‘Mayhem’ as ICE officials arrest multiple people at immigration court in Phoenix

Federal agents arrested multiple people at the immigration court in Phoenix on Tuesday, creating a situation one attorney described as “mayhem” as people believing their cases had just been dismissed were taken into custody outside.

Issac Ortega, a Phoenix-based immigration attorney, said several agents arrested his client at the court after his hearing on Tuesday morning. The officials wore masks and refused to identify which agency they worked for —insisting only they were federal officers. 

Ortega said the unidentified agents took his client into custody and sent him to a processing center in Phoenix. It was unclear Tuesday night whether his client will be taken to an immigration detention facility in Eloy or Florence, or sent to one in another state.

Video from outside the court shows several agents milling around a few unmarked vehicles, many with their faces covered.

“My client has no criminal history; he entered the U.S. through the CBP program,” Ortega said. 

He
added his client was preparing for a credible fear interview, the first
hurdle as part of the asylum process when federal agents grabbed him
from the court. Under federal law, immigrants have a year to file and
pursue an asylum claim after entering the U.S.

ICE officials refused to comment on the arrests Tuesday evening.

‘Deportations at lightning speed’

There were reports of agents detaining people after their hearings at other courts across the country on Tuesday. In Los Angeles, ICE agents sat in a courtroom to notify other agents in the hallway when a case was dismissed, an immigration attorney said. The move is likely intended to “move towards deportations at lightning speed,” she said.

Since January, the Trump administration has sought to make immigration arrests a priority, enlisting not only special agents with Homeland Security Investigations, a part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but also agents with the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the ATF and the FBI.

In recent weeks, FBI agents have led “welfare checks” on families who took in minors unaccompanied by parents or guardians at the border, and DEA and U.S. Marshals made arrests at a Home Depot in Tucson in late January. 

During a four-day operation in Washington D.C. this month, more than a half-dozen agencies targeted dozens of business for inspection and made 189 arrests, ICE said. 

Officials have repeatedly argued this shift has not put hundreds of other federal cases investigated by these agencies at risk.

Ortega said his client is a Venezuelan man in his 20s who came to the U.S. last fall through CBP One — an application which allowed immigrants to request an appointment at border crossings and go through a background and security check before starting the first steps to seek asylum. The program was managed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which limited appointments to just eight border crossings — including Nogales, the only Arizona-Mexico border crossing accepting appointments — and allowed around 1,250 people per day across the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

CBP later revamped the program, calling it a “deportation tool” dubbed CBP Home. The agency also began offering $1,000 for people to agree to return home, a plan advocates called a trap because leaving under the program means a 5-or10-year bar on returning.

Biden administration officials said the application was part of an effort to “incentivize noncitizens to use lawful, safe, humane, and orderly pathways and processes.”

“DHS encourages migrants to use lawful processes, rather than taking the dangerous journey to cross unlawfully between the ports of entry, which also carries significant consequences under the United States immigration laws,” Biden administration officials said in December, noting the appointments helped CBP process migrants in a “more efficient and orderly manner while cutting out unscrupulous smugglers who endanger and profit from vulnerable migrants.

From January 2023 through December 2024, more than 936,500 people — including Venezuelan, Cuban, and Mexican migrants — scheduled appointments through CBP One rather than risking their lives in the hands of smugglers, CBP said.

However, the Trump administration slammed the door on CBP appointments, cancelling every appointment on January 20. Some migrants were already inside the Nogales border crossing when their appointments were cancelled, and federal officials decided to hold them and send them to a detention center in Eloy, Ariz.

‘Trying to do the right thing’

“For my client, it’s been frustrating, this type of ping-pong from one part to another,” Ortega said of the man taken into custody Tuesday. He said his client was issued a court date called a “notice to appear” after he was released by CBP under CBP One and stayed under parole. However, that was undone by Trump administration officials who attacked the parole program on April 8.

Lindsay Toczylowski, the president and co-founder of Immigration Defenders said in Los Angeles, ICE agents inside immigration courtrooms began detaining people after government attorneys moved to dismiss their cases.

“There were two ICE officers inside the courtrooms who would notify the officers sitting in the hallway when a case was dismissed,” she wrote on social media. “It appears the (government attorneys) were moving to dismiss cases where people have been in U.S. less than 2 years. By arresting them post-dismissal they will now try to put them in expedited removal proceedings and move towards deportations at lightning speed.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, said there were similar reports in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Seattle.

Karen Tumlin, director of the Justice Action Center, criticized the Trump administration’s move at the time, writing the revocations will cause “needless chaos and heartbreak for families and communities across the country.”

“The administration’s targeting of this successful and popular process — one of the last remaining safe and lawful pathways — is reckless, cruel and counterproductive,” Tumlin said in a statement. “The administration is breaking a commitment the federal government made to the hundreds of thousands of American sponsors and beneficiaries who did everything the government asked of them to participate.”

Following that move, Ortega said his client received another notice to appear. 

