Civil rights groups sued the Trump administration on Wednesday in a bid to stop the government’s policy of allowing ICE officers to arrest undocumented immigrants who show up for immigration hearings at courthouses.
The class-action lawsuit filed at a federal court in Washington, DC, on behalf of a dozen immigrants and several civil rights groups opens a new front in a sprawling legal effort by advocates to halt recent controversial moves by the administration aimed at increasing deportations in the US.
Until recently, the Department of Homeland Security operated under guidelines that limited immigration enforcement at courthouses. After the Trump administration rescinded those guidelines shortly into the president’s second term, masked law enforcement officers began showing up at courthouses across the country to arrest migrants.
The lawsuit details the administration’s new strategy: government attorneys ask an immigration judge to dismiss civil proceedings against an immigrant “based on changed circumstances,” and, upon dismissal, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents – who are sometimes already present in or near the courtroom – arrest the individual.
The person is then transferred into expedited removal proceedings, which gives them little legal recourse and typically requires their detention. In some cases, immigrants are detained immediately after the hearing or upon exiting the courthouse. And in many cases, attorneys say immigrants are detained in facilities far from the city where their court hearing took place.
“The consequences of (the administration’s) actions are severe. Noncitizens, including most of the individual plaintiffs here, have been abruptly ripped from their families, lives, homes, and jobs for appearing in immigration court, a step required to enable them to proceed with their applications for permission to remain in this country,” lawyers for the civil rights groups and immigrants wrote in court papers.
The attorneys are asking a federal judge to block the series of policy changes that have allowed the administration to carry out the effort, alleging they violate the US Constitution and federal law.
Among the individual plaintiffs are people who unlawfully entered the US in recent years and were arrested at courthouses after their cases were dismissed, including several who had pending asylum applications.
One of them, a Cuban man identified in court papers as P.D., appeared for a hearing on his asylum application in late May.
“At that hearing, DHS orally moved to dismiss his case without notice” and “without articulating any change in circumstances,” according to the lawsuit. “P.D.’s lawyer argued that his case should not be dismissed, but the judge granted the government’s motion. As soon as P.D. left the courtroom, he was arrested and taken into custody.”
Immigrant rights groups say the courthouse arrests reflect a growing trend: enforcement no longer confined to border crossings or employer sites, but extending into places once considered out of bounds.
The rescission of the DHS policy came as ICE faced mounting pressure from within the Trump administration to ramp up the agency’s detention and deportation numbers. Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, told ICE officials in May that they needed to average 3,000 arrests per day, a figure that has largely been elusive.
The push to undertake immigration-enforcement operations at courthouses stunned lawyers, legal advocates and civil rights activists who said that the operations targeted immigrants simply following legal procedures and who worried that fears about arrests at courthouses may drive immigrants underground.
“The Trump-Vance administration is weaponizing immigration courts by threatening people who follow the law and appear for their hearings as directed by the court. This unlawful scheme will chill participation in the legal process and violates the fundamental principles of due process and fairness that underpin our legal system,” said Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which helped bring the new lawsuit.
The administration’s approach has at times led to high-profile incidents. Such was the case in April when a state judge in Wisconsin allegedly helped an undocumented immigrant appearing before her for a criminal matter evade arrest by federal agents.
Federal charges were brought against the jurist – Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan – in a case that many legal experts said underscored the administration’s attempt to strong-arm courts around the country as it pushes ahead with controversial immigration policies. Dugan has pleaded not guilty.
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