A mother and her children have been ‘snatched’ from their New York house by ICE. Advocates are actually demanding their launch

A mother and her three children were “wrongfully” detained by immigration enforcement agents in New York and taken to a detention facility in Texas, a nonprofit says as it calls for their release.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained the mother – whose birth country was not disclosed – and her kids, one of whom is in third grade, on March 27 while they were executing an arrest on a farm in Sackets Harbor, New York, according to the New York Immigration Coalition.

“When ICE was executing an arrest on a farm, they also entered a different home on the property, without a judicial warrant, and detained the mother and her three children,” the nonprofit said, noting that President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan lives in Sackets Harbor.

The family, who have not been publicly identified, have since been transported to ICE’s Karnes County Detention Facility in Texas. It’s not immediately clear why they were taken to Texas. The Independent has contacted ICE for more information.

“It is horrifying that these children and their mother were snatched from their home and disappeared,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the nonprofit, said in a statement. “This egregious action in Tom Homan’s backyard is an affront to American values, and to humanity in general.

The family “was correctly navigating the immigration system and attending their immigration court hearings, they were instead taken by ICE agents and sent thousands of miles away from their home and community,” Awawdeh continued.

The group is now demanding the family be released from ICE custody.

One day after the family was detained, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that Marcell Meyer, a 43-year-old South African man living in Sackets Harbor, was charged with distribution of child pornography. Agents were looking for Meyer when they detained the family, WPTZ reported.

The children are enrolled in grades 3, 10 and 11.

The community is “hurting,” Sackets Harbor Central School District superintendent Jennifer L. Gaffney said in a shared statement.

“We are hurting because ICE took three students and their mother away from our community. The safety and well-being of our students will always be our top priority, and we will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to ensure their return back home, to our school and community,” Gaffney said. “We want them back in our classrooms as soon as possible, reunited with their teachers, friends, and the opportunity to continue their learning.”

The Jefferson County Democratic Party plans to hold a rally on April 5 to demand the release of the students. The demonstrators plan to “march peacefully” past Homan’s home, organizers said.

“There will be opportunities in the future to protest Trump and his policies. This is not the time. Our only purpose with this rally is to pressure our elected officials to return the children and to guarantee their due process rights,” the county’s Democratic party said.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul also condemned ICE’s actions.

The governor said she “cannot think of any public safety justification for ICE agents to rip an innocent family, including a child in the third grade, from their Sackets Harbor home.”

“That is not the immigration enforcement promised to the American people. It’s just plain cruel. I want this family returned to New York State and believe ICE needs to immediately answer for these actions,” she said in a statement.

The Trump administration has been scrutinized for some of its immigration operations in recent weeks as the president seeks to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history.”

Earlier this week, ICE admitted mistakenly removing a Salvadorian immigrant living in Maryland to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT prison — despite his protected status barring him from being sent back to his home country for fear of persecution.

In a separate case, a Columbia University graduate student activist, Mahmoud Khalil, was taken from his New York apartment to be held in federal detention; he was eventually moved to a facility in Louisiana. A court on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s request, ruling Khalil’s deportation case should continue to play out in New Jersey, rather than Louisiana.

Source: independent.co.uk