“Tuesday was his first court date, and he was trying to do the right thing,” Ortega said. During the hearing, the attorney with ICE agreed to close the case. After the hearing, federal agents detained his client. 

Ortega said this maneuver was likely an attempt to ensure his client’s hearings were gone, making it easier for Trump administration officials to detain him and place him in an expedited process for removal. 

“They always want people to enter the right way, to follow the process, but how are people supposed to do that when the rules are getting changed?” he said. 

The Trump administration has made Venezuelan immigrants a prime target. 

Earlier this year, the White House stripped Temporary Protected Status for around 350,000 Venezuelan migrants, undermining President Joe Biden’s 18-month extension. While immigration rights organizations garnered a temporary reprieve from a federal judge, the Supreme Court disagreed and allowed the program to end in a Monday decision, Courthouse News reported. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Venezuelan immigrants “dirtbags” and insinuated with no public proof that they were members of the street gang Tren de Agua. The administration has also sought to deport 176 Venezuelan men to a brutal prison in El Salvador, arguing they can be removed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. 

Ortega said his client was not protected under TPS because he entered through CBP One.  

Ortega said he didn’t see how many people were arrested Tuesday morning because he was focused on his client, but another attorney told Ortega the arrests were “mayhem” just outside the court. She later told a fellow attorney she was “shaken to her core” by the arrests. Citing concerns about her clients, the attorney describing the scene declined to go on the record with the Sentinel.

For years, ICE officials were deterred from making arrests and conducting interviews or searches at “sensitive” locations, including schools, churches, and courthouses without an imminent need or clearances from supervisors.  

However, Trump administration officials revoked the Obama-era guidance, and said ICE officials may engage in civil immigration enforcement in or near courthouses “when they have credible information that leads them to believe” their quarry will be present, and where such action is “not precluded” by local laws.  

“Civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses should, to the extent practicable, continue to take place in non-public areas of the courthouse, be conducted in collaboration with court security staff, and use the court building’s non-public entrances and exits,” officials said. “When practicable, ICE officers and agents will conduct civil immigration enforcement actions against targeted aliens discreetly to minimize their impact on court proceedings.”

Despite an order for discretion, ICE officials have made arrests inside courthouses across the nation, including the high-profile arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan. 

In a separate incident last week, ICE officers also arrested the mayor of Newark, New Jersey and charged New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement,” the New Jersey Monitor reported. 

In 2017, the American Immigration Lawyers Association criticized the first attempt to use courthouses for arrests, calling it a “dangerous mistake.”

They noted the move would mean victims or witnesses would be less likely to appear in courts, and cases may collapse because immigrants are unwilling to risk deportations. 

Ortega said the agents refused to identify themselves or their agency, but insisted to him that they were federal agents. 

In recent months, federal agents have routinely appeared to make arrests wearing regular  civilian clothing, including jeans and t-shirts. The only sign they belong to a federal agency comes from velcro patches adhered to armored vests. Both the patches and vests are widely available online.

“It has a chilling effect on people following the rules and showing up,” said Mo Goldman, a Tucson-based immigration attorney and Democratic candidate for Congress. “Similarly, you want to people to file their taxes and now you’re going to have IRS sending data to DHS and that undermines the rule of law in that sense.” 

Goldman said this hasn’t happened in Arizona before and occurred only in a handful of cases during the last Trump administration. 

In April, Goldman launched a campaign against U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani for next year’s election for Arizona’s Congressional District 6. 

“How do you get people to show up and follow the law and due process when law enforcement is potentially waiting for them outside,” said Goldman. “As a lawyer, we have to tell them they need to show up and they have to consider what that means.” 

Unlike other federal judges who are part of an independent judiciary, immigration judges are employees of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency charged with running the nation’s immigration courts. Advocates have long complained that this creates conflicts of interest because the Justice Department is also the agency responsible for prosecuting criminal immigration cases in federal courts.

The first Trump administration attempted to undermine the judge’s union and sought to prohibit immigration judges from speaking to the public, and Trump-era attorneys general repeatedly overruled decisions. This was part of a wider move to undermine immigration judges independence during the Trump administration, which included moves from Justice Department officials requiring judges to follow new quotas, reassigning judges to prioritize asylum cases, and restricting judges’ ability to close cases. 

“It takes away the idea of having an unbiased arbiter, and that comes form the directives from senior personnel if they don’t make certain decisions, they could lose their jobs,” Goldman said. “One of the biggest problems with having EOIR under the umbrella under the DOJ and the attorney general. It allows politics to seep into judicial proceedings.”

Goldman said immigrants heading to court should come with an attorney or trusted friend or family member who has legal status to monitor and document what happens during their cases and after. 

Goldman said immigrants are required to tell authorities they in the country under the Alien Registration Act,  but while this is the first step toward regularizing their status, it also can make them targets for deportation. “But, it’s my responsibility is to tell them to follow the law, and they have to make the decision if they want to. If they don’t show up, they will have a deportation order.”

“They’re damned if they do, they’re damned if they don’t,” Goldman said.