder than any phrases in a boilerplate assertion; neither the general public nor the press is moved.
After months of obscurity and violence, it’s time for ICE to face down and maintain itself accountable to the Structure that its brokers are supposedly sworn to uphold.
Detained immigrants who commit a criminal offense should be handled safely, with respect to their constitutional rights and psychological and bodily well being wants. There must be no mysterious deaths in ICE custody. The federal government should maintain itself to a better normal.
ICE brokers should take away their masks and clearly determine themselves to everybody they work together with on the job.
If the company refuses to cooperate, New York state and metropolis should take applicable motion, together with all doable authorized and legislative measures — reminiscent of masks bans, authorized injunctions, and even withholding federal income if essential.
The silence from ICE and DHS is deafening. It’s time for honesty and accountability from federal companies which have acted with impunity for a lot too lengthy.
