Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has put some New York City operations on hold while a protest outside Manhattan’s main ICE facility stretched into its fifth day.
On Thursday, demonstrators set up camp outside a downtown ICE processing center that houses an immigration court and a temporary immigrant detention facility. By Friday, ICE was smuggling detainees out a freight exit reserved for the U.S. Postal Service in order to avoid the demonstrators. By Monday, ICE had postponed all immigration hearings in the building, without clear plans to resume.
“The original call was for a 24/7 presence to occupy this space and call for the abolition of ICE,” Marisa Holmes, an activist with the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council told The Daily Beast. The group has been a leading coordinator of the demonstration, which began at the ICE processing center at 201 Varick St. Thursday night. On Monday morning, approximately a dozen protesters were blocking the facility’s doors.
