ICE agents wait in hallways of immigration court as Trump seeks to deliver on mass arrest pledge
Associated Press (archive.ph)
By Joshua Goodman and Gisela Salomon
2025-05-22 11:49:17GMT
Federal agents take a person into custody after an immigration court hearing outside an immigration court, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
MIAMI (AP) — Juan Serrano, a 28-year-old Colombian migrant with no criminal record, attended a hearing in immigration court in Miami on Wednesday for what he thought would be a quick check-in.
The musty, glass-paneled courthouse sees hundreds of such hearings every day. Most last less than five minutes and end with a judge ordering those who appear to return in two years’ time to plead their case against deportation.
So it came as a surprise when, rather than set a future court date, government attorneys asked to drop the case. “You’re free to go,” Judge Monica Neumann told Serrano.
Except he really wasn’t.
Waiting for him as he exited the small courtroom were five federal agents who cuffed him against the wall, escorted him to the garage and whisked him away in a van along with a dozen other migrants detained the same day.
They weren’t the only ones. Across the United States in immigration courts from New York to Seattle this week, Homeland Security officials are ramping up enforcement actions in what appears to be a coordinated dragnet testing out new legal levers deployed by President Donald Trump’s administration to carry out mass arrests.
While Trump campaigned on a pledge of mass removals of what he calls “illegals,” he’s struggled to carry out his plans amid a series of lawsuits, the refusal of some foreign governments to take back their nationals and a lack of detention facilities to house migrants.
Arrests are extremely rare in or immediately near immigration courts, which are run by the Justice Department. When they have occurred, it was usually because the individual was charged with a criminal offense or their asylum claim had been denied.
“All this is to accelerate detentions and expedite removals,” said immigration attorney Wilfredo Allen, who has represented migrants at the Miami court for decades.
Dismissal orders came down this week, officials say
Three U.S. immigration officials said government attorneys were given the order to start dismissing cases when they showed up for work Monday, knowing full well that federal agents would then have a free hand to arrest those same individuals as soon as they stepped out of the courtroom. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared losing their jobs.
AP reporters on Wednesday witnessed detentions and arrests or spoke to attorneys whose clients were picked up at immigration courthouses in Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York, Seattle, Chicago and Texas.
The latest effort includes people who have no criminal records, migrants with no legal representation and people who are seeking asylum, according to reports received by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, known as AILA. While detentions have been happening over the past few months, on Tuesday the number of reports skyrocketed, said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel at AILA.
In the case of Serrano in Miami, the request for dismissal was delivered by a government attorney who spoke without identifying herself on the record. When the AP asked for the woman’s name, she refused and hastily exited the courtroom past one of the groups of plainclothes federal agents stationed throughout the building.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of Homeland Security, said in a statement that it was detaining people who are subject to fast-track deportation authority.
Outside the Miami courthouse on Wednesday, a Cuban man was waiting for one last glimpse of his 22-year-old son. Initially, when his son’s case was dismissed, his father assumed it was a first, positive step toward legal residency. But the hoped-for reprieve quickly turned into a nightmare.
“My whole world came crashing down,” said the father, breaking down in tears. The man, who asked not to be identified for fear of arrest, described his son as a good kid who rarely left his Miami home except to go to work.
“We thought coming here was a good thing,” he said of his son’s court appearance.
Antonio Ramos, an immigration attorney with an office next to the Miami courthouse, said the government’s new tactics are likely to have a chilling effect in Miami’s large migrant community, discouraging otherwise law abiding individuals from showing up for their court appearances for fear of arrest.
“People are going to freak out like never before,” he said.
‘He didn’t even have a speeding ticket’
Serrano entered the U.S. in September 2022 after fleeing his homeland due to threats associated with his work as an adviser to a politician in the Colombian capital, Bogota, according to his girlfriend, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being arrested and deported. Last year, he submitted a request for asylum, she said.
She said the couple met working on a cleanup crew to remove debris near Tampa following Hurricane Ian in September 2022.
“He was shy and I’m extroverted,” said the woman, who is from Venezuela.
The couple slept on the streets when they relocated to Miami but eventually scrounged together enough money — she cleaning houses, him working construction — to buy a used car and rent a one-bedroom apartment for $1,400 a month.
The apartment is decorated with photos of the two in better times, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty in New York, visiting a theme park and lounging at the beach. She said the two worked hard, socialized little and lived a law-abiding life.
“He didn’t even have a speeding ticket. We both drive like grandparents,” she said.
