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Fast Company
28-05-2025
- General
- Fast Company
ICE asked judges to close certain immigration cases—and then immediately arrested the people
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested 11 people after their court hearings at the San Diego Immigration Court last Thursday as part of a new nationwide operation to try to fast track deportations. Beginning on Tuesday, May 20, in courts including those in Santa Ana and Las Vegas, attorneys representing the U.S. government—who are also employed by ICE—requested that immigration judges close cases of some people who had been in the U.S. for less than two years and who had shown up without attorneys. Normally a closed immigration court case would mean that the government is no longer trying to deport someone. But instead, ICE officers waited outside courtrooms to arrest those people and put them into expedited proceedings that do not require a judge. 'Going to immigration court is your chance to be heard,' said Michelle Celleri, an attorney and legal rights director of Alliance San Diego. 'It is your right. It is part of due process.' Celleri said that arresting people who show up for their hearings would discourage others from coming to immigration courts. ICE and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the immigration court, did not respond to requests for comment from Beyond the Border. ICE has told other news outlets that it is detaining people who are subject to a fast-track deportation authority. That fast-track deportation process is called expedited removal. In expedited removal, an immigration officer, rather than a judge, gives the deportation order. In an executive order issued in January, President Donald Trump called for officers to use the process on anyone who has been in the U.S. for less than two years. 'With expedited removal, they can deport them tonight,' said Ginger Jacobs, a private immigration attorney in San Diego. 'They're short-cutting the due process these folks came here to receive in immigration court.' But not everyone detained in San Diego last Thursday had closed cases. ICE arrested several people who had received future hearings dates from the immigration judges they appeared before, according to their attorneys and friends. Ruth, a volunteer with the grassroots group Detention Resistance who asked not to be fully identified because of concerns about potential retaliation, said she had accompanied her friend, a man from Colombia who has been in the U.S. for just under a year, to court Thursday morning. She said that when her friend left the courtroom to go to the bathroom, officers tried to detain him even though his hearing hadn't happened yet. During his hearing, Ruth's friend told the judge that he was afraid of being arrested when he went back outside the courtroom. The judge told her friend that he wasn't affiliated with ICE and couldn't control what they did, Ruth said. Her friend turned in his asylum application, and the judge gave him another hearing date. When her friend left his hearing, ICE officers took him into custody. 'He came in good faith keeping with his asylum process,' Ruth said. 'Now we don't even know what's going to happen to him.' Ruth said her friend has been active in the San Diego community and getting involved as a volunteer to help others in need. Tracy Crowley, an immigration attorney with Immigrant Defenders Law Center, took on Ruth's friend's case as he was being detained. She said she was still trying to figure out the legal reason for taking him into custody. 'It's wild,' Crowley said. 'The warrants are very bareboned and don't include the legal basis for detaining them.' Crowley was among a group of lawyers who jumped in to try to represent people in their court proceedings throughout the day in an effort to avoid additional arrests. Jacobs, the private immigration attorney, said her office took on four cases on May 22, including that of a young woman from Turkey who seemed terrified by the officers' presence. In the afternoon, Jacobs helped a mother and her teenage son, quickly getting to know them in the courtroom in the moments before the hearing began. Outside in the hallway, more than 10 officers waited. ICE also called in two private security guards and two Federal Protective Services officers because of the presence of journalists, attorneys, and community members documenting their actions in the hallway. After the family left the courtroom, ICE appeared to follow them to try to detain them. Jacobs followed after the officers, and she said that ICE decided to let the family go. Jacobs said ICE let the family go because the son had accompanied his mother. ICE officers in San Diego mistakenly attempted to arrest two additional people that same day. The officers later acknowledged the error. In one case, an attorney from the American Bar Association Immigration Justice Project accompanied his client out of the courtroom. When ICE moved to arrest the client, the attorney objected, asking to see a warrant. Officers shoved themselves between the attorney and his client. Two officers took hold of the man and he ended up on the ground. Beyond the Border witnessed him begin to gasp for air and hyperventilate. The attorney asked to be allowed to help his client, but ICE officers kept him away. 'May I please see a warrant because the warrant you provided is not that person,' the attorney said after ICE showed him their documentation. 'You are making an unlawful arrest.' ICE continued to keep him away from his client, saying that the man was having a medical emergency. 'He's having a medical emergency thanks to you,' the attorney replied. Another attorney in the hallway called for an ambulance, and eventually ICE backed away from the man. The attorney helped his client down the hallway to the elevator, holding the man's arm over his shoulders to support his weight so that he could move away from the officers. 'I will help my client at this point,' the attorney said as they left. 