Since May, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been handcuffing asylum seekers and others in the halls of immigration courthouses and at required check-ins with ICE, resulting in more than 100 arrests in Northern and Central California. Many of those arrested had previously been granted conditional release and allowed to remain out of custody, typically after border agents had determined they were not dangerous and would show up for their hearings.
Lawyers representing immigrants in the two cases argued that both the courthouse arrests and the rearrest of people who had been previously released were unheard of before this year — and called the actions arbitrary and illegal.
“Just imagine if the government changed a [policy] and all of a sudden you could be thrown in jail at any time. Imagine how that would harm you. That’s how it harms our clients,” said Bree Bernwanger, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, who is representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging rearrests.
She said the courthouse arrests — challenged in the other case, which was argued by attorneys with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area — are also causing irreparable harm to people trying to defend themselves in immigration court.
If an immigrant fails to appear for a hearing, they automatically lose their case and are ordered deported in absentia.
The plaintiffs have asked Pitts, who was appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden, to halt the arrests while the cases are decided.
Lawyers for the government argued that ICE has the authority to make arrests where and how the agency deems fit. They say new policies for ICE and the immigration courts that now deem arrests in or near courthouses acceptable simply reflect the will of voters who elected President Donald Trump on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration.
In late May, ICE officials acknowledged the courthouse operations in a statement that read, in part: “Secretary Noem is reversing Biden’s catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets. This Administration is once again implementing the rule of law.”