The woman was waiting outside the courthouse when she received a call from her boyfriend. “He told me to go, that he had been arrested and there was nothing more to do,” she said.
She was still processing the news and deciding how she would break it to his elderly parents. Meanwhile, she called an attorney recommended by a friend to see if anything could be done to reverse the arrest.
“I’m grateful for any help,” she said as she shuffled through her boyfriend’s passport, migration papers and IRS tax receipts. “Unfortunately, not a lot of Americans want to help us.”
---
Arrests happening inside Chicago’s immigration court, attorneys say: ‘People are going to be afraid’
Chicago Tribune (archive.ph)
By Laura Rodríguez Presa, Madeline Buckley, and Alice Yin
2025-05-22 19:31:40GMT
People wait in line at the Chicago Immigration Court, which is located in the office building at 55 E. Monroe St. in downtown Chicago, on May 21, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents appeared to have arrested several people inside Chicago’s immigration court on Wednesday and Thursday, lawyers told the Tribune, in what seems to be the latest escalation in President Donald Trump’s bid to enact mass deportations.
Throughout Wednesday, groups of men were spotted detaining individuals inside the downtown courthouse, with many of those agents wearing badges or verbally identifying themselves as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to four attorneys. More arrests were seen Thursday, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center.
An ICE spokesperson did not provide comment, but a Tribune reporter also witnessed three individuals being taken into custody by men dressed in plainclothes and holding clipboards early Wednesday afternoon. Their lawyer, Essam Abdallah, told the Tribune his clients are immigrants who have been in the country for under two years but did not know where they were being taken.
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” a surprised Abdallah said as he left the courthouse to find a way to help his clients.
News outlets across the U.S. have similarly reported on federal agents detaining individuals during immigration hearings and check-ins in Dallas, Phoenix and Seattle this month. In Chicago, several attorneys who were at the immigration courthouse Wednesday said they noticed men sitting by the waiting area and inside the courtrooms, with one lawyer saying he followed the detainees to the fourth floor where immigration arrests are processed.
Another attorney, Alex McGriff, said he was at the courthouse for most of Wednesday and heard the men identify themselves as ICE agents to the people they approached. McGriff monitored the court hearings as part of the National Immigrant Justice Center to learn more of ICE’s latest move.
The practice of ICE entering the courthouses to detain individuals who are there for deportation or other immigration proceedings is a shift that signals a more aggressive tactic by the Trump administration. It comes as his campaign promise to drastically ramp up deportations has seen a chaotic rollout but has so far fallen short of his goals numbers-wise, with recent reports indicating that removals have lagged behind those that happened during the administration of President Joe Biden.
While ICE is allowed inside courthouses, advocates worry the presence of agents will have a chilling effect on immigrants due for routine check-ins or hearings. Immigration lawyers said the Trump administration appeared to be coordinating efforts to dismiss cases of individuals in the U.S. for less than two years so that federal agents can immediately detain them, potentially for an expedited removal order.
Trump in January expanded that designation, traditionally only used at the border, to apply to any noncitizen without legal status who cannot prove they’ve been in the country for more than two years. Those individuals are not owed a hearing before an immigration judge.
Aaron Lawee, an immigration attorney with Minsky, McCormick & Hallagan, was in court when he saw government attorneys move to dismiss two separate cases. In both instances, he said, two individuals were waiting outside the courtroom to detain the respondents.
ICE officers wait outside of Seattle Immigration Court on May 20, 2025. (Nick Wagner/The Seattle Times)
In one case, Lawee said, a woman from Vietnam had an attorney, though the attorney was present via videoconference and not physically in court. The woman was eventually able to talk to her attorney, who informed the agents she had an asylum application and was entitled to an interview.
In the other instance, the man did not have an attorney, Lawee said. The judge allowed the man 10 days to respond to the government’s request to dismiss the matter, he said. He accompanied the man to the ICE office, and learned that he had a criminal conviction, which appeared to be the reason for the detention.
“This tactic of switching someone from a nondetained case to a detained case really stacks the deck against them,” he said. “The deck is already stacked against immigrants. Unlike in criminal court, this is more like you’re guilty until proven innocent.”
Another attorney who asked to remain anonymous to protect their client told the Tribune they were at a downtown immigration court Wednesday and saw the government move to dismiss their client’s case. That government official would only explain, “The circumstances have changed.”
