The Trump administration has launched an operation to terminate the immigration court cases of certain migrants, in order to arrest them and place them in a fast-tracked deportation process instead, government officials and attorneys told CBS News.
Lawyers and advocates this week reported arrests of migrants outside of immigration courthouses across the U.S., saying teams of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had detained individuals whose cases in front of immigration judges had just been terminated at the request of the government.
Two Department of Homeland Security officials told CBS News that ICE is conducting an operation to expedite the deportation of migrants with court hearings scheduled in the near future. It’s the latest step taken by the Trump administration to dramatically ramp up immigration arrests across the country and fulfill what the president has promised will be the largest deportation campaign in American history.
The operation involves ICE prosecutors asking immigration judges to terminate the court cases of certain migrants, so agents at the agency can instead arrest those individuals and place them in a more rapid deportation process known as “expedited removal,” the officials said.
Unlike immigration court proceedings, which can take years to complete due to a massive backlog of 4 million pending cases, the expedited removal process allows officials to more quickly deport migrants, if their cases satisfy certain conditions.
Migrants who lack proper documents and can’t prove they have been in the U.S. for more than two years are eligible to be deported under expedited removal, without a court hearing.
Historically, officials were only allowed to use expedited removal on unauthorized immigrants detained within 100 miles of an international border and who had been in the U.S. for less than two weeks. But the Trump administration vastly expanded its scope soon after taking office.
Expedited removal can also be applied to unauthorized migrants who entered the U.S. with the government’s permission at legal entry points, and there’s no two-year entry limit for those cases. That would place the nearly 1 million migrants who entered the U.S. under a Biden administration program known as CBP One at risk of being targeted by the new ICE operation.
While those placed in expedited removal can be deported without a hearing in immigration court, they are entitled to an interview with an asylum officer if they say they are afraid of being persecuted in their home country. If they pass those screenings, they get a chance to plead their case in immigration court.
In a statement, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin faulted the Biden administration for releasing many migrants with notices to appear in immigration court, instead of trying to deport them quickly through expedited removal.
“ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been,” McLaughlin said.
Leandro Ferrer, an immigration lawyer based in Phoenix, Arizona, said his clients, two Cuban migrants, appear to have been swept up in the ICE operation when they showed up to their immigration court hearing on Tuesday.
“There was a sense of relief when the government prosecutors moved to dismiss the removal proceedings,” Ferrer recounted. “This has always been, historically, a result that is highly sought after and either we try to win a case on the merits of an application or we try to dismiss the removal proceedings.”
But to his shock and dismay, Ferrer said ICE agents arrested his clients immediately after they left the courtroom.
“They did not provide identification, they did not have an arrest warrant, they did not make any attempt to establish whether or not they had committed a crime,” Ferrer added. “They just went in and took them.”
Ferrer said his Cuban clients entered the U.S. in 2022, after showing up to a legal entry point along the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to request asylum.
Even amid ICE’s efforts to arrest some migrants after they show up to court, immigration lawyers said they are still strongly advising their clients against missing their hearings, as failure to do so could be grounds for judges to issue a deportation order.
The ICE arrests at immigration courts were reported across the country in several cities with large immigrant populations, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas and Miami.
“I began getting calls from family members of those getting arrested asking for help,” said Antonio Ramos, a Miami-based immigration lawyer, adding that the phone calls began on Monday.
Ramos said he’s trying to make preparations for his clients who have upcoming court hearings.
“They’re going to come to my office first, we are going to take them to court and we are not going to leave them alone for one second in the building,” he said.
“People need to consult with an attorney before going to court, somebody that can take a look at the case, evaluate options and not a notary,” Ramos added.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration reporter at CBS News. Based in Washington, he covers immigration policy and politics.
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