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A gang of nearly two dozen masked federal agents descended on a courthouse in Phoenix, Arizona over several days this week and arrested immigrants moments after they left their immigration court hearings.
Issac Ortega, a Phoenix-based immigration attorney, said his client was arrested on Tuesday after a hearing that same morning. His client has no criminal history and entered the United States legally through the CBP One app. Ortega told the Arizona Mirror.
The incident in Phoenix was not isolated.
Unidentified agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies have made similar arrests inside and outside courthouses across the country in recent days, from Washington state to Virginia, as Donald Trump’s administration accelerates his deportation agenda.
Inside Seattle Immigration Court, three people were arrested and escorted from the building on Wednesday morning immediately after their cases were dismissed, KUOW reported. One woman was granted permission to apply for asylum, narrowly avoiding another agent who was waiting for her outside the courtroom.
And in San Diego, a man was arrested for allegedly obstructing the detention of a Guatemalan man who was attending his immigration court hearing. His lawyer later said his client’s case had not yet been dismissed and that he had not violated any of the terms of his release.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association says the incidents are a “flagrant betrayal of basic fairness and due process” for people who are simply following the rules.
“Immigration courts are being weaponized, judges are coordinating with ICE to dismiss cases and immediately funnel individuals into the fast-track deportation pipeline known as expedited removal,” the group said.
“These are not fugitives,” the group added. “They are individuals, many who are seeking protection from torture in their countries, complying with the law.”
After taking office, Trump signed an executive order that greenlights fast-track deportation proceedings for immigrants who cannot prove that they have continuously lived in the United States for more than two years. That “expedited removal” process — historically used at the U.S.-Mexico border — is now being expanded across the country. The American Civil Liberties Union sued to block the measure, arguing people seeking asylum “would get less due process contesting their deportation than they would contesting a traffic ticket.”
Internal administration documents reviewed by The Washington Post instruct ICE agents in more than 20 states to arrest people immediately after there cases are dismissed by a judge, or if they are given orders for their removal.
Following that, immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years are placed into a fast-track removal process — which does not involve a hearing before a judge.
One attorney, Khiabett Osuna, told The Post she was was approached by a plainclothes ICE agent who was checking a list of immigration cases while sitting inside a courtroom’s public gallery.
Roughly six agents gathered outside the courtroom with laptops, reviewing more lists of names, she said.
“It’s a whole operation,” she told the outlet.
Immigration lawyers describe the tactics as “cruelty disguised as policy.” They’re morally wrong — and self-defeating, they said.
“If the goal is court compliance, these tactics achieve the opposite: they terrify people away from the very process they’re supposed to trust, undermining the rule of law at its foundation,” according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association
“This is a corruption of our immigration courts, transforming them from forums of justice into cogs in a mass deportation apparatus,” the group said. “The expansion of expedited removal strips more people of their right to a hearing before a judge — as our laws promise.”
English (US) ·