'A trap' Asylum seekers arrested after attending US courts

NEW YORK, July 18 (AFP): 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.

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.