New York Courts Act Against Lawyers Protesting Immigration Agents

For the second day in a row, public defenders on Tuesday staged a walkout against the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) in a city courthouse, this time in Queens. But the Office of Court Administration called these "impromptu demonstrations," that it considers disruptive and take lawyers out of the courts.

After Tuesday's protest by the Legal Aid Society in Queens, Court Administration spokesman Lucian Chalfen said the agency took the unprecedented step of reassigning 10 new cases in the arraignments courtroom to other lawyers who can represent the poor. 

"Since the defender organizations opted to hold a demonstration in lieu of representing their clients, we immediately began assigning new cases in arraignments to other attorneys," he explained, referring to private so-called 18B lawyers that represent the poor. Chalfen called this a response to the defenders' "abandonment of their cases."

"In addition, there have been multiple instances reported of Legal Aid attorneys taunting ICE agents in hallways," Chalfen explained, "attempting to take pictures of agents and trying to stand in front of officers blocking the view of the hallway." 

However, Tina Luongo, who heads the criminal practice at Legal Aid Society, said the ICE protests are usually during lunch breaks. Another one was held in the Bronx on Monday, where a man was wrongly picked up by ICE. She also insisted that supervisors and other public defenders step in to cover clients whose lawyers have left the building to protest.

"We are absolutely not abandoning our clients and never have and never will," she stated. 

Luongo said it might violate her organization's contract for Court Administration to order supervisors to leave the arraignments courtroom and cover other cases. 

She also accused the agency of trying to distract from the main issue. "I think OCA is angry at perhaps the message they feel that is being sent," she said, "which is the only people standing up for our clients are the public defenders."

Public defenders, politicians and some district attorneys have expressed alarm at the presence of ICE in courthouses because they said it frightens undocumented immigrants and could keep them from coming to court. They've sought ways to limit ICE from entering, such as being required to have an order signed by a judge.

Last year, WNYC reported on how immigration officers waited outside the door of a special courtroom for victims of human trafficking, sparking a city council hearing.

Chief Judge Janet DiFiore has maintained that courts are public buildings and cannot legally keep ICE from entering. Courts are not considered "sensitive locations" by ICE, unlike schools and churches.

For its part, ICE has consistently said it needs to detain immigrants at courthouses who are charged with or convicted of crimes, because New York City sanctuary city law prevents its police and jails from turning over immigrants unless they've been convicted of certain serious offenses and ICE has a warrant signed by a judge.