'You guys have done enough.' Several people who had accompanied family members to their hearings were left in the hallway in tears as they watched loved ones being taken away. Celleri worried about family members who weren't there and would have no way of knowing what had happened. 'For those who are unrepresented, to their family they have just disappeared, and they are not going to know where they are for 48 hours—and that's if they know how to find them,' Celleri said. Officers told attorneys in the hallway that those arrested on Thursday would be taken to Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. Lindsay Toczylowski, an attorney and CEO of Immigrant Defenders Law Center who was among the first to publicly call attention to the ICE operation, called the arrests a bait and switch. 'By detaining people in courtrooms, we are discouraging people from doing what we have always asked them to do,' Toczylowski said. 'We have always stressed how important it is for people to show up to court, to avail themselves of the system to follow the rules that are set out.' She said courts in Santa Ana, Chicago, Phoenix, and Miami also saw arrests this week. Celleri said people with upcoming hearings should know that if they don't come to court, they will likely be ordered deported in their absence.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Father ripped from family as agents target immigration courts, arresting people after cases dismissed
The man just had his immigration case dismissed and his wife and 8-year-old son were trailing behind him when agents surrounded, then handcuffed him outside the downtown Los Angeles courtroom. Erick Eduardo Fonseca Solorzano stood speechless. His wife trembled in panic. The federal agents explained in Spanish that he would be put into expedited removal proceedings. Just moments earlier on Friday, Judge Peter A. Kim had issued a dismissal of his deportation case. Now his son watched in wide-eyed disbelief as agents quickly shuffled him to a service elevator — and he was gone. The boy was silent, sticking close by his mother, tears welling. 'This kid will be traumatized for life,' said Lindsay Toczylowski, chief executive and co-founder of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, who reached out to the family to help them with their case. Similar scenes are taking place across the country as government lawyers dismiss immigrants' deportation cases only to have them immediately arrested by agents as they leave the courtroom to be removed on a fast track that does not involve a judicial review. The courthouse arrests escalate the administration's efforts to speed up deportations. Migrants who can't prove they have been in the U.S. for more than two years are eligible to be deported without a hearing before a judge. Historically, these expedited removals were done only at the border, but the Trump administration has sought to expand their use. The policies are being challenged in court. 'Secretary [Kristi] Noem is reversing Biden's catch-and-release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets," said a senior official from the Department of Homeland Security. The official said most immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally within the last two years "are subject to expedited removals." But he noted that if they have a valid credible fear claim, as required by law, they will continue in immigration proceedings. Toczylowski said it was Fonseca Solorzano's first appearance in court. Like many of those apprehended this week, Fonseca Solorzano arrived in the United States from Honduras via CPB One, an application set up during the Biden administration that provided asylum seekers a way to enter the country legally after going through a background check. More than 900,000 people were allowed in the country on immigration parole under the app, starting in January 2023. The Trump administration has turned the tool into a self-deportation app. "We are punishing the people who are following the rules, who are doing what the government asks them to do," Toczylowski said. "I think that this practice certainly seemed to have shaken up some of the court staff, because it's so unusual and because it's such bad policy to be doing this, considering who it targets and the ripple effects that it will have, it'll cause people to be afraid to come to court." A Times reporter witnessed three arrests on Friday in the windowless court hallways on the eighth floor of the Federal Building downtown. An agent in plain clothes in the courtroom came out to signal to agents in the hallway, one wearing a red flannel shirt, when an immigrant subject to detainment was about to exit. "No, please," cried Gabby Gaitan, as half a dozen agents swarmed her boyfriend and handcuffed him. His manila folder of documents spilled onto the floor. She crumpled to the ground in tears. 'Where are they taking him?' Richard Pulido, a 25-year-old Venezuelan, had arrived at the border last fall and was appearing for the first time, she said. He had been scared about attending the court hearing, but she told him missing it would make his situation worse. Gaitan said Pulido came to the U.S. last September after fleeing violence in his home country. An immigrant from Kazakhstan, who asked the judge not to dismiss his case without success, walked out of the courtroom. On a bench across from the doors, two immigration agents nodded at each other and one mouthed, 'Let's go.' They stood quickly and called out to the man. They directed him off to the side and behind doors that led to a service elevator. He looked defeated, head bowed, as they searched him, handcuffed him and shuffled him into the service elevator. Lawyers, who were at courthouses in Santa Ana and Los Angeles this week, say it appears that the effort was highly coordinated between Homeland Security lawyers and federal agents. Families and lawyers have described similar accounts in Miami, Seattle, New York, San Diego, Chicago and elsewhere. During the hearing for Pulido, Homeland Security lawyer Carolyn Marie Thompkins explicitly stated that the case would be dismissed because the government planned on deporting Pulido. 'The government intends to pursue expedited removal in this case,' she said. Pulido appeared confused as to what a dismissal would mean and asked the judge for clarity. Pulido opposed having his case dropped. 