A San Francisco drag performer attending his asylum hearing was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on June 26 and relocated to an ICE detention facility near Bakersfield.

He’s one of at least 20 people in the city who’ve been subject to a new presidential administration practice of courthouse arrests, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. 

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The drag artist, a San Francisco resident from Central America who goes by the stage name Hilary Rivers, appeared in court for a pending asylum application based on “traumatic and severe” persecution in his home country. A government lawyer asked the judge to dismiss Rivers’ claim, but was rebuffed. ICE agents detained him anyway as he left the courthouse.

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The attempted dismissal is another tool in the current administration’s arsenal of tactics to detain and deport immigrants granted temporary asylum by the Biden administration, according to Milli Atkinson, legal director at the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative, who heads up the city’s Rapid Response Network that responds to immigration enforcement actions.

Rivers was legally admitted to the U.S. through CBP One, a Biden-era program that allowed migrants to cross the U.S.-Mexico border legally and stay without penalty while awaiting an asylum hearing. The current president canceled it and revoked probationary status for all immigrants who entered the country through the program.

Since late May, federal immigration authorities have deployed government attorneys in court to seek dismissal of asylum seekers’ cases; doing so strips protections afforded to those with pending immigration proceedings. 

Of those 20 or so asylum seekers detained at court hearings in San Francisco, just two cases have been dismissed.

A Rapid Response Network attorney who was on site for Rivers’ detention was able to advise him of his rights to prevent the government from deporting him in error. They’re using Rivers’ stage name publicly to protect his identity.

The group was able to locate Rivers in the Bakersfield facility a day after his detention.

“It’s a complete, flagrant violation of what our asylum system was built on,” Atkinson said of Rivers’ detainment. “He was doing everything, complying with every rule there could possibly be. Every day he’s been in the U.S. has been lawful.”

The night before his court appearance, Rivers performed at the city’s Miss & Mr. Safe Latino pageant.

In press materials for the event, pageant sponsor Instituto Familiar de la Raza said that Rivers “hopes to be an example of tolerance in her San Francisco community. Although she grew up with discrimination at home, her message centers on queer joy, where everyone deserves to be happy as they are. She made her stage debut in Guatemala at 17, but Hilary Rivers’ true origin was in a pageant where she appeared with a pupusa cart, giving her the nickname ‘la pupusera.'”

Community activists have rallied in support of Rivers’ release.

“We stand shoulder to shoulder with Instituto Familiar de la Raza, queer Latinx leaders, and Hilary’s chosen family as we figure out how to support his immediate release from ICE detention,” San Francisco Pride said in a statement.

“San Francisco Pride vehemently rejects the continued attacks on immigrant communities by the federal administration, SCOTUS rulings, and the splintering of our communities by ICE on the basis of violations to due process and our city’s sanctuary policy. San Francisco is the vibrant city we know of today because of the contributions of immigrants — especially queer immigrants.”

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