Victoria Carmona, a clinical professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, called the maneuver to dismiss cases to then expedite deportation “unprecedented” and said it appeared to be a coordinated, nationwide effort rolled out in multiple cities.
“It’s definitely to detain as many people as possible,” she said. “It’s easy detention, and absolutely to quickly deport people.”
Attorneys urged people to still attend their court dates because failing to show up would lead to a removal order, but said family members who would come in a supportive role may opt to stay home.
“People are going to be afraid to go to court,” Carmona said.
People enter and exit the office space at 55 E. Monroe St. in downtown Chicago, which is home to the Chicago Immigration Court, May 21, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)
Many are unaware that there may be legal avenues available to challenge their arrests and the expedited removal process being applied to them, said immigration attorney Khiabett Osuna.
Osuna was there on Wednesday morning with one of her clients when she noticed the apparent agents in the waiting room and inside the courtroom.
“There is a real risk for people who are navigating this process without representation,” Osuna said. “Those without attorneys are not being informed of their rights or potential defenses, leaving them at a heightened risk of immediate detention and removal.”
More than 50,000 asylum-seekers, mostly from Venezuela but also from Haiti and other countries suffering instability, have arrived in Chicago since 2022. The U.S. Supreme Court this week sided with the Trump administration’s move to revoke the Temporary Protected Status of 350,000 Venezuelans, but a tangled web of pending litigation over other protections for immigrants targeted by the White House continues unfolding in courts.
Chicago has often been in the crosshairs of the White House since Trump’s second term started. Mayor Brandon Johnson, a progressive first-termer, has decried the president as a “tyrant” and went to Washington, D.C., in March for a congressional hearing in which he defended Chicago’s sanctuary policy that prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
However, ICE has been moving ahead with deportations in the nation’s third-largest city even without Chicago police’s help. That was evident during the citywide immigration raids attended by Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and the TV personality Dr. Phil in January — and now in Wednesday’s courthouse arrests.
Rey Wences, senior director of deportation defense at Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, called the arrests “deeply troubling.”
“We know that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are using this strategy to snatch and disappear people in different cities nationwide,” Wences said. “This is a deeply troubling development that instills fear in communities, creates barriers for people going through the immigration process, and only serves to pad Trump’s deportation numbers at the expense of everyday families. Trump and DHS are trying to use a shortcut to deny due process to our family members and neighbors.”
Associated Press (archive.ph)
By Joshua Goodman and Gisela Salomon
2025-05-22 11:49:17GMT
Federal agents take a person into custody after an immigration court hearing outside an immigration court, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
MIAMI (AP) — Juan Serrano, a 28-year-old Colombian migrant with no criminal record, attended a hearing in immigration court in Miami on Wednesday for what he thought would be a quick check-in.
The musty, glass-paneled courthouse sees hundreds of such hearings every day. Most last less than five minutes and end with a judge ordering those who appear to return in two years’ time to plead their case against deportation.
So it came as a surprise when, rather than set a future court date, government attorneys asked to drop the case. “You’re free to go,” Judge Monica Neumann told Serrano.
Except he really wasn’t.
Waiting for him as he exited the small courtroom were five federal agents who cuffed him against the wall, escorted him to the garage and whisked him away in a van along with a dozen other migrants detained the same day.
They weren’t the only ones. Across the United States in immigration courts from New York to Seattle this week, Homeland Security officials are ramping up enforcement actions in what appears to be a coordinated dragnet testing out new legal levers deployed by President Donald Trump’s administration to carry out mass arrests.
While Trump campaigned on a pledge of mass removals of what he calls “illegals,” he’s struggled to carry out his plans amid a series of lawsuits, the refusal of some foreign governments to take back their nationals and a lack of detention facilities to house migrants.
Arrests are extremely rare in or immediately near immigration courts, which are run by the Justice Department. When they have occurred, it was usually because the individual was charged with a criminal offense or their asylum claim had been denied.
“All this is to accelerate detentions and expedite removals,” said immigration attorney Wilfredo Allen, who has represented migrants at the Miami court for decades.
Dismissal orders came down this week, officials say
Three U.S. immigration officials said government attorneys were given the order to start dismissing cases when they showed up for work Monday, knowing full well that federal agents would then have a free hand to arrest those same individuals as soon as they stepped out of the courtroom. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared losing their jobs.
AP reporters on Wednesday witnessed detentions and arrests or spoke to attorneys whose clients were picked up at immigration courthouses in Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York, Seattle, Chicago and Texas.
