ICE agents wait in hallways of immigration court as Trump seeks to deliver on mass arrest pledge

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-panelled 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.

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 US 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.

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.

He didn't even have a speeding ticket' Serrano entered the US 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 clean-up crew to remove debris near Tampa following Hurricane Ian in September 2022.

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."

Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/latest-updates/ice-agents-wait-in-hallways-of-immigration-court-as-trump-seeks-to-deliver-on-mass-arrest-pledge/articleshow/121329857.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst