S.F. drag performer detained by ICE after asylum hearing

San Francisco Chronicle​

20 hours ago

A San Francisco drag performer was detained by immigration enforcement officers after his asylum hearing in immigration court Thursday morning, one of the latest among at least 20 people in San Francisco to be subject to a new Trump administration practice of courthouse arrests.
The man, an immigrant from Central America who performs under the drag name Hilary Rivers, is gay and has a pending asylum application based on 'traumatic and severe' persecution he experienced in his home country that led him to flee to the U.S., according to Milli Atkinson, legal director at the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative, who heads up the city's Rapid Response Network that responds to immigration enforcement actions.
At Rivers' immigration hearing, the government attorney moved for the case to be dismissed, but the judge denied it. Rivers was arrested as he was leaving court, Atkinson said. A Rapid Response Network attorney on site was able to advise Rivers on his rights to prevent the government deporting him in error, Atkinson said. His attorney has since located him at an ICE detention facility in Bakersfield, she said.
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The Chronicle has reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment.
U.S. law grants asylum seekers like Rivers the right to remain in the United States while their asylum claim is pending, but the government has argued that it has the right to detain such individuals, which has been challenged in court before. Under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment's right to due process, immigrants also generally have the right to a hearing in front of an immigration judge before they're deported, with some exceptions.
However, since late May, federal immigration authorities under President Donald Trump's administration have started a new practice where the government attorney in an immigration hearing would file a motion for the judge to dismiss the case so that the person would lose protections from deportation afforded to those with pending immigration proceedings.
After the judge dismisses it, ICE agents would arrest the immigrant and detain them for expedited removal, or deportation without a hearing, a federal power that's under Biden was reserved for those arrested at the border within two weeks of their arrival.
Authorities have also been detaining people whose cases were not dismissed by immigration judges, including Rivers, Atkinson said. Of the, at least 20, people who the San Francisco Rapid Response Network confirmed had been subject to 'courthouse arrests,' she said only two of them had cases dismissed by judges. The rest, she said, are still in active proceedings and the majority have a pending asylum application.
Atkinson said she has confirmed that the government then moves a person's case to appear before an immigration judge who is more willing to grant the motion to dismiss, so they can deport the person.
'It's a complete, flagrant violation of what our asylum system was built on,' Atkinson said. 'He was doing everything, complying with every rule there could possibly be. Every day he's been in the U.S. has been lawful.'
Rivers was paroled — legally admitted — into the U.S. through a Biden-era program called CBP One, which granted permission to about 900,000 migrants to enter the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump has since cancelled the program and revoked parole from those who entered through it, but the move is facing legal challenges.
The Trump administration justified the mass revocation of parole as a way to secure U.S. borders and protect nation security. Trump has argued the program was illegal in the first place.
The night before he was detained, Rivers performed at a long-running queer pride pageant event called Miss & Mr. Safe Latino, started 30 years ago in response to the HIV epidemic at the now-closed Mission District bar Esta Noche, which had been a hub for queer Latinos.
'There's not a more textbook case of what asylum was created for than a case like his,' Atkinson said. 'To have them take him away from his community during Pride Week, when he's fleeing persecution for his queer identity, and when he had just participated in that pageant … is just horrific to me, is just a disgrace, and people should really be outraged and ashamed by what our government is doing.'
Advocates have voiced concern over bad conditions in overcrowded ICE detention facilities as the Trump administration detained a record 56,000 people as of June 15, about 72% of whom have no criminal records, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data organization.
The courthouse arrests have caused a 'real panic' in the undocumented immigrant community, causing people to be afraid to go to their hearings, Atkinson said. But if they fail to appear for their hearings, they can be ordered deported.