Five days, 12 arrests: A week inside San Diego Immigration Court

Inside a courtroom tucked away on the second floor of the San Diego federal building, a man recently spent his last few hours of liberty.  Orlando had applied for asylum a month before. He didn’t speak English. He didn’t have a lawyer – he couldn’t afford one. He didn’t want to be detained. But the only attorney present in court, representing the Department of Homeland Security, told the judge it was no longer in the government’s best interest to pursue his case.  Instead, the attorney said, they wanted to transfer him to expedited removal proceedings. In other words, ICE was about to arrest him.  The asylum-seeker in Courtroom 9 said he was afraid. He said he didn’t want to be deported. He pleaded, asking if there was anything else he could do. The judge explained that he still had the opportunity to express his fear in detention. “Please keep fighting for yourself,” Judge José Luis Peñalosa Jr. said.   The man, crying, walked to the back of the courtroom to make one last phone call before he stepped outside.  And when he walked out the door, he did what the judge told him to do. He cooperated. Head down, he walked to the elevator with the seven ICE agents waiting to make the arrest. He asked nothing and said nothing.  This has been the fate of the more than 60 people who have been arrested in the hallway of San Diego Immigration Court as they exited their proceedings since May.  Little is known about the day-to-day operations of a federal immigration court. Unlike other federal and state courts, no online database exists allowing public access to filings. There is also no online listing of cases to be heard on a specific day. There is, however, a docket displayed on a TV in the immigration court check-in room, but even that list isn’t comprehensive.  Times of San Diego observed arrests and court proceedings that were open to the public for five consecutive days. During that period, from June 17 to June 24, 12 individuals were arrested.  Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have occurred at immigration courts statewide as a part of President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign, one that has grown exponentially in recent months. These courtroom arrests do not occur at random, nor do they even necessarily target those with criminal records, despite the claims of the federal government. Before arrests, the government dismisses a person’s case. To do so, the attorney cites either a “change in enforcement priorities and policies” or states that pursuing the case is “no longer in the government’s best interest.”  “(The people being detained) are the people that were paroled under the Biden administration, that entered the country somewhat legally because parole gives them a temporary legal status,” said immigration attorney Wismick Saint-Jeans. “What the Trump administration did is terminate the parole, thereby rendering those people somewhat illegal. When the DHS attorney terminates for expedited removal, these people have no status, and ICE can detain them.” Expedited removal was created in 1996 and used only at port of entries until 2004, when it was expanded to allow undocumented individuals present in the U.S. for under two weeks and within 100 miles of a U.S. land border to be categorized on a “fast-track” to deportation.  Following the January executive order that Trump issued on the first day of his second term, the two-week requirement has been expanded to two years, and the 100-mile specification has been scrapped to include the entire country.  In a statement sent to Times of San Diego, DHS said,  “Secretary (Kristi) Noem is reversing (former President Joe) Biden’s catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets. This Administration is once again implementing the rule of law.”