University Student on Visa Released From ICE Detention After Public Outcry

A 20-year-old Purdue University student who was abducted by ICE on July 31 as she walked out of her visa hearing in a Manhattan courthouse was released on an ankle monitor on August 5, after being detained in Louisiana.

Although Yeonsoo Go’s visa is valid until December, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed it expired two years ago and called Go an “illegal alien from South Korea.” Go came to the United States in 2021, and lives with her mother, an Episcopal Church pastor, in Scarsdale, New York. Her arrest sparked widespread outrage from community members, faith leaders and local lawmakers, who helped secure her release.

After Go’s release, her mother told reporters, “There’s more who need the support.”

Cases like Go’s have become more and more commonplace since DHS rescinded a memo that barred, with few exceptions, officers from making immigration arrests at or near courthouses.

The new guidance allows for arrests of ICE’s “target,” as well as arrests of noncitizens who are “family members or friends accompanying the target alien to court appearances or serving as a witness in a proceeding.” DHS has also directed government attorneys to dismiss large categories of immigration cases and advised immigration judges that they can rule on dismissals from the bench and do not need to request any additional briefing or supporting documentation.

The policies have had catastrophic impacts across the country, spurring numerous lawsuits against the Trump administration.

On August 1, New York-based civil rights groups sued the Trump administration on behalf of two organizations that work with noncitizens in immigration proceedings, The Door and African Communities Together. One Door member, a 21-year-old asylum seeker identified as John Doe 1, was arrested and detained after the immigration judge granted the DHS attorney’s motion to dismiss his removal proceedings, over Doe’s objections.

In another case, the National Immigration Project and others filed suit on behalf of two families in Louisiana who were deported when they arrived for mandatory immigration appointments. One of the children, a U.S. citizen, had been diagnosed with kidney cancer. Officers took the mother’s phone and wallet, refused to let her speak with her attorney, and only permitted brief phone calls with her father. The officers confined the family to a hotel room and then forced them to board a flight to Honduras.

A class action lawsuit brought by several national immigrant rights groups says the administration’s tactics violate people’s due process rights and endanger their lives. One plaintiff was arrested at his immigration hearing where he had planned to file an asylum application after he had been persecuted in Ecuador because of his activism for LGBTQ rights. He was deported weeks later and is now in hiding, according to the suit. Another asylum seeker was arrested and detained when he left his immigration hearing. At the hearing he had been granted a continuance to look for an attorney. During his first week of detention, he was not given his HIV medication, according to the complaint.

“We are witnessing an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. immigration court system by the Trump administration,” said Keren Zwick, director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center, one of the groups that filed the class action suit. “We must continue fighting to overcome the administration’s escalating attacks on the U.S. Constitution and rule of law.”