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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are beginning a nationwide initiative to arrest illegal immigrants after asylum hearings as they leave courtrooms, multiple sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Fox News.
The effort will target those who have been living in the United States for less than two years, sources said.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) strategy aims to get illegal immigration cases dropped. Federal officials plan to arrest migrants and place them in expedited removal proceedings, fast-tracking them to deportation out of the country, allowing for almost-immediate removal without a hearing before an immigration judge, according to ICE sources.
If a migrant has an active, pending court case, expedited removal cannot happen, which is why DHS officials are planning to get them dropped. Immigration judges, however, have to agree to drop cases, and so far, they are cooperating with the effort, sources said.
The initiative will likely cause controversy because migrants will be disincentivized from attending asylum hearings, and it will involve arrests of migrants with no criminal histories aside from entering the United States illegally.
Videos posted to social media and captured by local news across the country show the ICE arrests already happening in various courthouses.
“Secretary Noem is reversing Biden’s catch-and-release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets,” a DHS spokesperson told Fox News. “This Administration is once again implementing the rule of law.”
The spokesperson added that “most aliens who illegally entered the United States within the past two years are subject to expedited removals.”
“ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been.”
— DHS spokesperson
“Biden ignored this legal fact and chose to release millions of illegal aliens, including violent criminals, into the country with a notice to appear before an immigration judge,” the spokesperson said. “ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been. If they have a valid credible fear claim, they will continue in immigration proceedings, but if no valid claim is found, aliens will be subject to a swift deportation.”
Gregg Jarrett, Fox News legal analyst and commentator, noted the Supreme Court’s recent ruling “that President Trump had the authority to end Biden’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for certain specified migrants who have been in the U.S. for less than two years.”
“That means they are eligible for expedited deportation,” he said. “There is no law that prevents ICE from carrying out the initiative by making arrests at immigration/asylum hearings. From a safety standpoint, it makes sense. Indeed, it has been a longstanding practice.”
Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, immigration attorney and CEO and owner of Lincoln-Goldfinch Law, told Fox News Digital that while “ICE can go in and conduct apprehensions in courthouses,” such arrests “can be restricted” if immigration judges refuse to dismiss cases.
WATCH: Attorney explains effort to detain illegal immigrants in courthouses
“Because the playbook is this: the immigrant goes into their court hearing. The DHS attorney, which is essentially the prosecutor, tells the judge, ‘Judge, we actually want to dismiss this case. We don’t want to pursue it.’ And in many instances, the judge will just dismiss over objection of the immigrant or [if] the immigrant doesn’t know any better, and they say, ‘Sure, that sounds great.’ And then they walk out of the courtroom, and they’re apprehended,” Lincoln-Goldfinch explained.
If judges refuse to dismiss cases, they can “maintain their own jurisdiction over what happens with [an immigrant] because this person is in immigration court proceedings and the judge gets to decide what happens to them so long as they don’t dismiss the case.”
Jarrett believes “the likelihood of interference is minimal” when asked whether judges might try to stop the arrests.
“Most asylum and deportation hearings are in front of an immigration judge who is an employee of the Justice Department,” he said. “Those hearings occur in federal courthouses or detention facilities, so the likelihood of interference is minimal. You would not have, for example, a state court judge trying to interfere, as we saw in [Milwaukee, Wisconsin].”
Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan, 65, was indicted last month on federal charges of obstruction of proceedings before a U.S. agency and unlawful concealment of an individual subject to arrest after she allegedly directed an illegal immigrant defendant to leave through a private exit at the Milwaukee County Courthouse while ICE officials were serving a warrant for his arrest.
WATCH: WISCONSIN JUDGE SEEN TALKING TO ICE AGENTS
Lincoln-Goldfinch, meanwhile, believes the new DHS effort is a scheme for the Trump administration to easily and quickly boost illegal immigrant apprehension numbers, and that “they are not targeting the population of immigrants that Trump and Kristi Noem purport to want to go after, and that is law-breaking, dangerous, criminal history type of immigrants.”
This initiative, she said, targets illegal immigrants trying to go through a legal citizenship process.
“Why are we not sending ICE after the people that they’re claiming are here to harm us? It doesn’t make sense from a resource expenditure perspective,” she said. “And I think that is the main objection. So do I think this will be challenged in court? But on top of that, I think that people should really take issue with the fact ICE is going after people who are following the rules and they’re playing dirty tricks and games in order to get them to dismiss their cases and then they arrest them walking out of the courtroom.”
WATCH: INSIDE THE THREATS AND DANGERS ICE AGENTS FACE
In an April 29 press release marking 100 days in office, DHS announced that border apprehensions were down 95% since President Donald Trump took office, and more migrants are returning to their home countries to avoid deportation.
The administration also noted that it had arrested more than 158,000 illegal aliens in 2025 alone, including more than 600 members of Tren de Aragua, saying federal officials are “targeting the worst of the worst” with 75% of illegal immigrant arrests involving those with convictions or pending charges.
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