On Thursday afternoon, a young mother of five kids, only one of whom is a U.S. citizen, stood in front of a judge at the immigration court in downtown Phoenix. She was asking the immigration judge to grant her asylum.
She came to the U.S. from Mexico seeking safety for her and her family after escaping domestic and cartel violence, state Sen. Analise Ortiz, who sat in on the hearing, told Phoenix New Times. The mother told the court that she had been beaten by her boyfriend, who was a cartel member, and forced to provide information to the organization, under threat of death.
Lawyers from the Department of Homeland Security argued against her asylum claim. They said she had assisted a group, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, that the State Department has dubbed a foreign terrorist organization.
The immigration judge ultimately rejected the woman’s asylum claim. With the assistance of organizers from Puente and Borderlands Resource Initiative, two local advocacy organizations that accompany asylum seekers to their court hearings, the woman requested a continuance. She has 30 days to file an appeal and left the courthouse with her family.
“That’s good,” Ortiz said, “that they didn’t immediately detain her.”
If her hearing had been scheduled for one day earlier, she and her children may well have left the courthouse in handcuffs and headed toward deportation. Earlier this week, armed U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents, covering their faces with black neck gaiters, baseball hats and dark sunglasses, stalked court hallways, waiting to pick up and deport immigrants when the government’s removal cases against them were dismissed.
Dismissal is normally a terrific outcome for defendants who face a traffic violation or criminal charge. But for defensive asylum seekers, it’s perilous. For these folks, the government’s removal proceeding itself provides them the opportunity to raise their asylum claim in immigration court as a defense to DHS’ case. Without it, these individuals can face prompt deportation.
Rapidly deporting migrants whose appeals for legal status could otherwise extend for months or years is one aspect of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. With these latest moves, the administration appears to be working within the law — but very, very aggressively.
Courthouse protections no longer in effect
For asylum seekers, specifically those who have been in the U.S. for less than two years, the administration has been engaging in a process to expand expedited removal. To do that, U.S. Department of Homeland Security prosecutors, through DHS’ Office of Principal Legal Advisor, have been moving for dismissal of pending removal proceedings against asylum seekers.
A statement emailed to New Times, and attributed to an unnamed senior DHS spokesperson, read that undocumented people who entered the U.S. within the last two years are “subject to expedited removals,” but posited that the Biden administration “ignored this legal fact.” Fernando Burgos Ortiz, the public affairs officer at the ICE field office in Phoenix, emailed New Times the exact same DHS statement.
“ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been,” the statement continued. “If they have a valid credible fear claim, they will continue in immigration proceedings, but if no valid claim is found, aliens will be subject to a swift deportation.”
Applying for asylum, as some 900,000 people do in the United States every year, per data from 2023, is legal and protected under international law. Immigration courts in this country face enormous backlogs of cases that, as they drag on, keep many migrants in limbo — yet do allow them to live legally in the United States.
“They’re showing up trying to follow the legal process, trying to demonstrate that they’re doing everything that the government asks them to do,” Beth Strano, the executive director of the Borderlands Resource Initiative, told New Times. “It is really kind of a bait-and-switch. It’s a subversion of due process.”
As part of the same enforcement agency, DHS attorneys and ICE are allowed to coordinate. Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel for the American Immigration Council, a D.C.-based immigration organization, told New Times in an email that while he hasn’t “explicitly seen this type of coordination in the past, it is something that is expected.”
A longstanding Department of Justice policy prevented ICE agents from entering immigration courthouses. That changed once Trump took office. His administration rescinded those protections at the beginning of the year.
More concerning, Orozco said, is the possibility that ICE and immigration courts are coordinating. “It’s not clear at this point, but we’ll be monitoring to determine whether this was the case,” he said.
Immigration courts, like some other specialized courts, exist inside the executive branch, within the U.S. Department of Justice. Immigration judges therefore are inside the same branch of government as the Department of Homeland Security lawyers arguing for deportations.
But if coordination is occurring, in which a federal attorney approaches a judge without the presence of the respondent or their lawyer, that’s a violation of court rules, said Robyn Barnard, the senior director for human rights advocacy for Human Rights First.
“That would be a very, very serious problem and the judge would probably accuse me of unprofessional conduct. There might be some kind of sanction issued by the court,” she said. “If there is evidence of some kind of knowing coordination between the judges and ICE … that would be very serious.”
Either way, in Phoenix and across the country we see “immigration judges dismissing cases over the objections of the respondents and respondent counsel,” Barnard said. “That is really concerning."
Were arrests just a 'two-day sting operation'?
This week, social media feeds in Phoenix buzzed with videos of ICE agents escorting handcuffed detainees on the sidewalk of Seventh Avenue and Van Buren Street into a white van. The tactic “kind of blitzed everybody,” Strano said. ICE conducted similar activity at immigration courts in Los Angeles, Seattle, California, Texas, Chicago, Miami and New York.
After that chaos, Thursday morning was different. Instead of a strong ICE presence around the downtown Phoenix office building, which houses immigration court, elected officials, local organizers and protesters took their place.
Protesters held anti-ICE, pro-due process signs as drivers passing by honked in support. Organizers with clipboards in hand offered guidance to immigrants before they went into hearings, and often accompanied them inside.
Inside the courthouse, elected officials — including Ortiz, state Rep. Lorena Austin and Phoenix City Councilmember Anna Hernandez — sat in to observe the hearings.
Organizers also made sure they had identifying information for every person who entered the courthouse, as well as an emergency contact, in case ICE arrested them. If a person disappears, organizers can send that information to the Florence Project, which “has the ability to go to orientations in detention centers,” Strano said. “And they will go find that person.”
It’s unclear if the process of “moving to dismiss” was just a “two-day sting operation” or if the public and media pressure is “causing them to hold off and change strategy and course,” Ortiz said. Either way, ICE’s surprise move is likely to have lasting effects — perhaps deterring immigrants from showing up for court hearings where they now believe they could be deported.
But failing to appear at a hearing is a serious matter. In response, a judge can issue a removal order. That would prompt ICE to issue an arrest warrant.
“You want people to feel like they can safely go to immigration court and follow the rules of their release and directions of the court,” Barnard said. “You don’t want them to be too scared to leave the house, which is what many people feel right now.”
Organizers will continue to meet immigrants at the courthouse and provide them with information and a point of contact.
“Ideally, we’re gonna be here every day,” Strano said. “Whether ICE is here or not.”
Still, the fear lingers. Through tears, Ortiz, whose West Valley district has many mixed-status and immigrant families, said organizers told the woman with the five kids that she might be detained, pending the outcome in the courtroom. During the hearing, an adult took the kids elsewhere, in case that scene unfolded.
“It’s horrible,” Ortiz said. “We feel powerless, even as a legislator.”
