Latest news with #CBPOne
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Self-deportations. Factory layoffs. Military zones. How Trump is transforming the U.S.-Mexico border
Juan Ortíz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack full of water bottles that he planned to leave for migrants trying to cross this rugged terrain. Only there hadn't been many migrants of late. When Ortíz started water drops in this especially dangerous stretch of desert near El Paso nearly two years ago, he sometimes encountered dozens of people trying to reach the U.S. in a single afternoon. Now he rarely sees any. Border crossings began falling during the final months of President Biden's term, and have plunged to their lowest levels in decades under President Trump. "It's dramatically different," Ortíz said, the desert silent except for the crunch of his footsteps in the sand and the whir of a Border Patrol helicopter overhead. "Migrants no longer have any hope." These borderlands surrounding El Paso were long a place of risk but also opportunity. Migrants chasing the American dream crossed by the tens of thousands annually, sometimes dodging federal agents and often seeking them out to ask for asylum. But Trump's immigration crackdown - a total ban on asylum, a mass deportation campaign and the unprecedented militarization of the border - has altered life here in myriad ways. Across the Rio Grande from El Paso in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, shelters once hummed with life, rich with the smell of cooked stews and the chatter of people plotting their passage to the U.S. Today those shelters are largely empty, populated by migrants stranded in Mexico when Trump took office, and others who were in the United States but decided to leave, spooked by policies designed to instill fear. Maikold Zapata, 22, had been one of the lucky ones. He entered the U.S. last year via CBP One, a government app that helped more than 900,000 migrants make asylum appointments at ports of entry. Zapata worked as a landscaper in El Paso, sending most of his earnings to his family back in Venezuela but occasionally splurging on a steak dinner or a visit to a water park with friends. What kept Zapata up at night was a looming court date for his immigration case. Since Trump took office, Zapata had heard about federal agents showing up even at routine immigration hearings and taking migrants away in handcuffs. He was afraid of being arrested and sent to a detention facility like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, or to a far-away country - perhaps El Salvador or South Sudan, where authorities have shipped U.S. deportees in recent months. "Imagine arriving in Africa with no documents and no money," Zapata said. "No." Missing his early July court date was also not an option, since the electronic bracelet on his wrist allowed immigration agents to track his location. So Zapata stuffed his few possessions in a backpack and walked south over the U.S.-Mexico border bridge, abandoning his asylum claim and the dream he had worked his way across two continents to achieve. He plans to return to South America, likely to Colombia, where his mother is living. "I'll go back, working the whole way again." For now he is living at Oasis de Migrante, a small shelter in downtown Juárez, where he has befriended another Venezuelan who made a similar choice. Richard Osorio, 35, decided to leave the U.S. after his husband landed in immigrant detention. Osorio, who worked in home care for the elderly, said it felt like only a matter of time before immigration agents captured him: "I was filled with fear." He hopes that his partner's attorney can persuade the U.S. to deport the man to Mexico, and that he and Osorio can make a life there. The vast majority of migrants languishing along the border never made it to the United States. Eddy Lalvay got close. He was 17 when he and his 5-year-old nephew, Gael, arrived in Juárez last year. Originally from Ecuador, they were trying to reach New Jersey, where Gael's mother lives. But before they could cross, they were detained by Mexican authorities, who sent them to a government shelter for minors. Lalvay was released when he turned 18. But Gael remains in custody, where he recently turned 6, and authorities say they will release him only to a parent or a grandparent. "I'm trying to be strong, but I feel awful," Lalvay said on a recent afternoon as he sat at another shelter in a working-class neighborhood boxed in by sprawling industrial parks. Francisco González Palacios, a Christian pastor who runs the facility and leads a network of faith-based shelters, said the number of migrants housed by the network has dropped from 1,400 to 250 in recent months. "Nobody is coming from the south," he said. Some shelters and nonprofit groups providing legal or humanitarian assistance to migrants may have to close, he said, because many were indirectly funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump shuttered. He tells the migrants gathered at his shelter to rethink their goals now that their "plan A" - a life in the U.S. - is out of reach. "Look for a plan B," he says. "Stay awhile, start to work. God will help you." But other Trump policies are hurting the economy in the region, limiting opportunities from migrants. Juárez has long drawn Mexicans from poorer parts of the country who come to work in its factories, which boomed under the North American Free Trade Agreement, churning out auto parts and other goods destined for the U.S. But Trump's