'A trap': Asylum seekers arrested after attending US courts

In gloomy corridors outside a Manhattan courtroom, masked agents target and arrest migrants attending mandatory hearings -- part of US President Donald Trump's escalating immigration crackdown.

Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to deport many migrants, has encouraged authorities to be more aggressive as he seeks to hit his widely-reported target of one million deportations annually.

Since Trump's return to the White House, Homeland Security agents have adopted the tactic of waiting outside immigration courts nationwide and arresting migrants as they leave at the end of asylum hearings.

Missing an immigration court hearing is a crime in some cases and can itself make migrants liable to be deported, leaving many with little choice but to attend and face arrest.

Armed agents with shields from different federal agencies loitered outside the court hearings in a tower block in central New York, holding paperwork with photographs of migrants to be targeted, an AFP correspondent saw this week.

The agents arrested almost a dozen migrants from different countries in just a few hours on the 12th floor of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building.

Brad Lander, a city official who was briefly detained last month by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents as he attempted to accompany a migrant targeted for removal, called the hearings "a trap."

"It has the trappings of a judicial hearing, but it's just a trap to have made them come in the first place," he said Wednesday outside the building.

- White House defends agents -

Lander recounted several asylum seekers being arrested by immigration officers including Carlos, a Paraguayan man who Lander said had an application pending for asylum under the Convention Against Torture -- as well as a future court date.

"The judge carefully instructed him on how to prepare to bring his case to provide additional information about his interactions with the Paraguayan police and make his case under the global convention against torture for why he is entitled to asylum," Lander said.

After his hearing, agents "without any identifying information or badges or warrants grabbed Carlos, and then quickly moved him toward the back stairwell," he said.

Lander, a Democrat, claimed the agents were threatening and that they pushed to the ground Carlos's sister who had accompanied him to the hearing.

The White House said recently that "the brave men and women of ICE are under siege by deranged Democrats -- but undeterred in their mission."

"Every day, these heroes put their own lives on the line to get the worst of the worst... off our streets and out of our neighborhoods."

Back at the building in lower Manhattan, Lander said that "anyone who comes down here to observe could see... the rule of law is being eroded."