Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested five people Thursday morning in San Francisco immigration court, even after a federal judge last week blocked the administration’s use of a key policy related to these arrests.
Thursday’s arrests were the first in immigration court in San Francisco since Judge Jia M. Cobb, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on Aug. 29 disallowed the Trump administration’s use of “expedited removal.”
That process fast-tracks would-be immigrants out of the country without appearing before an immigration judge.
This morning, an attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security moved to dismiss the cases of all five asylum-seekers in court at 630 Sansome St. Mission Local has heard DHS lawyers in the courtroom, on multiple occasions, say that they move to dismiss asylum cases with the express goal of putting immigrants into expedited removal.
Judge Patrick O’Brien did not immediately grant the government’s motion. Instead, he gave all five asylum-seekers four weeks to respond in writing and used coded language to warn them they might be detained: “This has worked out differently for everyone, so I can’t really tell you how this is going to go,” he said.
Still, the asylum-seekers did not seem prepared for what awaited them outside the courtroom doors.
As they have often done in recent months, ICE officers stood there, ready to make arrests.
One of the asylum-seekers tried to back up toward the courtroom door, saying in Spanish he wanted to return and ask the judge a question. The ICE officers did not let him. Instead, two officers blocked him and took him down a hallway and through an unmarked door.
A woman who was arrested asked to go to the bathroom, which is on the same floor of the courtroom. The ICE officers said she could go “upstairs” and took her through the same unmarked door.
People who are arrested following an appearence in court are typically held on the sixth floor of the building, where there is an ICE field office, until they can be transferred to a longer-term detention facility.
The arrests in immigration court have been underway since the end of May. They began after President Donald Trump’s DHS issued a notice in January that it was expanding expedited removal to anyone, anywhere in the country, who had arrived within the past two years.
Up until then, expedited removal was only to be used for people who had entered the country within 14 days and remained within 100 miles of the border.
One way of identifying people to put in expedited removal is to focus on asylum-seekers in immigration court. If a judge grants the DHS attorney’s motion to dismiss, that person no longer has an active asylum case — and the protections from deportations that come with it.
Officers with ICE, which is part of the DHS, can then arrest the asylum-seekers on the spot and place them into expedited removal.
As O’Brien did on Thursday, judges in San Francisco typically do not immediately grant these motions, despite pressure from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the country’s immigration courts, to do so.
But the judges’ offers of more time that keep the case in play are simply ignored. As also happened on Thursday, ICE officers swoop in and arrest people outside of the courtroom anyway.
‘We intend to pursue expedited removal proceedings’
In recent weeks, O’Brien has asked DHS attorneys during the hearings where the people arrested in court are headed. It appears he does this so he can better indicate to the asylum-seekers what might happen to them.
On July 25, the attorney told O’Brien: “We intend to pursue expedited removal proceedings,” after moving to dismiss the asylum cases of two women.
On July 31, O’Brien asked the Homeland Security attorney what her plans were for the three asylum-seekers whose cases she had just moved to dismiss.
“Is it that they are going to expedited removal?” O’Brien asked.
“Yes,” the DHS attorney responded.
Judge blocks Trump’s expansion of expedited removal
On Friday, the Trump administration’s tactics were challenged when Judge Cobb blocked the its expansion of expedited removal.
In her opinion, Cobb specifically mentioned the arrests at immigration court: “When people have appeared in immigration courts … for instance, the Government has moved to dismiss those proceedings, promptly arrested individuals inside of those courts, and then shuttled them into much faster-moving — and much less procedurally robust — expedited removal proceedings.”
She added that the plaintiffs in the case, an immigrant rights group called Make the Road, “has made a strong showing that the Government’s expansion of expedited removal violates the due process rights of those it affects” by fast-tracking them out of the country without allowing them to see an immigration judge.
Immigration advocates were unaware of any arrests since that Friday decision — until today.
When asked whether these arrests violate Cobb’s decision on expedited removal, Milli Atkinson, an immigration specialist with the Bar Association of San Francisco, said they do not.
For someone to be placed in expedited removal, a judge would have had to dismiss their case, which did not happen for any of these asylum-seekers, Atkinson said.
If a judge eventually does grant DHS’s motion to dismiss Thursday’s cases, then those people could be placed in expedited removal. That would then be in violation of Cobb’s decision, Atkinson continued.
For some asylum seekers out of San Francisco, that is a possibility. Some who are arrested are transferred to longer-term detention facilities, where their cases are heard by more-conservative judges who are more willing to grant that motion to dismiss, allowing DHS to put the asylum-seeker in expedited removal.
But the move in which judges offer immigrants time to respond and should keep them in immigration court, perplexed Atkinson. It is unclear to her why ICE is arresting and detaining people who cannot be placed into expedited removal and deported.
“It seems a waste of time and resources to pay for people to be detained who cannot physically be removed from the United States,” Atkinson said.
A return to court
To DHS, this may not look like wasted time if enough detained asylum-seekers simply give up and ask to leave.
Some asylum-seekers, frightened by the arrest and possibility of detention, give up their rights to asylum and ask to leave the country before a judge can even rule on the motion to dismiss.
Others, particularly in recent weeks, get released from detention on habeas corpus petitions, which argue that DHS violated their due process rights by arresting and detaining them. In these cases, judges grant temporary restraining orders to keep ICE from arresting asylum-seekers again.
Today, a 25-year-old woman from Colombia who was arrested on Aug. 7 following her court hearing, appeared in O’Brien’s court today for her next, routine hearing.
The DHS attorney seemed shocked to see the woman back: “This is a new one for me,” she said, and asked to hear the case later in the morning, once she had time to prepare.
When the woman was eventually called up for her hearing, she appeared so nervous that O’Brien asked, “Are you okay?” When she said yes, he responded, “Take a deep breath.”
When O’Brien asked the DHS attorney what she would like to do about her motion, the DHS attorney withdrew the motion to dismiss the woman’s case.
The woman’s hearing was otherwise uneventful, and she left with notice for her final hearing, when O’Brien will decide whether or not to grant her asylum.
So, still no coverage on how the Mayor is complicit with ICE, allowing SFPD to protect them?
Would you rather have SFPD protecting ICE, or the US military patrolling our streets to protect ICE, as happened in LA when the local police department was slow in responding to threats at the federal building?
I would rather have SFPD do it, personally. It is their job.
Former President Barack Obama formally removed 3 million noncitizens from the U.S. over two terms – more than any other president in American history, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.
In comparison, President George Bush removed about 870,000 people; Bill Clinton, about 2 million; and Donald Trump about 1.2 million people during his first term.
Stop your virtue signaling! and do something about the horrible conditions in your own city. Do something to help the poor children that live in all this crime and filth. Help the starving people with no coats or shoes dying on your sidewalks.
What kind of terrible human beings try to help everyone else, before their fellow citizens and legal residents? It’s willful ignorance to be obsessed with nothing but causing constant chaos and division. It’s Shameful.
Waffen SS at work..Wake up USA.
I haven’t figured out yet if the Trump regime is just fascist or outright Nazi.
The fear is the point.
Remember the immigration judges are employees of the Justice Department, not members of the judicial branch of government. The government lawyers are making requests to members of the same executive department. All of the above report in to Pam Bondi, ultimately. No judicial independence.