on-again, off-again threats of tariffs on goods from Mexico have stunned industry in the Juárez area, with factories laying off thousands of workers. "We're in the middle of tremendous uncertainty," said María Teresa Delgado Zarate, vice president of INDEX Juárez, a trade group. About 308,000 workers are employed in factories today, she said, down from 340,000 a few years ago. Mexican Juan Bustos, 52, recently lost his assembly line job making auto parts. Most days, he lines up at 6 a.m. outside factories that say they are hiring to try to get new work. "It's not easy like it was before," he said. So much of life in Juárez depends on decisions made in Washington, he said. "He changes his mind minute to minute," Bustos said of Trump. "We're at his mercy." On the U.S. side, industry is also reeling from the tariff uncertainty. Jerry Pacheco, who operates an industrial park in Santa Teresa, N.M., a few miles west of El Paso, said several companies that planned new projects there have pulled out since Trump took office. His park abuts a new militarized zone that stretches 200 miles across a vast expanse of New Mexico. Another 63-mile-long zone has been established along the border nearby in Texas. The Pentagon, which made the designations, has deployed some 9,000 active-duty troops to the border as part of Trump's directive to expand the military's role in reducing migrant crossings. Migrants who enter the new "national defense" zones while crossing the border are being detained by U.S. troops, charged with trespassing and turned over to immigration authorities. It's part of a broader militarization of immigration enforcement in this stretch of border. U-2 spy planes have been flying missions in the skies. At the nearby Army base of Ft. Bliss, the U.S. is constructing a new 5,000-bed immigrant detention camp. The U.S. has also pushed Mexico to keep migrants from reaching Juárez and other border cities, and Mexican troops have ramped up enforcement in recent years. Migrant advocates blame those policies on a deadly fire at a detention center in Juárez in 2023 that killed 40 migrants and injured 27. Ortíz, the activist, used to traverse the part of the border that has been turned into a national defense zone, leaving water for the migrants who crossed. But on a recent afternoon, while heading out to check on a water tank, he was stopped by Border Patrol agents who warned him he was trespassing on military land. The buildup of troops at the border and Trump's changes to the asylum system have made it nearly impossible for migrants to cross, Ortíz said. In June, there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants than in any month on record, according to the White House. On the day with fewest encounters, border agents apprehended just 137 people across the entire 2,000-mile long border. But Ortíz is convinced that migration levels can't stay this low forever. There are too many jobs that need filling north of the border, he said, and too much poverty and strife south of it. This region has been a site of migration since pre-colonial times, he said. El Paso, which means "the pass," got its name from Spanish explorers who arrived in the late 16th century and established a trade route here leading from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Movement, he said, is part of our nature. "You will never be able to fully stop human migration," Ortíz said. "You never have and you never will." Those most desperate to cross will find a way, he says. And that will probably mean paying smugglers even larger sums and taking riskier routes. _____ Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
I fled persecution in Iran. ICE enforcement here today reminds me of Tehran
As a Christian who smuggled Bibles into my home country of Iran, I became a target of the country's Islamist regime, which imprisons and sometimes kills those who invite Muslims to convert. After living under house arrest for two years, I fled as a refugee and was ultimately resettled to the United States. I experienced true religious freedom for the first time in my life in this country, of which I am now a proud, grateful citizen — and that's why I am shocked by the ways that my government is now treating my Iranian congregants, who have been detained by masked officers, separated from their families and threatened with deportation to a country that would kill them for their Christian faith. What I have witnessed gives me flashbacks to Tehran, and I believe that America must be better. Two families who are a part of the Farsi-speaking evangelical congregation that I pastor in Los Angeles have been detained in recent weeks. First, a couple and their 3-year-old daughter, who are in the process of seeking asylum because they fear persecution if they were returned to Iran. They were detained at their court hearing in downtown Los Angeles on June 23. The entire family is now being held in South Texas. The next day, I received a call from a woman in my church. Like me, she had been forced to flee Iran for Turkey when her involvement in Iran's underground churches was exposed. When the woman and her husband found themselves in a desperate situation in Turkey last year, they were not offered the option to fly to the U.S. as resettled refugees as I had been in 2010. Instead, they flew to South America, made a treacherous journey north and waited in Mexico for an appointment they reserved on a U.S. government app, CBP One, to be able to explain their situation to officers of the U.S. government. Once lawfully