Nearly two dozen people were arrested at a Manhattan courthouse Wednesday after protesters reportedly tried to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles and enter the building, according to several reports.
Authorities pepper-sprayed the anti-deportation activists and made arrests inside and outside the courthouse, local media outlets reported. Video footage from CBS New York showed protesters pushing and pulling on metal gates, getting bound by zip ties and being dragged off the streets by their hands and feet as law enforcement officers moved in to restore order.
Twenty-three people belonging to the “disorderly group” were taken into custody, the NYPD told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The mobs were “sitting in the roadway, blocking vehicular traffic” and “were instructed verbally numerous times to vacate the roadway and did not comply,” the NYPD said.
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The incident resulted in charges such as obstruction of government administration, according to CBS New York.
Protesters gathered and sat in the streets to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vans that presumably contained migrants, according to The City, a local news outlet. Federal agents reportedly arrested several protesters inside the courthouse, including a Queens-based pastor who allegedly tried to enter the building to observe migrant arrests.
Eighteen people have received court summonses stemming from the protest, while five others face charges, the NYPD told the DCNF.
The protesters’ concerns were in part centered around the nationwide trend of ICE coming to immigration courts to arrest illegal migrants who show up for their own hearings, according to CBS New York and The City. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has argued that ICE agents can legally enter a courthouse for arrests “when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present” at the building.
The Trump administration previously charged judges in Wisconsin and New Mexico with crimes for allegedly helping illegal migrants hide from ICE agents.
The DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
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