Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Organizers with the group Good Neighbors Getting it Done in Western New York held a rally Friday afternoon outside the entrance to the Delaware North building in Downtown Buffalo to peacefully protest the raids carried out across the nation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security.
The Delaware North building at the corner of Delaware Avenue and W Chippewa Street houses the U.S Customs and Immigration Enforcement Buffalo Field Office.
Protestors showed their support for the thousands of individuals who have been detained by ICE agents, and speak out against the Trump administration in Washington attempting to usurp the judicial system and rule by decree instead of the courts.
"This is an excuse to take down our justice system. If we don't give these people due process, oh and a few citizens or people here legally get caught up, they also don't have due process. That is the foundation of our democracy. It's the foundation of how we aren't a dictatorship. We don't rule by decree, it's in the courts," said Kathleen King, one of the organizers for the protest on Friday. "The courts are slow, but so far, they are holding, and I think that we have to continue to try to uphold that pathway and try to figure out how our representatives can demand that people who are not following the court orders have some repercussions for that."
One particular individual the group called for ICE to free, Yuriy Zinovyev, has been part of the community in the U.S. for over 25 years. With due process by the court system, he was twice (2013 and 2017) granted permission to stay under a C-18 Order of Supervision with authorization for employment. For the past 12 years, Zinovyev complied with that order by reporting for his check-ins every six months.
Recently, without his knowledge, the Department of Homeland Security, ignoring past rulings of the courts, revoked his status by decree, paving the way for ICE to arrest him.
"In his last hearing at Ballston Spa courthouse, in that area, he was arrested by ICE. The Indivisible Group out in Sarasota got word of this just through happenstance when he didn't return from the courthouse for his ride home, and the landlady was looking for him. 'Why isn't he here?' He had been a long-term tenant there. So the word got out, they did a protest in Saratoga Springs, and during that protest, he was transferred to Batavia, to the Buffalo Detention Center," King noted. "We were then asked by the people in Saratoga to advocate on his behalf, but we're also advocating on the behalf of all of the people who have been taken without due process."
Organizers feel Zignovyev’s case highlights the deliberate cruelty of the Trump administration in targeting people while they are complying with court ordered rules, which is similar to others who have been detained across the country.
"This is a particularly cruel way that ICE has been doing things by basically baiting them into the courthouse, not telling them they have, by decree, revoked these, in his case, two different court orders, and then saying they're persona non grata, so we're going to detain you. That's Yuriy's case, but all of the cases have somebody who's concerned about them," King said. "It's thousands of people, they are somebody's loved one. And it shouldn't be just one case. He just is the face we happen to have, and we're trying to make sure that everybody gets due process, as in the Constitution."
This protest also comes in solidarity with the people of Los Angeles, and others who have been terrorized by the Trump administration’s deployment of military force to try and deescalate the protests there.
"The people here are not going to stand for it," King said. "We're focusing on due process, because we think that's the foundation. I don't understand how anybody can take a mother and leave their babies without anybody there and feel good about themselves. I don't understand how that can be some sort of order you can follow, and think that it's a just and right order. I don't understand how the military and Mr. [Pete] Hegseth could not stand up to, 'No, we don't send military upon our own soil when there is not an invasion.' But they don't seem to be standing up for it, so we need to go through the courts and figure out some sort of repercussion for those that don't stand up. And I think ICE will come to its just deserts eventually."
Kings adds she's hopeful that these protests will help bring more awareness to what the current administration in Washington is trying to do, especially in California.
"I think Kristi Noem's statements about, 'We're going to use this as a model to, basically, take away the votes of the people in California because we don't like how they voted. We don't like this mayor, we don't like this governor, so we're going to use this as a model to go in and terrorize.' Hopefully that message will reach every city, every person that this is goal. She said the quiet part out loud: This is the goal. We want to take over every place that doesn't agree with us," she said.