allowed in with provisional humanitarian status, they found our church — where they could be baptized and publicly profess their faith in Jesus — and legal help to begin their asylum request. They received their work authorization documents and found jobs. Their first asylum hearing in immigration court was scheduled for this September. When President Trump returned to office, however, his administration both suspended all refugee resettlement and canceled humanitarian parole for those who had been allowed to enter via the CBP One app. Many parolees received menacing letters instructing them to self-deport or face prosecution, fines or deportation. But these letters also noted that these instructions did not apply to those who had 'otherwise obtained a lawful basis to remain,' such as a pending asylum application. That's why I was so shocked to receive a call from the woman in my congregation informing me that her husband had been detained by masked immigration officers on the street, just a few blocks from our church. I rushed over and began to film the shocking scene: First he was detained by masked officers, and then she was. I asked if they had a judicial warrant, but if they did, they would not show me. The woman experienced a panic attack and was taken to a hospital but discharged into ICE custody; she is now hours away in a detention center in California. Her husband is in a detention center in Texas. It's not just these two families who are affected. My community of Iranian Christians is terrified of being detained and deported back to Iran, where they fear being killed for their faith. Some have lost jobs because they fear leaving their homes. Others lost jobs because their work authorization, tied to humanitarian parole, was abruptly terminated. I believe that America is better than this. This behavior reminds me disturbingly of what I fled in Iran. But I know that most Americans do not support this, nor do most fellow evangelical Christians: Many evangelicals voted for Trump because he pledged to protect persecuted Christians — not to deport them. While most evangelicals want those convicted of violent crimes detained, one-quarter or less of us say that about other immigrants, and 7 in 10 believe the U.S. has a moral responsibility to receive refugees. I have been overwhelmed by the support of English- and Spanish-speaking sister congregations of our church, by the outreach of Christians from across the country and by a recent biblically rooted statement of many California evangelical leaders. Now, Congress has passed legislation to exponentially increase the funding for detaining and deporting immigrants. Trump's administration has been clear that anyone in the country unlawfully — including more than a million who were here lawfully until his administration abruptly canceled their status — is at risk of deportation. According to a recent study by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, 80% of those vulnerable to deportation are Christians; some, like those in my church, would likely face death if deported to their home countries. I hope and pray Trump will reverse course on these policies, going after those who genuinely present a public safety threat but having mercy on others, especially those who fled persecution on account of their faith. And until he does make that policy shift, I plead with Congress to pass real immigration reforms that would halt these horrifying detentions and deportations. Ara Torosian is a pastor at Cornerstone West Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Self-deportations. Factory layoffs. Military zones. How Trump is transforming the U.S.-Mexico border.
EL PASO, TEXAS — Juan Ortíz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack full of water bottles that he planned to leave for migrants trying to cross this rugged terrain. Only there hadn't been many migrants of late. When Ortíz started water drops in this especially dangerous stretch of desert near El Paso nearly two years ago, he sometimes encountered dozens of people trying to reach the U.S. in a single afternoon. Now he rarely sees any. Border crossings began falling during the final months of President Biden's term, and have plunged to their lowest levels in decades under President Trump. 'It's dramatically different,' Ortíz said, the desert silent except for the crunch of his footsteps in the sand and the whir of a Border Patrol helicopter overhead. 'Migrants no longer have any hope.' These borderlands surrounding El Paso were long a place of risk but also opportunity. Migrants chasing the American dream crossed by the tens of thousands annually, sometimes dodging federal agents and often seeking them out to ask for asylum. But Trump's immigration crackdown — a total ban on asylum, a mass deportation campaign and the unprecedented militarization of the border — has altered life here in myriad ways. Across the Rio Grande from El Paso in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, shelters once hummed with life, rich with the smell of cooked stews and the chatter of people plotting their passage to the U.S. Today those shelters are largely empty, populated by migrants stranded in Mexico when Trump took office, and others who were in the United States but decided to leave, spooked by policies designed to instill fear. Maikold Zapata, 22, had been one of the lucky ones. He entered the U.S. last year via CBP One, a government app that helped more than 900,000 migrants make asylum appointments at ports of entry. Zapata worked as a landscaper in El Paso, sending most of his earnings to his family back in Venezuela but occasionally splurging on a steak dinner or a visit to a water park with friends. What kept Zapata up at night was a looming court date for his immigration case. Since Trump took office, Zapata had heard about federal agents showing up even at routine immigration hearings and taking migrants away in handcuffs. He was afraid of being arrested and sent to a detention facility like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, or to a far-away country — perhaps El Salvador or South Sudan, where authorities have shipped U.S. deportees in recent months. 