Investigative Post reports that ICE has begun arresting asylum seekers at their mandated check-in appointments and has significantly increased enforcement actions against Afghan nationals across Western New York. Federal lawsuits filed over the past month describe asylum seekers with pending court hearings being instructed to report to ICE offices, only to be detained despite being in the country legally and having no criminal records or arrest warrants.

Speaking with Investigative Post, Sarah Decker, our U.S. senior staff attorney at the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, who represents three Afghan nationals that were arrested said, “We believe that this is a pattern of enforcement against Afghan nationals. It violates their constitutional right to not be discriminated against for their national origin.” She added, “We believe that they’re looking through their database for Afghan nationals … and then they’ll just target those people using whatever combination of dystopian surveillance dragnet information that they’ve gathered.”

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