A San Diego law firm filed a class action lawsuit late last week asking a federal judge to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from arresting asylum seekers at immigration court.
“We’re asking the judge to declare that the agency’s behavior is unlawful,” said Kimberly Hutchison, a civil rights lawyer with locally based Singleton Schreiber.
The firm filed the suit on behalf of two asylum seekers who were arrested at San Diego’s immigration court earlier this year. The class action argues that courthouse arrests violate the constitutional rights of asylum seekers and delegitimize the integrity of the legal process.
“You can’t just take away someone’s liberty without giving the process to determine whether that is an appropriate decision,” Hutchison said. “They are doing it across the board and that’s a violation of due process.”
The class, as defined in the lawsuit, is limited to people actively seeking asylum who do not have a criminal record and have already been determined not to be a flight or public safety risk.
Neither of the two asylum seekers identified in the lawsuit have a criminal record. They also regularly attended all their immigration court hearings, Hutchison said.
“These are the quintessential people that can be trusted to remain out in the community,” she added.
Aside from claiming to erode trust in the immigration court system, lawyers argue courthouse arrests are traumatizing to their clients by subjecting them to unnecessary detention.
ICE did not respond to questions from KPBS about the lawsuit.
An abrupt change in policy
During the Biden administration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) explicitly prohibited courthouse arrests.
According to a 2021 memo, the agency explained its rationale against courthouse arrests, “so as to not unnecessarily impinge upon the core principle of preserving access to justice.” The memo explicitly defined a “courthouse” as any municipal, county, state, federal, tribal, or immigration court.
But in January, Trump administration officials suspended the 2021 memorandum and a separate Biden-era policy against arresting individuals in sensitive areas like schools, hospitals and courthouses.
In San Diego, ICE agents began arresting people in immigration court on May 22.
Courthouse arrests are part of a larger legal strategy meant to speed up Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
The strategy involves government lawyers asking immigration judges to dismiss immigration cases of people who have been in the country less than two years. Once those cases are dismissed, ICE agents can rearrest those individuals and place them in a fast-track deportation process called expedited removal.
It’s unclear how many people have been arrested in San Diego’s courthouse, but immigration lawyers and activists say federal agents arrest about 10 people each day.