'Imagine arriving in Africa with no documents and no money,' Zapata said. 'No.' Missing his early July court date was also not an option, since the electronic bracelet on his wrist allowed immigration agents to track his location. So Zapata stuffed his few possessions in a backpack and walked south over the U.S.-Mexico border bridge, abandoning his asylum claim and the dream he had worked his way across two continents to achieve. He plans to return to South America, likely to Colombia, where his mother is living. 'I'll go back, working the whole way again.' For now he is living at Oasis de Migrante, a small shelter in downtown Juárez, where he has befriended another Venezuelan who made a similar choice. Richard Osorio, 35, decided to leave the U.S. after his husband landed in immigrant detention. Osorio, who worked in home care for the elderly, said it felt like only a matter of time before immigration agents captured him: 'I was filled with fear.' He hopes that his partner's attorney can persuade the U.S. to deport the man to Mexico, and that he and Osorio can make a life there. The vast majority of migrants languishing along the border never made it to the United States. Eddy Lalvay got close. He was 17 when he and his 5-year-old nephew, Gael, arrived in Juárez last year. Originally from Ecuador, they were trying to reach New Jersey, where Gael's mother lives. But before they could cross, they were detained by Mexican authorities, who sent them to a government shelter for minors. Lalvay was released when he turned 18. But Gael remains in custody, where he recently turned 6, and authorities say they will release him only to a parent or a grandparent. 'I'm trying to be strong, but I feel awful,' Lalvay said on a recent afternoon as he sat at another shelter in a working-class neighborhood boxed in by sprawling industrial parks. Francisco González Palacios, a Christian pastor who runs the facility and leads a network of faith-based shelters, said the number of migrants housed by the network has dropped from 1,400 to 250 in recent months. 'Nobody is coming from the south,' he said. Some shelters and nonprofit groups providing legal or humanitarian assistance to migrants may have to close, he said, because many were indirectly funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump shuttered. He tells the migrants gathered at his shelter to rethink their goals now that their 'plan A' — a life in the U.S. — is out of reach. 'Look for a plan B,' he says. 'Stay awhile, start to work. God will help you.' But other Trump policies are hurting the economy in the region, limiting opportunities from migrants. Juárez has long drawn Mexicans from poorer parts of the country who come to work in its factories, which boomed under the North American Free Trade Agreement, churning out auto parts and other goods destined for the U.S. But Trump's on-again, off-again threats of tariffs on goods from Mexico have stunned industry in the Juárez area, with factories laying off thousands of workers. 'We're in the middle of tremendous uncertainty,' said María Teresa Delgado Zarate, vice president of INDEX Juárez, a trade group. About 308,000 workers are employed in factories today, she said, down from 340,000 a few years ago. Mexican Juan Bustos, 52, recently lost his assembly line job making auto parts. Most days, he lines up at 6 a.m. outside factories that say they are hiring to try to get new work. 'It's not easy like it was before,' he said. So much of life in Juárez depends on decisions made in Washington, he said. 'He changes his mind minute to minute,' Bustos said of Trump. 'We're at his mercy.' On the U.S. side, industry is also reeling from the tariff uncertainty. Jerry Pacheco, who operates an industrial park in Santa Teresa, N.M., a few miles west of El Paso, said several companies that planned new projects there have pulled out since Trump took office. His park abuts a new militarized zone that stretches 200 miles across a vast expanse of New Mexico. Another 63-mile-long zone has been established along the border nearby in Texas. The Pentagon, which made the designations, has deployed some 9,000 active-duty troops to the border as part of Trump's directive to expand the military's role in reducing migrant crossings. Migrants who enter the new 'national defense' zones while crossing the border are being detained by U.S. troops, charged with trespassing and turned over to immigration authorities. It's part of a broader militarization of immigration enforcement in this stretch of border. U-2 spy planes have been flying missions in the skies. At the nearby Army base of Ft. Bliss, the U.S. is constructing a new 5,000-bed immigrant detention camp. The U.S. has also pushed Mexico to keep migrants from reaching Juárez and other border cities, and Mexican troops have ramped up enforcement in recent years. Migrant advocates blame those policies on a deadly fire at a