26 Federal Plaza, alongside its neighbors 290 Broadway and 7 Elk, was the site of thousands of detentions just this summer. The building houses an Immigrations and Custom Enforcement field office, one of 25 in the country, on its unreachable 10th floor. As the number of detentions climbs higher and higher, immigrants sleep on the floor in inhumane conditions. Before his transfer to Louisiana and eventual release, one of these immigrants was Mahmoud Khalil. The others? New Yorkers, friends, sisters, cousins — names we may never know.
I spent my summer trailing ICE agents through the eerily silent hallways of these buildings, snapping pictures, tracking movements and talking to my immigrant neighbors; providing know your rights documents, collecting their information in the event they were detained. Having witnessed these detentions, I know they can only accurately be described as kidnappings.
In Courtroom Five on the 14th floor, a Department of Homeland Security Judge presided over a courtroom of immigrants, none with legal representation. He informed a young French-speaking African immigrant that thanks to his application for asylum, he had the right to a hearing, which was scheduled for 2029. That declaration should permit him the next four years to live in the U.S. without a removal order, awaiting his opportunity to prove his credible fear of returning to his home country.
Throughout this process, three masked agents were waiting in the hallway. When he exited, we attempted to physically surround the young man and safely escort him to the elevator, but we were shoved aside. His folder of documents, proof of his past and evidence of his dreams for the future, fell to the floor as he was pressed against the wall and handcuffed. A moment later, he was gone. I took a video of the entire abduction. The video is 36 seconds long.
On the morning court watch shift, you see families lined up outside the building, ensuring their timely arrival for their 8:30 a.m. hearings, eager to prove their desire to remain. Even the youngest children are often dressed in their finest attire — dresses fit for Easter mass, ruffle socks, bowties, all color coordinated to match with their parents’ blazers and slacks.
The unease is palpable as people sit in limbo, knowing what danger lurks just outside. DHS judges, who are not part of the judicial branch, conspire with not only ICE agent predators but DHS lawyers, leadingly questioning them until they hear the magic words they need to dismiss a case, order a removal.
For anyone who believes in due process, who still somehow holds even a morsel of faith in the American justice system, this must alarm you. This strategy of kidnapping immigrants who dutifully show up to their hearings, with or without an order of removal, is new and uniquely despicable.
And yet, if we do not admit that our immigration system has been persistently, purposefully developed by generations of bipartisan lawmakers to be profoundly unethical and broken, we are comforting ourselves with a convenient fiction. The U.S. deported 37,660 people in Trump’s first month in office, far below the monthly average of 57,000 removals and returns in Biden’s final year. 14% of immigrants who applied for green cards in 2018 would die without seeing a green card.
Even here, two graduate students, Momodou Taal and Amandla Thomas-Johnson, were targeted by a coalition of the purportedly liberal Cornell and Biden administrations, with both ultimately deciding to self-deport to avoid the uncertainties of abduction. ICE came to campus in hopes of kidnapping Momodou and Cornell said nothing, that same semester rejecting every single proposal put forth by students to protect immigrant and international community members.
You may think that under a Trump presidency and with increased ICE funding (unlocked on October 1), we have no hope of successfully fighting with our immigrant neighbors for their safety and dignity.
I have seen the power of people coming together, handing out pamphlets, practicing their Spanish skills in the field and becoming a physical blockade against ICE. I encourage everyone to discover their nearest detention center (hint: there’s one in Batavia, NY), to build a neighborhood watch team, join a mutual aid network, share accurate timely information on ICE movements and fight back.
John Milton wrote, “the power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people.” The only way Trump, ICE or any institution holds power is because we the people have, explicitly or implicitly, handed it to them. Their iron-fisted rule requires the consent of the governed.
Become ungovernable.
Adriana Vink '27 is an Opinion Columnist and a student in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Her fortnightly column One Day Longer takes aim at campus politics, international relations and labor exploitation. She can be reached at avink@cornellsun.com.
