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.”
Go’s lawyer and family still have a lot of questions about her case. They’re also raising a bigger question for Republican leaders: Will Go’s situation force some kind of accountability?
“We had no idea why she was detained. Initially, nothing was said to her in court that we know of,” Mary Rothwell Davis, an immigration lawyer with the diocese, told NOTUS. “Someone did say to me that this was the first time people really understood how close to home this whole new world we live in is.”
For months, ICE has documented detaining people at routine court hearings. The Department of Homeland Security has taken several immigrants who are in the United States legally into custody, including green card holders and others granted legal status by the courts. Those cases have largely become high-profile and prompted calls for the administration to rethink its immigration enforcement methods.
Publicly, Republican lawmakers have largely been silent about Go’s case and others like it. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, the only GOP member of Congress in New York City, and Rep. Jim Baird, who represents the district home to Purdue University, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from NOTUS.
Behind the scenes, Go’s detention has apparently caught the attention of at least one GOP member of Congress, Davis said.
“We also had good support from Rep. [Mike] Lawler in upstate New York, who’s a Republican,” Davis told NOTUS. “There was a very concerted effort of outreach.”
Lawler and his office did not respond to follow-up questions from NOTUS. But the moderate Republican member has somewhat diverged from the Trump administration on immigration, including by cosponsoring a bipartisan bill that would create more pathways to citizenship for some migrants.
Lawler’s advocacy for Go is part of a broader trend of Republican members of Congress who have quietly advocated for constituents being targeted by DHS for their immigration statuses — often while simultaneously publicly applauding the Trump administration’s uptick in immigration enforcement.
Republican Rep. Mike Kelly told NOTUS Friday that he had not heard about any reports of ICE arresting people in the United States legally or during court hearings. But he did suggest he is open to discussing broader immigration reform.
“It is so hard, the process. We need to take a really long look at what they have to go through,” he said. “There has to be a solution to this.”
DHS doubled down on its allegations that Go was detained because she is an “illegal alien” — a claim that Davis told NOTUS is false.
“The facts haven’t changed: Yeonsoo Go, an illegal alien from South Korea, overstayed her visa that expired more than two years ago,” Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS assistant secretary, said in a statement to NOTUS. “President Trump and Secretary Noem are committed to restoring integrity to the visa program and ensuring it is not abused to allow aliens a permanent one-way ticket to remain in the U.S.”
Davis said that Go’s visa is valid until December 2025 and that Go did not hear anything that suggested otherwise at the court hearing she attended right before she was detained.
Go has been in the United States since 2021 on a dependent visa related to her mother’s visa as a religious worker, her attorney told reporters, and she was attempting to renew that visa when she was detained.
It’s been difficult to measure the impact of Democrats’ attempts at oversight. Lawmakers have been turned away from detention facilities. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed when he attempted to interrupt DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference in Los Angeles about anti-deportation protests.
In Go’s case, Davis said multiple Democratic politicians in New York called for her release, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Gov. Kathy Hochul and several state lawmakers.
Democratic members of the state’s Congressional delegation were also quick to criticize the administration over the case.
Rep. Nydia Velázquez suggested in a statement to NOTUS that Go’s detention happened as part of the administration’s push for more deportations.
“This is the result of a quota-driven deportation policy crafted by Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, enforced with zero regard for the law,” Velázquez said. “It puts even lawful immigrants at risk and spreads fear and confusion in our communities.”
And Rep. Grace Meng said in a statement that Go was “following the rules” and “attempting to do the right thing” and questioned why ICE detained her.
DHS did not provide the reasoning behind her release in response to questions from NOTUS.
Davis said she is not sure whether Go and her family will pursue legal recourse against the administration like some other migrants have. But she said she’s optimistic that Go and her family can receive more answers and that her case will prompt more action.
“It feels as though we’re just beginning to see the beginning,” she said. “My motto is that hope is always the right choice.”