detention center in Juárez in 2023 that killed 40 migrants and injured 27. Ortíz, the activist, used to traverse the part of the border that has been turned into a national defense zone, leaving water for the migrants who crossed. But on a recent afternoon, while heading out to check on a water tank, he was stopped by Border Patrol agents who warned him he was trespassing on military land. The buildup of troops at the border and Trump's changes to the asylum system have made it nearly impossible for migrants to cross, Ortíz said. In June, there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants than in any month on record, according to the White House. On the day with fewest encounters, border agents apprehended just 137 people across the entire 2,000-mile long border. But Ortíz is convinced that migration levels can't stay this low forever. There are too many jobs that need filling north of the border, he said, and too much poverty and strife south of it. This region has been a site of migration since pre-colonial times, he said. El Paso, which means 'the pass,' got its name from Spanish explorers who arrived in the late 16th century and established a trade route here leading from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Movement, he said, is part of our nature. 'You will never be able to fully stop human migration,' Ortíz said. 'You never have and you never will.' Those most desperate to cross will find a way, he says. And that will probably mean paying smugglers even larger sums and taking riskier routes.
Indian Express
5 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Venezuelan men expelled to El Salvador megaprison faced ‘state-sanctioned torture', say lawyers
When José Manuel Ramos Bastidas finally reunited with his family in El Tocuyo, Venezuela, it marked the end of an ordeal that began with his deportation by the Trump administration and ended in what his lawyers describe as 'state-sanctioned torture' inside El Salvador's notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot) megaprison. His emotional return was captured as his wife, child, and mother embraced him wearing shirts printed with his image. 'We have been waiting for this moment for months, and I feel like I can finally breathe,' said his partner, Roynerliz Rodríguez, according to The Guardian. 'These last months have been a living nightmare… There must be justice for all those who suffered this torture.' Ramos Bastidas was one of 252 Venezuelan men deported to Cecot as part of a deal negotiated between the US and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The agreement reportedly involved the release of 10 detained US citizens and several Venezuelan political prisoners in exchange for the deported individuals. The men were finally repatriated last week. Lawyers representing the men say many endured routine beatings, psychological torture, and severe deprivation. Ramos Bastidas and others were allegedly told they would spend between 30 and 90 years at Cecot unless President Trump intervened. They were repeatedly shot with rubber bullets, including on the final day of their detention. Another deportee, Edicson David Quintero Chacón, described to his lawyer the experience of being kept in isolation for prolonged periods. He believed he would die there. His scars from daily beatings remain, and he said detainees were only allowed soap or bathing privileges when the prison was being showcased to outside visitors, forcing them to choose between hygiene and public humiliation. The food was minimal, and detainees were forced to drink dirty water. The lights stayed on through the night, preventing any rest. 'And the guards would also come in at night and beat them,' said his lawyer, Stephanie M Alvarez-Jones of the National Immigration Project. In a legal filing requesting dismissal of her months-long petition for the men's release, Alvarez-Jones stated: 'He will likely carry the psychological impact of this torture his whole life. The courts must never look away when those who wield the power of the US government, at the highest levels, engage in such state-sanctioned violence.' Ramos Bastidas had never committed any crime, nor had he ever lived freely in the United States. After spending his life working in Venezuela to support his family, he left the country last year to seek better economic opportunities and afford treatment for his infant with severe asthma. In March 2024, he entered the US at a legal port of entry using the CBP One app to apply for asylum. Although his application was denied, he agreed to deportation. But US Customs and Border Protection flagged him as a suspected member of Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang, based solely on an unverified tip from Panamanian officials and his tattoos. Despite agreeing to voluntary return, Ramos Bastidas remained in detention for months. In December, Venezuela was not accepting deportees, prompting Ramos Bastidas to request release so he could arrange his own return. But the political situation shifted in January when Donald Trump was sworn in again as president. Soon after, Ramos Bastidas saw other Venezuelan detainees being sent to Guantánamo Bay and feared he was next. On March 14, he told his family he might finally be returning to Venezuela. The next day, he was sent to Cecot. 'They could have deported him to Venezuela,' Alvarez-Jones said. 'Instead, the US government made a determination to send him to be tortured in Cecot.' Now back in Venezuela, survivors and their families are calling for justice. Lawyers and human rights advocates argue that the use of Cecot for deported migrants is grave abuse of power. (With inputs from The Guardian)
