When ICE Is Waiting at Immigration Court, What Can Advocates Do?

President Donald Trump’s administration has directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase immigration arrests and raids to meet a quota of 3,000 arrests per day — with a stated special focus on Democratic-led cities like Los Angeles.

And according to NPR and local attorneys, one strategy ICE agents have used to meet those demands is to arrest people — or fast-track their removal — at their immigration court hearings.

The Bay Area is no exception. In San Francisco, at least six people have been arrested and detained at the city’s immigration court since June — prompting protests by activists that shut down the building for a day.

“I’ve been [in] immigration law for over 10 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jordan Weiner, the legal director of the Removal Defense Program at La Raza Centro Legal in San Francisco.

Risk levels for deportation are always changing, Weiner said. But currently, the most vulnerable immigrant groups she’s seeing are people who have received deportation orders, those who’ve been deported then returned and people who’ve been in the U.S. for less than two years.

According to the Deportation Data Project, a database led by a UC Berkeley law professor, ICE has arrested over 5,800 immigrants statewide since the inauguration — a 123% increase from 2024 — in locations ranging from private homes and bus stops to job sites and store parking lots.

The crackdowns have especially sparked a wave of fear and anger across California, the state with the largest share of immigrants in the country. According to a Public Policy Institute of California report, more than a quarter of California’s population is foreign-born, and nearly half of California’s children have at least one immigrant parent.

‘An impossible decision’

Showing up for immigration court is a routine reality for many, including those who entered the United States to apply for asylum for reasons including fear of persecution in their home country. Immigration court proceedings are already a stressful process that can take years, especially in a place like San Francisco, where the court faces a backlog of over 123,000 pending cases.

But in recent weeks, ICE appears to be collaborating with Department of Homeland Security lawyers to get judges to dismiss asylum cases, Weiner said. If the applicant has been in the United States for less than two years, having their case dismissed this way makes them immediately subject to expedited removal — deportation without the right to see a judge.

Homeland Security lawyers will “ask the immigration judge to dismiss their case in the courtroom,” Weiner said. “And if the judge agrees, the person will walk out in the hallway and ICE is waiting there for them to arrest them.”

In some cases, judges have given applicants at least 10 days to respond to ICE’s request to dismiss. However, the impact is already apparent, Weiner said. Her office is also receiving fewer calls from prospective asylum applicants.

“If people have to decide between fighting their asylum case and potentially getting deported to a country where they fear persecution, or just missing court and living in the shadows — that’s an impossible decision,” she said.

“Immigration court is just over,” Weiner said. “I don’t know how the institution can recover from this.”

Amid fear, volunteers show up

Milli Atkinson, the director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program with the Bar Association of San Francisco, said the organization has observers in the courtroom “every day.”

Nonetheless, Atkinson said they have also anecdotally observed “a marked increase in the number of individuals not appearing for their hearings at the hearings we are able to cover.”

In these cases, time is of the essence. Since immigration courts are generally open to the public, an extra pair of eyes from a volunteer can help lawyers form a quick response plan, said Autumn Gonzalez, a Sacramento-based lawyer who volunteers with NorCal Resist, a nonprofit that organizes bail funds, food distribution and asylum workshops.

“Those instances where people are going in for their usual check-in, and not being released — having someone there accompanying you means that we can immediately request legal assistance,” Gonzalez said. “We can make sure your family knows what happened to you … and hopefully prevent expedited deportations.”

Alison Maciejewski Cortez is one of those volunteers. After 13 years outside the United States, she moved to Sacramento last September and almost immediately began volunteering for NorCal Resist.

“Coming back this time, I knew the political climate was going to be scary for my community,” said Maciejewski Cortez, who has experience working with Latin American, immigrant and refugee organizations. “I wanted to make sure that I had a way to give back.”

As an American citizen who is fluent in several languages, including English, Spanish and Thai, Maciejewski Cortez particularly works with people going through the asylum-seeking process. Primed by NorCal Resist on what the organization calls “accompaniment training,” Maciejewski Cortez helps people with the administrative side of court hearings, including translating, going through paperwork and taking notes.

“I just want to make sure that they have the best chance at being heard,” Maciejewski Cortez said. “I have perfect English and I still find some of these forms and terminology to be confusing and complicated.”

In addition to supporting court logistics, accompaniment volunteers like Maciejewski Cortez also help provide a sense of protection and safety for the asylum seeker.

“I’ve been in a lot of immigration offices around the world, and it’s really scary to go alone,” she said. “I can’t imagine how somebody, who has recently arrived and has lived through a traumatic life experience, [is] trying to navigate this system,” she said.

