Levka<p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/ICE" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ICE</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/drag" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>drag</span></a></p><p>"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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>The Chronicle has reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment.<br>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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."</p><p><a href="https://archive.ph/46bS3" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">archive.ph/46bS3</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p>