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
She fled Cuba for asylum – then was snatched from a US immigration courtroom
Jerome traveled a thousand miles from California to El Paso, Texas, so he could accompany Jenny to her immigration hearing. He and his wife had promised to take her after she had fled Cuba last December, after the government there had targeted her because she had reported on the country's deplorable conditions for her college radio station. Everything should have been fine. Jenny, 25, had entered the United States legally under one of Joe Biden's now-defunct programs, CBP One. By the end of the year, she could apply for a green card. But a few days before her hearing, Jerome started to feel like something was off. Jenny's court date had been abruptly moved from May to June with no explanation. Arrests at immigration courthouses peppered the news. And when Jenny went before the court, the government attorney assigned to try to deport her asked the judge to dismiss her case, arguing vaguely that circumstances had changed. Instead, the judge noted that Jenny was pursuing an asylum claim and scheduled her for another court date in August 2026 – the best possible outcome. 'She turned around and looked at me and smiled. And I smiled back, because she understood that she was free to go home,' Jerome said. But as Jenny left the courtroom and approached the elevator to leave, a crowd of government agents in masks converged on her and demanded she go with them. Just before she disappeared down a corridor with the phalanx of officers, she turned back to look at Jerome, her face stricken, silently pleading with him to do something. 'I said, 'She's legal. She's here legally. And you guys just don't care, do you? Nobody cares about this. You guys just like pulling people away like this,'' Jerome recalled telling the agents. 'And nobody said a word. They couldn't even look me in the eye,' he told the Guardian. Footage of her apprehension was taken by those advocating for her and shared with the Guardian. Now Jenny is languishing in immigration custody. Her hearing for August 2026 has been replaced with a date for next month when the government attorney might once again attempt to dismiss her case, and her case been transferred from a judge who grants a majority of asylum applications to one with a less than 22% approval rate. 'There's no heart, there's no compassion, there's no empathy, there's no anything. [It's] 'We're just going to yank this woman away from you, and we don't care,'' Jerome said. The Guardian is not using his or Jenny's full name for their safety. Similar scenes have played out again and again at immigration courthouses across the country for weeks, as people following the federal government's directions and attending their hearings are being scooped up and sent to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention. The unusual tactics are happening while Donald Trump and his deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, push for Ice to make at least 3,000 daily arrests – a tenfold increase from during Biden's last year in office. Ice agents have suddenly become regulars at immigration court, where they can easily find soft targets. At first, the officers appeared to focus arrests on a subset of migrants who had been in the US for fewer than two years, which the Trump administration argues makes them susceptible to a fast-tracked deportation scheme called expedited removal. Ice officers seem to confer with their agency's attorneys, who ask the judge to dismiss the migrants' cases, as they did with Jenny. And, if judges agree, the migrants are detained on their way out of court so that officials can reprocess them through expedited removal, which allows the federal government to repatriate people with far less due process, sometimes without even seeing another judge. But reporting by the Guardian has uncovered how Ice is casting a far wider net for its immigration court arrests and appears also to be targeting people such as Jenny whose cases are ongoing and have not been dismissed. The agency is also snatching up court attendees who have clearly been in the US for longer than two years – the maximum timeframe that according to US law determines whether someone can be placed in expedited removal – as well as those who have a pathway to remain in the country legally. After the migrants are apprehended, they're stuffed into often overcrowded, likely privately run detention centers, sometimes far from their US-based homes and families. They're put through high-stakes tests that will determine whether they have a future in the US, with limited access to attorneys. And as they endure inhospitable conditions in prisons and jails, the likelihood of them having both the will to keep fighting their case and the legal right to stay dwindles. 'To see individuals who are law-abiding and who have received a follow-up court date only to be greeted by a group of large men in masks and whisked away to an unknown location in a building is jarring. It breaks my understanding and conception of the United States having a lawful due process,' said Emily Miller, who is part of a larger volunteer group in El Paso trying to protect migrants as best they can. One woman Miller saw apprehended had come to the US legally, submitted her asylum petition the day of her hearing, and was given a follow-up court date by the judge before Ice detained her. 