New York City
ICE Called A New York Nurse To Federal Plaza, Decided Ghana, Sent Her A Ticket
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been inviting longtime New York City residents to 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan for what advocates describe as administrative appointments, and then arresting them, processing them for deportation, and assigning them a destination country selected through a method that remains, as of press time, entirely opaque.
The women arrested in recent weeks include a house cleaner, a certified nurse's assistant, a hair braider, and a home health aide. None of them are from Ghana. Several of them have never visited Ghana. Ghana is nonetheless where ICE has decided to send them, according to a review of federal habeas corpus filings.
ICE spokesperson Dana Layne confirmed that the agency is pursuing third-country removals under expanded authority granted by the current administration, adding that each case involves a thorough individualized assessment. She did not specify what is being individually assessed, or why the assessments keep landing on the same country.
"We have a process," Layne said, at a length that suggested she had been asked about the process before.
The women had in many cases lived in New York for between fifteen and twenty-two years. They paid rent, paid taxes, raised children who attend New York City public schools, and in at least one documented instance, provided home health services to an elderly man in Flushing who has since written three letters to a federal judge describing her as the only person who knew how he liked his eggs.
The judge has not yet responded to the egg preference.
Attorneys filing emergency habeas petitions say the third-country designation is being used as a workaround for deportees whose home countries have refused to accept them, or with whom the United States has no functioning removal agreement. The solution, as implemented, is to find a country that will accept the paperwork, which is a different thing from a country that has any connection to the person on the paperwork.
Marcia Elba Fuentes, a 47-year-old hair braider who came to New York from Trinidad in 2001, was told at her appointment that she would be removed to Ghana. She told the officer she had never been to Ghana. The officer told her that was not relevant to the form he was filling out.
"He said, 'Ma'am, I understand, but this is the column,'" Fuentes said in a declaration filed with the Southern District of New York. "He was very polite about it. Very professional."
Congress has not commented, because Congress is currently debating whether to fund a study on commenting.
Immigration advocates say the pattern raises serious due process concerns, a phrase they have been saying into a microphone in Lower Manhattan for approximately four consecutive years, and which has so far produced two op-eds and a mural in Bushwick.
The home health aide is still in detention. The nurse's assistant has filed an emergency motion. The house cleaner's attorney told reporters outside the plaza that her client has a lease, a metrocard, a library card, and a 4.9 rating on the app she uses to find work, and that none of those things appear to have a column either.
Ghana, for its part, has not been reached for comment.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/10/05/third-country-deportations-ice-dhs-26-federal-plaza-west-africa/