Trump administration sued over ICE arrests at immigration courthouses

Civil rights groups sued the Trump administration on Wednesday in a bid to stop the government’s policy of allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to arrest undocumented migrants who show up for immigration hearings at courthouses.

Civil rights groups sued the Trump administration on Wednesday in a bid to stop the government’s policy of allowing ICE officers to arrest undocumented immigrants who show up for immigration hearings at courthouses. The class-action lawsuit filed at a federal court in Washington, DC, on behalf of a dozen immigrants and several civil rights groups opens a new front in a sprawling legal effort by advocates to halt recent controversial moves by the administration aimed at increasing deportations in the US. Until recently, the Department of Homeland Security operated under guidelines that limited immigration enforcement at courthouses. After the Trump administration rescinded those guidelines shortly into the president’s second term, masked law enforcement officers began showing up at courthouses across the country to arrest migrants. The lawsuit details the administration’s new strategy: government attorneys ask an immigration judge to dismiss civil proceedings against an immigrant “based on changed circumstances,” and, upon dismissal, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents – who are sometimes already present in or near the courtroom – arrest the individual. The person is then transferred into expedited removal proceedings, which gives them little legal recourse and typically requires their detention. In some cases, immigrants are detained immediately after the hearing or upon exiting the courthouse. And in many cases, attorneys say immigrants are detained in facilities far from the city where their court hearing took place. “The consequences of (the administration’s) actions are severe. Noncitizens, including most of the individual plaintiffs here, have been abruptly ripped from their families, lives, homes, and jobs for appearing in immigration court, a step required to enable them to proceed with their applications for permission to remain in this country,” lawyers for the civil rights groups and immigrants wrote in court papers.