Bay Area Advocates Head to Court to Halt Trump Administration’s Immigration Policies

In a series of recent class action lawsuits, Bay Area civil rights advocates are calling on the federal courts to halt what they call illegal Trump administration policies that are leading to the arrest of asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking and people attending immigration court hearings.

The three lawsuits filed in federal courts in California in recent weeks are part of a larger legal pushback by advocacy groups across the country challenging the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics.

At a time when Homeland Security officials tout arrests of “heinous” criminals they call the “worst of the worst,” the lawsuits put the focus on the ways U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has targeted vulnerable people such as domestic violence survivors and those who’ve fled persecution, said UC Davis Law Professor Kevin Johnson.

“These are serious constitutional and statutory claims … challenging the efforts of the Trump administration to tighten the immigration enforcement machinery around non-citizens,” he said.

Can ICE rearrest immigrants who were already released?

In a case before a federal judge in San José, Bay Area legal groups are seeking to block ICE from rearresting immigrants who had previously been granted conditional release, typically after border agents had determined they were not dangerous and not a flight risk, meaning they were expected to show up for their proceedings in immigration court.

Advocates say ICE has arrested and detained more than 100 immigrants in recent months as they attended mandatory court hearings and ICE supervision check-ins in Northern and Central California, even though they were abiding by the terms of their release and their circumstances had not changed.

Bree Bernwanger, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, one of the groups filing the suit, said until things shifted abruptly in May, such rearrests were unheard of for ICE’s San Francisco field office.

“ICE’s new policy allows them to make arrests and throw people back into detention without any justification,” she said. “[It] has disrupted people’s lives, it’s torn families apart, and it’s fundamentally unfair and unreasoned.”

ICE officials did not respond to KQED’s request for comment, but the agency typically does not comment on pending litigation.

One of those arrested was Gabriela Vargas Plasencia, who was an engineering student in Peru before she fled death threats and came to the U.S. last year seeking asylum, according to her declaration to the court. She said she and her boyfriend were detained at the border, then released with instructions on attending immigration hearings.

They settled in Oakland, submitted their asylum applications and enrolled in English classes. Once she was granted a work permit, Vargas Plasencia said she found two jobs, at Target and FedEx, working 50 hours a week.

But at court on Sep. 4, she said, a government attorney asked the immigration judge to dismiss their cases. When the couple left the courtroom, Vargas Plasencia said agents in plain clothes grabbed them, took them to the basement and shackled them – all with no explanation. Hours later, they were driven to Bakersfield and locked up at the Mesa Verde Immigration Detention Center.

After lawyers intervened, a federal judge ordered Vargas Plasencia’s release. But in the meantime, she said, her car was towed and she was reprimanded for missing work. Her partner is still in custody. And she said she still has flashbacks to what she called “one of the most difficult and painful experiences I have ever endured.”

“Each time I have to check in with ICE, I feel anxiety and panic all over again,” Vargas Plasencia said in her declaration. “I have never committed any crime, in the United States or anywhere else. I only wish to continue my asylum case peacefully and to build a safe, stable life here; and for my partner to be released soon, as well.”

Bernwanger, the ACLU attorney, says rearresting people who are complying with the conditions of their release is an arbitrary exercise of power that violates the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable seizure.

“We should all be concerned,” she said. “Are we comfortable with a system in which people can just be grabbed off of the street and thrown into detention?”

Can ICE arrest immigrants at immigration courthouses?

While the lawsuit involving Vargas Plasencia centers on the question of why ICE can arrest someone, another recent case deals with the question of where those arrests can take place.

That lawsuit, filed last month by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of San Francisco, along with the ACLU and others, takes on Trump administration policies instructing ICE and the immigration courts that arresting people at courthouses, formerly off limits, is now acceptable.

Immigrant advocates say detaining people who are following the rules, and may, like Vargas Plasencia, have pending claims to asylum or other relief, will have a “chilling effect,” keeping them away from hearings and denying them access to justice. The administration has denied there’s any evidence for that.

“Conducting these arrests at courthouses, and conducting arrests of people without a justification when you’ve already released them, both of those policies are unlawful for different reasons,” said Bernwanger. “We are seeing ICE use them in coordination to absolutely terrorize people in our community who are just trying to do what the immigration system asks of them.”

The same judge, P. Casey Pitts, who was appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, will hear both Bay Area cases. Pitts has set hearings in both cases for Dec. 9.

Can ICE arrest survivors of trafficking and domestic violence?

Meanwhile, a class action case filed in federal court in Los Angeles last week blasts ICE for arresting, and even deporting, immigrants applying for legal visas as survivors of human trafficking, domestic violence or other serious crimes.

Karen Hernandez is with the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which is representing the immigrants. She said, under the Violence Against Women Act and other laws, these immigrants have permission to be in the U.S while their visas are pending.

“These are folks who have been granted legal protection by Congress,” she said. “The government is basically violating those legal protections.”

One of the named plaintiffs in the case, identified as Camila B., has lived in Los Angeles for more than two decades. In 2021, she was attacked at a bus stop and beaten unconscious, according to the complaint. She cooperated with police, helping them to arrest her attacker, and applied for a U Visa, which offers legal status to undocumented immigrants who’ve suffered serious crimes and assist law enforcement.

Because of the long backlog for applications, the government granted Camila, 46, temporary protection from deportation to her native Mexico while she awaited her visa. But on July 1, as part of ICE’s immigration sweeps in Los Angeles, officers surrounded her tamale stand and arrested her. She was held in detention until July 30, when a judge ordered her released on bond.

Many of the affected immigrants are in the U.S. illegally. But, beginning with the 1994 passage of the Violence Against Women Act, Congress repeatedly expanded protections for immigrant survivors of crime, encouraging them to seek safety and cooperate with law enforcement. Among the protections are special visas for victims of trafficking and other serious crimes that eventually lead to a green card. Congress also provided work authorization, and for years, immigration authorities had policies not to deport people who were in the process of applying for the visas.

The lawsuit alleges the Trump administration’s reversal flies in the face of a federal law against “arbitrary and capricious” policy changes, and says the detentions violate people’s constitutionally guaranteed due process rights.

ICE and Homeland Security officials did not respond to KQED’s requests for comment about the case, but Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin has told other news outlets that every immigrant deported by ICE “has had due process and has a final order of removal — meaning they have no legal right to be in the country.”

Hernandez, with the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said defending laws like the Violence Against Women Act is very personal to her. She said she was a 3-year-old when her own family moved to the U.S. from Mexico. But her childhood was marked by domestic violence, and it took years for her mother to get free.

“I grew up with a father who was very violent towards my mom,” she said. “And I remember talking to her about this lawsuit as we were working on it. And she just said, ‘If this would have been around when you and I were being harmed by your father, this would’ve protected us.’”

The extent to which the Trump administration is pushing the legal limits on immigration means more lawsuits can be expected, according to Johnson, the UC Davis law professor.

“This administration is just so dogged in its immigration enforcement efforts, we see something new and different almost every day,” he said. “It’s an extraordinary time. The human misery is off the charts.”