When an attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security moved to dismiss the asylum case of a Guatemalan woman in San Francisco this morning, her husband and 8-month-old daughter were outside the courtroom doors.
The baby had been fussing too much inside.
These motions to dismiss, if granted, nullify an asylum-seeker’s protections from deportation. This is a tactic that the Trump administration has been using to boost Immigration and Custom Enforcement arrests and, lawyers believe, fast-track immigrants out of the country through a process called expedited removal.
Judges in San Francisco rarely grant these motions day-of, but ICE officers almost always arrest asylum-seekers anyway, once they step outside the courtroom and into the hallway.
The judge on Thursday, Joseph Park, who appeared by video in the courtroom at 630 Sansome St., gave the woman 10 days to respond to the motion in writing. He set her next hearing date.
“Any questions?” he asked.
No, the woman answered, apparently unaware of the change in her case. The hearing was over.
At this, two attorneys in court as part of the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Attorney of the Day Program, which provides free legal advice to immigrants at their court hearings, pulled the woman aside before she could leave the courtroom.
They warned her that ICE would probably arrest her the second she stepped out of the courtroom.
The woman, like the overwhelming majority of asylum-seekers who appear for these early hearings, did not have a lawyer of her own.
As has become routine in San Francisco, the attorneys huddled in the back of the courtroom with the woman. One of the attorneys asked some volunteers — court observers who attend immigration court and take notes on what happens — to find the woman’s husband and her baby.
Outside, five ICE officers, four men and a woman, waited.
At the front of the courtroom, the judge started hearing a different woman’s case.
A few minutes later, the court observers came back with the Guatemalan woman’s husband and baby. As it dawned on the woman that she could be detained, she started to cry. She rocked her daughter and fed her from a bottle.
The baby was eventually soothed. Her parents nervously spoke to the attorneys as the baby, now restless, began to crawl along the floor of the courtroom.
One of the attorneys helping the woman decided to try to reason with ICE. She left the family of three inside the courtroom, exited into the hallway and approached the female ICE officer.
The Guatemalan woman had a baby that she was still breastfeeding, the lawyer told the officer. Is there an alternative to arrest and detention that we can come up with? she asked.
The ICE officer looked at the Mission Local reporter and at volunteer court observers also standing in the hallway, and asked to speak with the lawyer privately, around the corner in the elevator bank.
The two began to walk down the hallway towards the elevator. The remaining ICE officers, all men, told Mission Local not to follow. Go back inside the courtroom, they said. Don’t “loiter” in the hallway.
In the past, Mission Local had only witnessed ICE refrain from arresting someone whose case was moved to dismiss once before, on Aug. 28.
That day, the person who avoided arrest was a visibly pregnant woman. It wasn’t clear if it was the the pregnancy that convinced ICE not to take her — a lawyer said that the pregnant woman also had valid Temporary Protected Status.
On Aug. 29, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s expanded use of expedited removal, a tactic to fast-track deportations.
Still, the motions to dismiss asylum cases have continued in San Francisco. As have the arrests.
It’s not yet clear what the administration plans to do with the asylum seekers it has arrested in the days since the court ruling.
Mission Local is aware of asylum-seekers in recent months who, terrified of detention, have given up their right to asylum, and asked to return to the country they came from before there’s even a chance to put them in expedited removal.
When the attorney eventually arrived back in the courtroom, she spoke quietly with the woman and her husband. Then, the two attorneys and the family of three stood up and left the courtroom. When the doors opened, the ICE officers were nowhere to be seen.
The attorneys and the family of three walked to the elevators and went down to the first floor of the building, where many immigrants attend regular check-ins with ICE. (In addition to hosting immigration court, 630 Sansome St. also houses an ICE field office.)
The family and one of the attorneys spent about an hour and a half on the first floor, apparently trying to find an alternative plan to detention, before walking out of the building doors at just after 1 p.m., with the baby wrapped in a pink blanket.
The judge on Thursday, Joseph Park, who appeared by video
– If the Judge is on video EVERYONE show be attending via video
EVERY judge should immediately mandate ALL cases to be on VIDEO only
Outside, five ICE officers — four men and a woman — waited.
– So they could kidnap harass intimate bully scare, yet another person who is trying to do the right thing, who is trying to follow all the steps. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH THIS MUST STOP, THIS MUST END
So, still no coverage on the Mayor, huh?
Whether it’s SFPD, or even if it was military, not mentioning that the Mayor is complicit with the arrest going on is sloppy journalism.
Why didnt they grab the baby, throw her on the floor, handcuff her, kidnap her and send her to Sudan? Or Gaza?
Why haven’t you experienced what you advocate for?
I still find it baffling that a JUDGE can tell them that they can go home and a bounty hunter that has been giving a 50k signing fee and a federal ID can then drag them off in an unmarked car…. and that’s legal?
“The family and one of the attorneys spent about an hour and a half on the first floor, apparently trying to find an alternative plan to detention, before walking out of the building doors at just after 1 p.m., with the baby wrapped in a pink blanket.”
???
So what happened? Seems like (maybe??) a happy ending. I guess. What was the resolution? Did the attorney have further information?