Sure, ordering people to come in on Father's Day just adds that special little dash of inhumanity. Smells like Stephen Miller! Via the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Immigrants across Philadelphia received terse text messages or app notifications on Friday evening, demanding they come to the ICE office on North Eighth Street on Sunday between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
The notification did not specify a reason for the invitation. But it did include a warning: “Failure to report as instructed will be considered a violation.”
Lawyers and community organizers called the message highly unusual, because of the short notice and the vague time frame. It was unclear how many people received the orders, and how those individuals were selected.
Maybe there was another nefarious purpose:
Emma Tuohy, an immigration lawyer and chair of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said one person who already had a deportation order contacted her late Friday after receiving the directive.
The prospective client wanted Tuohy to attend the appointment, but she was unavailable on short notice. She asked around, and heard from four or five other lawyers that they had fielded similar calls.
“Your conspiracy brain thinks, maybe they did this on Sunday, on Father’s Day, to make it less likely attorneys could go,” she said.
The same thing happened in Chicago. Via the Chicago Tribune:
The messages from ICE, along with an increased number of arrests at immigration courts and other offices in the area, represent an escalation from previous immigration procedures, according to Tenoch Rodriguez, deportation defense organizer with Resurrection Project. On June 4, advocates estimated 20 people were detained after they reported for appointments to an ISAP office in the 2200 block of South Michigan Avenue.
“(It is) not normal for this many people to show up on Saturday and Sunday,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not even normal for this many people to be showing up on a weekday.”
Immigration attorneys and local officials gathered outside the Broadview processing center on Sunday to offer legal assistance and translation help. The children of those inside waited for hours, playing in the grass. Some family members held onto one another for comfort. A 7-year-old girl named Diana brought her pet green parakeet with her. She played with the small bird and fed it tangerines as she waited for her mother to come out of the facility.
ICE officials tried to detain the mother, according to Diana’s grandfather, Francisco, but she begged for more time because her child was waiting. She was instructed to report the next day to the same ISAP office where the 20 arrests occurred a little over a week ago.
