Bay Area Immigrant Advocates Sue the Trump Administration to End Courthouse Arrests

Bay Area immigrant rights advocates have filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration to end its controversial immigration courthouse arrests and stop federal officers from detaining people for days in a San Francisco holding facility not meant for overnight use.

Since late May, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been arresting asylum seekers and others in the halls of immigration courts in San Francisco, Concord and Sacramento. Lawyers say at least 85 people have been detained.

“These arrests are often traumatic and needlessly violent,” the complaint said. “Immigrants leaving court are shackled and thrown to the floor while their families watch helplessly.”

The unprecedented tactic has triggered heated protests, with some activists attempting to block arrests and getting into clashes with ICE officers.

The class action lawsuit, filed late Thursday, challenges ICE and the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which runs the courts, for abruptly reversing longstanding policies that had protected immigration hearings to ensure people fighting to stay in the U.S. got their day in court.

“It’s really turned our immigration courts into a trap,” said Nisha Kashyap, an attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the groups suing.

“If they miss court, they automatically receive an in absentia order ordering their deportation,” she said. “On the other hand, folks who do come to court are now at risk of being arrested.”

Kashyap said the arrests are taking place in other cities, including New York, “but San Francisco, which has one of the busiest immigration courts in the country, is one of the places where the pattern has been most pronounced.”

The lawsuit also calls out ICE for holding detained immigrants for days at a time in a short-term processing center at ICE’s field office at 630 Sansome St. — a federal government office building in San Francisco. In January, ICE rescinded a policy that said people must not be kept in such temporary “hold rooms” for longer than 12 hours.

Now, people arrested at immigration court, at ICE check-in appointments and elsewhere are locked up overnight — some as long as six days — without bedding, hygiene products or access to prescribed medication, according to the lawsuit.

“There’s a single, shared toilet in the room that everyone has to use in front of each other,” Kashyap said. “The rooms are often very cold and so people who are kept there overnight are forced to try and sleep in a freezing cold metal box with no bed, where the lights are on all the time. The conditions are really punitive and punishing in a way that our lawsuit contends is unconstitutional.”

Officials with ICE and the Executive Office of Immigration Review said their agencies do not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two asylum seekers arrested at immigration court, a third asylum seeker who narrowly avoided arrest at court because she was with her 9-month-old baby, and a man who’s lived in the U.S. for three decades and was arrested at a scheduled interview with an asylum officer — as well as others who’ve faced similar treatment.

The suit alleges that the courthouse arrests and the extended use of the short-term holding cells are a consequence of the Trump administration’s sweeping mass deportation campaign and its stated goal of arresting at least 3,000 immigrants a day.