The latest effort includes people who have no criminal records, migrants with no legal representation and people who are seeking asylum, according to reports received by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, known as AILA. While detentions have been happening over the past few months, on Tuesday the number of reports skyrocketed, said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel at AILA.
In the case of Serrano in Miami, the request for dismissal was delivered by a government attorney who spoke without identifying herself on the record. When the AP asked for the woman’s name, she refused and hastily exited the courtroom past one of the groups of plainclothes federal agents stationed throughout the building.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of Homeland Security, said in a statement that it was detaining people who are subject to fast-track deportation authority.
Outside the Miami courthouse on Wednesday, a Cuban man was waiting for one last glimpse of his 22-year-old son. Initially, when his son’s case was dismissed, his father assumed it was a first, positive step toward legal residency. But the hoped-for reprieve quickly turned into a nightmare.
“My whole world came crashing down,” said the father, breaking down in tears. The man, who asked not to be identified for fear of arrest, described his son as a good kid who rarely left his Miami home except to go to work.
“We thought coming here was a good thing,” he said of his son’s court appearance.
Antonio Ramos, an immigration attorney with an office next to the Miami courthouse, said the government’s new tactics are likely to have a chilling effect in Miami’s large migrant community, discouraging otherwise law abiding individuals from showing up for their court appearances for fear of arrest.
“People are going to freak out like never before,” he said.
‘He didn’t even have a speeding ticket’
Serrano entered the U.S. in September 2022 after fleeing his homeland due to threats associated with his work as an adviser to a politician in the Colombian capital, Bogota, according to his girlfriend, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being arrested and deported. Last year, he submitted a request for asylum, she said.
She said the couple met working on a cleanup crew to remove debris near Tampa following Hurricane Ian in September 2022.
“He was shy and I’m extroverted,” said the woman, who is from Venezuela.
The couple slept on the streets when they relocated to Miami but eventually scrounged together enough money — she cleaning houses, him working construction — to buy a used car and rent a one-bedroom apartment for $1,400 a month.
The apartment is decorated with photos of the two in better times, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty in New York, visiting a theme park and lounging at the beach. She said the two worked hard, socialized little and lived a law-abiding life.
“He didn’t even have a speeding ticket. We both drive like grandparents,” she said.
The woman was waiting outside the courthouse when she received a call from her boyfriend. “He told me to go, that he had been arrested and there was nothing more to do,” she said.
She was still processing the news and deciding how she would break it to his elderly parents. Meanwhile, she called an attorney recommended by a friend to see if anything could be done to reverse the arrest.
“I’m grateful for any help,” she said as she shuffled through her boyfriend’s passport, migration papers and IRS tax receipts. “Unfortunately, not a lot of Americans want to help us.”
---
Arrests happening inside Chicago’s immigration court, attorneys say: ‘People are going to be afraid’
Chicago Tribune (archive.ph)
By Laura Rodríguez Presa, Madeline Buckley, and Alice Yin
2025-05-22 19:31:40GMT
People wait in line at the Chicago Immigration Court, which is located in the office building at 55 E. Monroe St. in downtown Chicago, on May 21, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents appeared to have arrested several people inside Chicago’s immigration court on Wednesday and Thursday, lawyers told the Tribune, in what seems to be the latest escalation in President Donald Trump’s bid to enact mass deportations.
Throughout Wednesday, groups of men were spotted detaining individuals inside the downtown courthouse, with many of those agents wearing badges or verbally identifying themselves as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to four attorneys. More arrests were seen Thursday, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center.
An ICE spokesperson did not provide comment, but a Tribune reporter also witnessed three individuals being taken into custody by men dressed in plainclothes and holding clipboards early Wednesday afternoon. Their lawyer, Essam Abdallah, told the Tribune his clients are immigrants who have been in the country for under two years but did not know where they were being taken.
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” a surprised Abdallah said as he left the courthouse to find a way to help his clients.
News outlets across the U.S. have similarly reported on federal agents detaining individuals during immigration hearings and check-ins in Dallas, Phoenix and Seattle this month. In Chicago, several attorneys who were at the immigration courthouse Wednesday said they noticed men sitting by the waiting area and inside the courtrooms, with one lawyer saying he followed the detainees to the fourth floor where immigration arrests are processed.
Another attorney, Alex McGriff, said he was at the courthouse for most of Wednesday and heard the men identify themselves as ICE agents to the people they approached. McGriff monitored the court hearings as part of the National Immigrant Justice Center to learn more of ICE’s latest move.