‘I don’t know what would have happened to him’

The idea of accompaniment work grew from faith communities in the 1980s, Gonzalez said. Volunteers would help new immigrants and refugees find apartments and enroll their kids into schools — supporting every step of settling into a new country.

Now, accompaniment to immigration court — and to check-ins with ICE — has become the primary need, Gonzalez said. And in recent months, volunteers have found themselves with an increasingly important extra role: keeping watch on applicants in the event that ICE detains a person.

At that point, the volunteer then immediately alerts the person’s legal support team or a local Rapid Response Network, a separate group of dedicated volunteers and attorneys who respond to reports of possible ICE activity around the clock.

“Hopefully, the fact that we have folks there with their eyes on what’s going on will provide deterrence to ICE from taking these actions,” Gonzalez said.

This is something Maciejewski Cortez witnessed. In mid-June, while accompanying an applicant to immigration court in Sacramento, she saw ICE agents walking down the hall with handcuffs “hanging off their side.” After turning to follow them, she watched them apprehend a man whose case had been dismissed.

Maciejewski Cortez immediately tracked down the man’s details and alerted the local Rapid Response network. A pro bono lawyer with NorCal Resist promptly arrived at the courthouse and met with the detainee “and they both were out of the courthouse in two hours,” she said.

“If I hadn’t seen who it was or caught the name of the man in the court, I don’t know what would have happened to him,” she said. “I don’t know how long he would have been in their custody.”

Access and alternatives

Some advocates are now reporting they’re having trouble even accessing courtrooms to accompany immigrants.

Immigration court hearings are “generally open to the public but can be closed or held with limited attendance at any time,” according to a representative of the federal Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. Scenarios where proceedings can be closed include cases involving protective orders or domestic abuse.

Gonzalez said that the court in Sacramento has had “inconsistent rules regarding our access.” Maciejewski Cortez said she’d experienced being denied access to the Sacramento immigration courtroom in late June during the start of a hearing after court staff told her the courtroom would be full. Despite this, she said she saw empty seats still available.

“This arbitrary restriction makes it difficult to catch important information announced by the judge within the early minutes of proceedings, such as the name of the DHS attorney or the respondents to be addressed first,” Maciejewski Cortez said.

Amid this uncertainty and the anxiety caused by in-person appearances, lawyers are scrambling to find other ways to support their clients and remind them of their civil rights.

La Raza Centro Legal’s Weiner said her “first line of defense” is to file motions for all of her cases to be heard online, rather than at the courthouse.

Moving a case online — using the Zoom-like application WebEx — is actually something anyone with an immigration court hearing can do, Weiner said, by filing a “Motion to Change Hearing Format” and mailing it to their court. Applicants can work with a nonprofit to help them fill out this legal document. (KQED has a guide to seeking free legal aid in the Bay Area.)

Just filing the motion isn’t enough to get a person’s hearing moved online, Weiner said— an applicant still needs to wait for the judge’s decision to grant it or not. While “you don’t need a special reason to ask for your hearing to be online,” Weiner recommended that applicants still provide one — which could include a lack of child care or transportation — “because it gives the judge more of a reason to say yes.”

If an applicant is detained at court and ICE immediately begins the expedited removal process, the applicant should ask the immigration officer for a “credible fear interview” — loudly and clearly, since the officer may not ask if they want one, Weiner said.

The applicant will have to prove they are afraid to return to their country for safety reasons, either due to persecution or torture.

“If they can pass that interview, then they may be able to see a judge again,” Weiner said. “They might be detained during that process, but at least they just won’t be quickly deported.”

‘Hope for the best and prepare for the worst’

Weiner said that while she didn’t want to “be part of scaring people from going to court,” immigrants should nonetheless be as prepared as possible before heading to any court appearance — not just for their individual asylum case, but also for the very real risk of detention.

This includes having a plan for any children they may have, key phone numbers for lawyers and family on hand or memorized, and leaving copies of all of their documents with their lawyer. (KQED has a thorough guide on how to create a family preparedness plan in the event that a parent is deported.)

It’s a scenario Maciejewski Cortez said terrifies the people she works with. They often ask her, “‘Can ICE do this? I read in the news that this happened. Is that allowed? Can that happen to me?’” she said.

“I feel awful because I’d love to tell them, ‘No, that’s not going to happen to you. You have a current case status. You’ve already submitted your application for asylum. You’re in good standing. You have no criminal history,’” she said. “None of these things matter.”

She continued: “And so I have to tell them, ‘Honestly, anything can happen. But we will be there in case it does.’ We’re going to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”