The two brothers had gone to dozens of check-ins at ICE as their political asylum case wound its way through the system.
When they showed up March 14 at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Manhattan, Jose and Josue Trejo Lopez expected another routine proceeding. Instead, within minutes, ICE agents were telling them to face the wall and handcuffing them.
They were being deported to El Salvador, which they left as children a decade ago with their mother when gangs threatened the family.
“These people just like took me away from my family, just in a matter of seconds,” Josue, 19, said in a Zoom interview from El Salvador. He and Jose, 20, had been living in Central Islip.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- Some immigrants are getting arrested by ICE agents and deported when they show up for routine immigration court hearings or check-ins.
- It is a new tactic in the Trump administration plan for the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history.
- Advocates say the practice violates the sanctity of the court system, but government officials contend it is an efficient way to deport people living in the country illegally.
As President Donald Trump pursues what he pledges to be the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history, federal agents are employing a new tactic: arresting people after they show up for immigration hearings.
Some get called in for “case reviews.” Others arrive in court only to see government lawyers and judges suddenly drop cases against them, advocates said. That leaves them exposed to deportation because a migrant generally cannot be deported while a case is being processed. Agents, often masked, arrest the immigrants in the hallway as they leave the courtroom.
The tactic is catching many immigrants off guard and leaving them in shock, since they thought they were following the rules as they pursued legal status. Some immigration attorneys contend federal agents are deceiving the migrants.
An ‘unprecedented’ strategy
Benjamin Remy, an immigration attorney with the nonprofit New York Legal Assistance Group, said he has been at the courts in Manhattan every day the last month trying to inform immigrants of their rights and possibly avoid deportation.
He called the courthouse crackdown “unprecedented” and in some cases illegal since some immigrants are detained even if their cases are not dismissed.
“It’s really made a mockery of our immigration court system,” Remy said. “This is a really wide dragnet that they are just pulling all sorts of people into. I’ve been practicing immigration law for quite a while, and … none of us have ever seen anything like this. … The amount of fear, you can see people get off the elevators, getting to their hearings, and seeing 30 masked officers with guns right next to them.”
An immigrant is detained by ICE agents as he exits an immigration courtroom hearing at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on June 6. Credit: Stephanie Keith
ICE did not respond to requests for comment.
Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, have previously said the arrests are a quick way to deport millions of migrants who have crossed the border illegally. Arresting them in the more controlled environment of a courthouse is more efficient than dispatching teams of agents into communities to find them and involves less risk for the officers and the public, they have said.
The new ICE tactics generated headlines in June when Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and candidate for mayor, was arrested as he tried to prevent an immigrant from getting detained by agents at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan.
Lander was charged with assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer. He denied the allegations and said he was trying to help the immigrant get out of the building. He was detained for hours as Gov. Kathy Hochul and other Democrats arrived to demand his release. The charges were later dropped.
ICE officers inside court in lower Manhattan. Credit: Marcus Santos
Remy estimated that hundreds of immigrants have been detained and deported just from the three immigration courts in Manhattan in the last several weeks. The pace appeared to accelerate after Stephen Miller, a deputy chief of staff at the White House, said in late May the government wanted to increase the arrests of immigrants from about 600 a day nationwide to at least 3,000 a day.
“It’s actually a disgrace,” said Christopher Cassar, an immigration attorney based in Huntington. The immigrants are “doing what they’re supposed to do, complying with the law, and you know, as a result, they’re getting deported.”
Immigrants summoned to court
While Trump says the government is targeting dangerous criminals, advocates contend most of those detained are restaurant dishwashers, farmworkers, landscapers, factory employees and other blue-collar workers with no criminal record.
As the crackdown intensifies, ICE agents have been contacting immigrants to come to their offices for a “case review,” according to Ala Amoachi, an immigration attorney in East Islip who represents the Trejo Lopez brothers.
She recently had five clients summoned on one day to immigration offices in Manhattan and on Long Island.
“The intention is to detain and deport,” she said.
A volunteer helps a woman from Africa in front of immigration court in Manhattan. Credit: Marcus Santos
Some migrants are deciding not to show up “because they’ve seen others detained, even with no criminal record or with pending relief,” Amoachi said. “They feel caught between risking detention and facing deportation to a country where they are unsafe, or losing any chance to fix their status.”
The new tactics are undermining what immigrants used to consider the haven of immigration court, where they could safely pursue their cases, advocates said.
Some of the migrants are “going to go underground,” Cassar said.
Still, many choose to show up because if they don’t, their case can be terminated, Amoachi said.
“They have this hope that the officer will look at the equities in their case and their circumstances and give them an opportunity” to remain here legally, she said. “For them not to show up is devastating, you know, because to them that means like the end of hope for fixing legally their status to stay here. Nobody really wants to stay here as a fugitive.”
Bart Jones has covered religion, immigration and major breaking news at Newsday since 2000. A former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in Venezuela, he is the author of “HUGO! The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution.”