The practice of ICE entering the courthouses to detain individuals who are there for deportation or other immigration proceedings is a shift that signals a more aggressive tactic by the Trump administration. It comes as his campaign promise to drastically ramp up deportations has seen a chaotic rollout but has so far fallen short of his goals numbers-wise, with recent reports indicating that removals have lagged behind those that happened during the administration of President Joe Biden.
While ICE is allowed inside courthouses, advocates worry the presence of agents will have a chilling effect on immigrants due for routine check-ins or hearings. Immigration lawyers said the Trump administration appeared to be coordinating efforts to dismiss cases of individuals in the U.S. for less than two years so that federal agents can immediately detain them, potentially for an expedited removal order.
Trump in January expanded that designation, traditionally only used at the border, to apply to any noncitizen without legal status who cannot prove they’ve been in the country for more than two years. Those individuals are not owed a hearing before an immigration judge.
Aaron Lawee, an immigration attorney with Minsky, McCormick & Hallagan, was in court when he saw government attorneys move to dismiss two separate cases. In both instances, he said, two individuals were waiting outside the courtroom to detain the respondents.
ICE officers wait outside of Seattle Immigration Court on May 20, 2025. (Nick Wagner/The Seattle Times)
In one case, Lawee said, a woman from Vietnam had an attorney, though the attorney was present via videoconference and not physically in court. The woman was eventually able to talk to her attorney, who informed the agents she had an asylum application and was entitled to an interview.
In the other instance, the man did not have an attorney, Lawee said. The judge allowed the man 10 days to respond to the government’s request to dismiss the matter, he said. He accompanied the man to the ICE office, and learned that he had a criminal conviction, which appeared to be the reason for the detention.
“This tactic of switching someone from a nondetained case to a detained case really stacks the deck against them,” he said. “The deck is already stacked against immigrants. Unlike in criminal court, this is more like you’re guilty until proven innocent.”
Another attorney who asked to remain anonymous to protect their client told the Tribune they were at a downtown immigration court Wednesday and saw the government move to dismiss their client’s case. That government official would only explain, “The circumstances have changed.”
Victoria Carmona, a clinical professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, called the maneuver to dismiss cases to then expedite deportation “unprecedented” and said it appeared to be a coordinated, nationwide effort rolled out in multiple cities.
“It’s definitely to detain as many people as possible,” she said. “It’s easy detention, and absolutely to quickly deport people.”
Attorneys urged people to still attend their court dates because failing to show up would lead to a removal order, but said family members who would come in a supportive role may opt to stay home.
“People are going to be afraid to go to court,” Carmona said.
People enter and exit the office space at 55 E. Monroe St. in downtown Chicago, which is home to the Chicago Immigration Court, May 21, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)
Many are unaware that there may be legal avenues available to challenge their arrests and the expedited removal process being applied to them, said immigration attorney Khiabett Osuna.
Osuna was there on Wednesday morning with one of her clients when she noticed the apparent agents in the waiting room and inside the courtroom.
“There is a real risk for people who are navigating this process without representation,” Osuna said. “Those without attorneys are not being informed of their rights or potential defenses, leaving them at a heightened risk of immediate detention and removal.”
More than 50,000 asylum-seekers, mostly from Venezuela but also from Haiti and other countries suffering instability, have arrived in Chicago since 2022. The U.S. Supreme Court this week sided with the Trump administration’s move to revoke the Temporary Protected Status of 350,000 Venezuelans, but a tangled web of pending litigation over other protections for immigrants targeted by the White House continues unfolding in courts.
Chicago has often been in the crosshairs of the White House since Trump’s second term started. Mayor Brandon Johnson, a progressive first-termer, has decried the president as a “tyrant” and went to Washington, D.C., in March for a congressional hearing in which he defended Chicago’s sanctuary policy that prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
However, ICE has been moving ahead with deportations in the nation’s third-largest city even without Chicago police’s help. That was evident during the citywide immigration raids attended by Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and the TV personality Dr. Phil in January — and now in Wednesday’s courthouse arrests.
Rey Wences, senior director of deportation defense at Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, called the arrests “deeply troubling.”
“We know that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are using this strategy to snatch and disappear people in different cities nationwide,” Wences said. “This is a deeply troubling development that instills fear in communities, creates barriers for people going through the immigration process, and only serves to pad Trump’s deportation numbers at the expense of everyday families. Trump and DHS are trying to use a shortcut to deny due process to our family members and neighbors.”
