Witnessing disappearance

Action arises not from intellectual knowledge, nor even family history, but from something much deeper. That's why it's useful to witness fascism up close and personal — in downtown Manhattan, for example.

By Andy Bichlbaum, first published in Waging Nonviolence.

Last Tuesday, I went for the second time to observe an immigration hearing in downtown Manhattan, as part of a coalition of groups whose work seems inspired by Central American accompaniment strategies. Besides providing a friendly presence to people in horrible circumstances, the point of going is to collect names and emergency contact numbers — so that if someone ends up disappeared, they won’t disappear as completely.

When I entered Courtroom 7 on the 14th floor of 26 Broadway, an Ecuadorian refugee — I’ll call him Andrés — was sitting before Judge Deborah Klahr (who, like all Immigration Court judges, is actually an attorney appointed by the Justice Department). Klahr was in the process of informing Andrés that the government had recommended he be deported.

Klahr then asked Andrés, through an interpreter, if he had reason to fear being sent back. He said that he did, and began to explain the danger he’d face back in Ecuador. Klahr asked whether he could think of a different country to which he might be deported instead. Andrés said he couldn’t.

Klahr then granted Andrés an asylum hearing and proceeded to schedule it for November 2026. She explained to him in meticulous detail what he’d need to do to prepare, and how he should find a lawyer well in advance — noting that if he waited until the last week, the lawyer wouldn’t be able to prepare his case adequately. She also explained that he could bring witnesses to testify about the danger he’d face if he returned to Ecuador.

Klahr’s assistant gave Andrés a freshly-printed sheet with the date, time and place of his new asylum hearing. She then thanked Andrés for coming, wished him well and concluded the session.

No amount of knowledge could have prepared me for what happened next.

At the door, a group of masked and armed ICE agents — who’d been visible the whole time through the doorframe, and also to Klahr — grabbed Andrés by the arm and asked him to come with them “for a minute.” With a dozen press photographers snapping photos, they walked him into a waiting elevator. The doors closed.

Andrés is probably now on the 10th floor of the building, four floors below Klahr’s courtroom. At some point in the coming weeks or months — with no way to find out when — he’ll likely be put on a plane to Ecuador.

Disappearance is one of the first terror tools deployed by fascism, as the person I’d been paired with on Tuesday reminded me. Since January, well over a hundred thousand immigrants, most with no criminal record at all, have been arrested (and, in effect, disappeared) from cities, homes, job sites — and even from federal courts to which people show up for their hearings, often with no suspicion of danger.

The immigration courts in lower Manhattan, as it happens, have been the top spot in the U.S. for this latter kind of abduction.

And while most ICE disappearances can’t be stopped — especially when they happen in a federal building — documenting them, gathering information and alerting loved ones dulls the sharp edge of disappearance. In short, it’s a way to fight fascism, still available to us now, still at very low risk to ourselves.

But another reason to witness the violence of disappearance — in person, not through writing or video — is that real motivation doesn’t always (or often?) arise out of intellectual knowledge, nor even from family history.

Like most people, I knew the many phenomena of today’s incipient fascism: the cowing of law firms and universities, the cancelling of critical TV shows, the threats to people the executive branch doesn’t like, the takeover of cultural institutions and whole cities, the increasingly authoritarian economic and foreign policy. I knew all those things, and how their progression parallels that of well-known fascist movements in history.

I knew from family history too just where this can lead: The Gestapo took my grandfather away from my father, forever, and the rest of his family survived only by hiding for years. In a nation of immigrants, many of us have similar connections to what’s going on now.

Yet none of my knowledge, both abstract and personal, prepared me at all for seeing ICE thugs brazenly disregard the ruling — by a judge who works for the same boss as them, no less — that Andrés was entitled to an asylum hearing. The whole “they came for me” thing made sudden and total sense: If they can do this, they can do anything.

I can’t unsee or unfeel what I witnessed. I wouldn’t want to. But I do want everyone to experience the shock, trauma, upheaval that I did — not to offload it, but to motivate others as I now feel motivated.

I don’t think I can do that in writing. Maybe no writing can. I’m not sure seeing videos can help either — it didn’t for me.

Fascism breaks the American brain. Unlike most people in the world, Americans, and especially white Americans, don’t even get hints, early on, that widespread violence by government thugs is a thing. When we do at last find out about criminal episodes in American history, we believe them the way we believe most other facts — which is to say, abstractly. Even recent family history doesn’t always make much of a difference.

Some of us need first-hand experience to break out of our mental framework that authoritarianism can’t happen here. Fortunately, that experience is available, and at very low risk, especially for those of us with certain privileges.

Immigration courts are still accessible to the public. Neighborhood ICE watch operations are still easy to join. There’s still little risk of arrest for citizens — especially white ones — who film disappearances, attend hearings, or collect information from those meant for oblivion, to make sure they aren’t forgotten.

How long will this form of resistance be easy? There’s no way to know. Historian Timothy Snyder writes about how fascist regimes become harder and riskier to oppose as they grow, and as more and more institutions crumble.

They’ve already crumbled considerably. But we still do have courts (however corrupt the top court); we still have an actual Congress and real elections (if we ensure they keep happening); we still have state and municipal authorities independent of federal ones (although one less as of last week); and there are still many people of conscience, even within the executive branch.

But to stop fascism before it destroys all that too, many more of us need to know that it’s happening, and not with our intellects only.

In New York City, immigration court watch is run by two coalitions. One coalition, New Sanctuary, has a faith-based approach. The other (which is the one I’ve been with) is secular. One of its members, Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, has a public-facing interest form. As a whole, this coalition has trainings every morning, and attendees get paired up, so that no one is alone for the experience. People can also just show up in person at Liberty City, an encampment in Thomas Paine Park, and find someone to talk to about how to help.

Even more usefully, if you’re in New York, there are ICE watch programs to join in different neighborhoods. Outside of New York, folks can find or start an ICE watch or court watch community where they live.

It’s a real privilege to be able to do this critical work risk-free (so far), and to learn so easily what many must learn at enormous personal cost. If more of us use that privilege, more of us will be driven to stop fascism from barreling further down the highway it’s on.