'I feel that I can contribute a lot to this country,' he said. Kim said it was not enough and dismissed the case. The courthouse arrests have frustrated immigrant rights advocates who say the rules of the game are changing daily for migrants trying to work within the system. "Immigration court should be a place where people go to present their claims for relief, have them assessed, get an up or down on whether they can stay and have that done in a way that affords them due process," said Talia Inlender, deputy director at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law School. "That is being ripped away sort of at every turn. "It's another attempt by the Trump administration to stoke fear in the community. And it specifically appears to be targeting people who are doing the right thing, following exactly what the government has asked them to do," she said. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
CBS News
23-05-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
ICE ending migrants' court cases in order to arrest and move to deport them
The Trump administration has launched an operation to terminate the immigration court cases of certain migrants, in order to arrest them and place them in a fast-tracked deportation process instead, government officials and attorneys told CBS News. Lawyers and advocates this week reported arrests of migrants outside of immigration courthouses across the U.S., saying teams of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had detained individuals whose cases in front of immigration judges had just been terminated at the request of the government. Two Department of Homeland Security officials told CBS News that ICE is conducting an operation to expedite the deportation of migrants with court hearings scheduled in the near future. It's the latest step taken by the Trump administration to dramatically ramp up immigration arrests across the country and fulfill what the president has promised will be the largest deportation campaign in American history. The operation involves ICE prosecutors asking immigration judges to terminate the court cases of certain migrants, so agents at the agency can instead arrest those individuals and place them in a more rapid deportation process known as "expedited removal," the officials said. Unlike immigration court proceedings, which can take years to complete due to a massive backlog of 4 million pending cases, the expedited removal process allows officials to more quickly deport migrants, if their cases satisfy certain conditions. Migrants who lack proper documents and can't prove they have been in the U.S. for more than two years are eligible to be deported under expedited removal, without a court hearing. Historically, officials were only allowed to use expedited removal on unauthorized immigrants detained within 100 miles of an international border and who had been in the U.S. for less than two weeks. But the Trump administration vastly expanded its scope soon after taking office. Expedited removal can also be applied to unauthorized migrants who entered the U.S. with the government's permission at legal entry points, and there's no two-year entry limit for those cases. That would place the nearly 1 million migrants who entered the U.S. under a Biden administration program known as CBP One at risk of being targeted by the new ICE operation. While those placed in expedited removal can be deported without a hearing in immigration court, they are entitled to an interview with an asylum officer if they say they are afraid of being persecuted in their home country. If they pass those screenings, they get a chance to plead their case in immigration court. In a statement, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin faulted the Biden administration for releasing many migrants with notices to appear in immigration court, instead of trying to deport them quickly through expedited removal. "ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been," McLaughlin said. Leandro Ferrer, an immigration lawyer based in Phoenix, Arizona, said his clients, two Cuban migrants, appear to have been swept up in the ICE operation when they showed up to their immigration court hearing on Tuesday. "There was a sense of relief when the government prosecutors moved to dismiss the removal proceedings," Ferrer recounted. "This has always been, historically, a result that is highly sought after and either we try to win a case on the merits of an application or we try to dismiss the removal proceedings." But to his shock and dismay, Ferrer said ICE agents arrested his clients immediately after they left the courtroom. "They did not provide identification, they did not have an arrest warrant, they did not make any attempt to establish whether or not they had committed a crime," Ferrer added. "They just went in and took them." Ferrer said his Cuban clients entered the U.S. in 2022, after showing up to a legal entry point along the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to request asylum. Even amid ICE's efforts to arrest some migrants after they show up to court, immigration lawyers said they are still strongly advising their clients against missing their hearings, as failure to do so could be grounds for judges to issue a deportation order. The ICE arrests at immigration courts were reported across the country in several cities with large immigrant populations, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas and Miami. "I began getting calls from family members of those getting arrested asking for help," said Antonio Ramos, a Miami-based immigration lawyer, adding that the phone calls began on Monday. Ramos said he's trying to make preparations for his clients who have upcoming court hearings. "They're going to come to my office first, we are going to take them to court and we are not going to leave them alone for one second in the building," he said. "People need to consult with an attorney before going to court, somebody that can take a look at the case, evaluate options and not a notary," Ramos added.
