It was outside the Christ the King Episcopal Church in Stone Ridge where a crowd gathered under a handful of open umbrellas and a grey, misting sky to keep the media’s attention focused on the It was outside the Christ the King Episcopal Church in Stone Ridge where a crowd gathered under a handful of open umbrellas and a grey, misting sky to keep the media’s attention focused on the sorry Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrest and detainment of Ali Faqirzada, a 31-year-old computer science student at Bard college, a hospital security guard, a community member seeking asylum in the United States.
Saida Faqirzada, Ali’s sister, was there in front of the church. She told how he had been snatched up by ICE agents after attending an October 14th asylum interview in Long Island.
Though charged with locating and arresting the “worst of the worst criminal illegal immigrants,” scores of recorded video encounters on the internet tell a different story.
Video shows agents distinguishing themselves by singling out foreign-born, law-abiding human beings now living in the United States and abducting them from their jobs, beating them on the ground, taking them off the sidewalks and pushing them into vehicles, dragging them out of their cars and lurking in courthouse halls to arrest those following the responsible performance of their immigration obligations.
