868: The Hand That Rocks The Gavel
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbearped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. From WBZChicago, It's This American Life, I'm Eric Glass. This summer, three people from our show, Zoe and Nadia and Angela, spent weeks at immigration court in New York City, witnessing this extraordinary thing that you might have heard about happening in the hallways there. There was one group at the center of that thing that nobody ever got to hear from. They would not talk to reporters until now, when they've been talking to us. We had them on today's show. We're going to get to them in a few minutes, but first, Zoe, Jason now joins me in the studio. Zoe, let's first describe what you witnessed at the courthouse. We visited the courtrooms at 26 federal plaza downtown, and it's basically just a bunch of very old looking courtrooms. Normally immigrants are coming in and out, going for their hearings in this place. It looks like it hasn't been redone since the '90s. And now, you take the elevator, you get to the 12th floor, the doors open and it's just crowded. Like three or four different kinds of law enforcement, ICE, DHS, FBI, I saw the diplomatic security service. Whatever that is. Don't know. Plus reporters, a lot of photographers, activists, lawyers. Everyone's kind of huddled around one courtroom door, like a celebrity is going to come out of it. And the feeling of it, it's tense, and then it's boring. And then when somebody steps out of the courtroom, ICE surrounds them and handcuffs them and starts hustling them down the hall, and it gets very rushed, like in ER, everyone's chasing them. Volunteer lawyers are racing down the hallway after this guy, asking for a phone number for a family member that can call for him. Three, four, seven, three, four, seven, say more. I can contact your family. The guy says, "I don't remember." And he's pushed into the elevator. Okay, I want to slip this in your faculty. Um, what just happened? ICE picked them up. I've been waiting there all day. They know who they're coming together. Yeah. That was an ICE officer in the courtroom the entire time texting and coordinating them. And just to be clear, these are people showing up at court, the government told them to. They're following the rules as part of this legal process, and then they are suddenly getting arrested in the hallway and thrown into detention. Yeah. And we're doing so many of them here. You can feel almost routine, like between the detentions, the agents and the press and the lawyers are just standing around chit-chatting about the podcasts they listen to or Lord of the Rings.
Transcription truncated.