ICE’s Detainment of a Priest’s Daughter Highlights the Sweep of Trump’s Deportation Agenda

Rep. Mike Lawler quietly advocated for Yeonsoo Go’s release, a lawyer close to her case said. Will her situation spur accountability?

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

The nature of Yeonsoo Go’s detention clarified some realities of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda for people close to the 20-year-old daughter of a priest.

Go, a student at Purdue University whose mother is in the clergy in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after attending a routine court hearing in New York City to renew her visa, a lawyer for the diocese said. She was transferred to a Louisiana detention facility, detained for five days, and released this week — as mysteriously as she was detained.

“The fact that she could get caught up in this, I hope sheds light on how cruel these policies and practices are,” Anne Marie Witchger, a reverend in the diocese, told NOTUS. “Nobody deserves to be subject to that kind of uncertainty, the lack of dignity, going into a court hearing following the process that has been laid out to you and then being detained.”