ICE in immigration court
How does ICE maximize deportations and keep up the White House’s daily quota of 3,000 arrests if its targets are legally entitled to have their cases heard in immigration court? With a crooked and predatory tactic: arrest immigrants at their immigration hearings.
Immigrants who have lived in the United States for fewer than two years without legal status can be deported without an immigration hearing or any opportunity to fight their deportation in a process called "expedited removal”. However, anyone with a pending immigration case, regardless of their immigration status or the amount of time they have spent in the United States, has a due process right to receive a hearing and cannot be removed until their proceedings have concluded in immigration court. This is especially important for asylum seekers who enter the United States to request humanitarian immigration relief and may remain in the country while their asylum application is being processed.
ICE identifies recent immigrants with cases pending in immigration court. Their agents gather at courthouses and in the halls of immigration courts across the country and wait for those immigrants to appear for their hearings. When a target arrives, ICE quickly petitions the presiding immigration judge to dismiss their case. The judges, employees from the Justice Department, frequently yield to ICE's requests and toss out immigrants’ cases, denying them even the chance to argue for their right to stay. There is no hearing. No verdict. With their cases dismissed, asylum seekers and other immigrants fighting for status lose their legal protections from deportation - fair game for expedited removal. They’re promptly handcuffed by anonymous ICE agents, prodded into idling vans, and disappeared to notoriously overcrowded and remote detention centers.