'My physical reaction was standing in the hallway shaking. My body just physically started shaking, out of shock and out of concern,' Miller said. 'I have lived in other countries where I've been a stranger in a strange land and did not speak the language or had limited language abilities. And as a woman, to be greeted by masked men is something we are taught to fear because of violence that could happen to us.' Elsewhere in Texas, at the San Antonio immigration court earlier this month, a toddler dressed in pink and white overalls ran gleefully around the drab waiting room. Far more chairs than people lined the room's perimeter, as if more attendees had been expected. A constantly multitasking employee at the front window bowed her head in frustration as the caller she was speaking to kept asking more questions. Self-help legal pamphlets hung on the wall – a reminder that the representation rate for people in immigration proceedings has plummeted in recent years, and the vast majority of migrants are navigating the deportation process with little to no expert help. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion In one of the courtrooms, a family took their seats before the judge. Their seven-year-old boy pulled his shirt over his nose, his arms inside the arm holes. The government attorney sitting with a can of Dr Pepper on her desk promptly told the judge she had a motion to introduce, even as the family filed their asylum applications. She wanted to dismiss their cases, she said, as it was no longer in the government's best interest to proceed. The judge said no. She scheduled the family for their final hearings just over a year later. And she warned them, carefully, that Ice might approach them as soon as they left her courtroom. What happened next, she said, was not in her control. Her last words to the family: 'Good luck.' Men in bulletproof vests were hanging around in the hallway, but the family safely made it into the elevator and left the courthouse for the parking lot. Stephanie Spiro, associate director of protection-based relief at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), said that for the most part, Ice is leaving families with children alone (with notable exceptions). It's 'single adults' they're after, people who often have loved ones in the US depending on them, but whose immigration cases involve them alone, she said. A few days later, two such adults – a man and a woman – separately went before a different immigration judge in San Antonio, whose courtroom had signs encouraging people to 'self-deport', the Trump administration's phrase for leaving the country voluntarily before being removed. The government attorney that day moved to dismiss both the man's and the woman's cases, which the judge granted, dismissing the man's case even before the government attorney had given a reason why. Using a Turkish interpreter, the judge then told the man it was likely that immigration authorities would try to put him into expedited removal – despite the fact that he had entered the US more than two years earlier. Soon after, the woman – who had been in the country for nearly four years – went before the court without a lawyer. The judge tried to explain to her what might happen if her case were dismissed, but as he finished, she admitted in Spanish: 'I haven't understood much of what you've told me.' The woman went on to say that she was deep in the process of applying for a visa for victims of serious crimes in the US – a visa that provides a pathway to citizenship. But the judge was upset with her for not also filing an asylum application, and he threatened to order her repatriated. It was the government attorney who 'saved' her, the judge said, by requesting the case be dismissed instead. As soon as the woman walked out of the courtroom, agents approached her and directed her out of the hallway, into a small room. Around the same time, outside the building, men wearing gaiters over their faces ushered a group of people into a white bus, presumably to be transported to detention. Spiro of the NIJC, meanwhile, works in Chicago and said she and fellow advocates have documented Ice officers in plainclothes coming to immigration court there with a list of whom they're targeting – and court attendees are apprehended whether or not their case is dismissed. 'People are getting detained regardless,' Spiro added. 'And once they're detained, it makes it just so much harder to put forth their claim.' Migrants picked up at the court in Chicago have been sent to Missouri, Florida and Texas – to detention spaces that still have capacity, but also to where judges are more likely to side with the Trump administration for speedier deportations. Many of them end up far from their loved ones, and a lag in Ice's publicly accessible online detainee locator has meant some of them have at times essentially disappeared. As word of mouth has spread among immigrant communities in Chicago about these arrests, the once bustling court has gone eerily quiet, Spiro said. That, in turn, could have its own serious consequences, as no-shows for hearings are often ordered deported. 'They don't want to leave their house because of the detentions that are happening,' Spiro said of Chicago's immigrants. 'So to go to court, and to go anywhere – they don't want to come to our office. To go anywhere where there's federal agents and where they know Ice is trying to detain you is just terrifying beyond, you know, most people's imagination.'
