Federal agents detained a family of three after they attended a hearing at Denver Immigration Court on Thursday, part of a spate of courthouse arrests nationwide over the last two weeks as the Trump administration pursues a new strategy aimed at mass detentions.
The man, woman and small child left a courtroom at the federal facility on Stout Street after attending an immigration hearing in their case early Thursday morning. During the hearing, Judge Tyler Wood dismissed the removal case against them, said Emily Brock, deputy managing attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.
The dismissal of a removal case historically has meant the government decided to no longer pursue deportation from the United States.
But as the family left the courtroom with the dismissal order in hand, they were detained by several plain-clothed federal agents, said Brock, who witnessed the confrontation.
“They didn’t identify themselves, they just pulled out their badges and said, ‘You are coming with us,’ ” she said.
Brock asked the agents for a few minutes to talk with the family about their rights. She started shouting out information in Spanish when the agents refused, Brock said. The family, which has not been publicly identified, was silent.
“Honestly, they were just in shock,” Brock said. “If I could paint a picture of the look on their faces… I don’t know. I’ve been doing this for a while, but that was really shocking. And that child just clung to his father’s neck. He was terrified.”
Colorado law prohibits immigration arrests at or near state courthouses; that law does not apply to federal facilities.
The family’s arrest in downtown Denver is the first known local example of a new strategy by President Donald Trump’s administration that has unfolded across the United States over the last two weeks in immigration courts from New York to Seattle. Homeland Security officials are ramping up enforcement actions in what appears to be a coordinated dragnet testing out new legal levers deployed by Trump’s administration to carry out mass arrests.
Dismissing regular removal proceedings against an immigrant allows federal agents to then detain the person for expedited removal, Brock said. Expedited removal is harder for immigrants to fight, in part because they’re typically detained during the process. A person in ongoing regular removal proceedings can’t be put into the expedited removal process.
Three U.S. immigration officials told the Associated Press that government attorneys were given the order on May 19 to start dismissing cases, knowing full well that federal agents would then have a free hand to arrest those same individuals as soon as they stepped out of the courtroom. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared losing their jobs.
AP reporters last week witnessed detentions and arrests or spoke to attorneys whose clients were picked up at immigration courthouses in Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York, Seattle, Chicago and Texas.
“We are setting people up,” Brock said of the government’s new strategy. “We’re giving people a set of rules they’re told to follow, and then halfway through the game, we’re changing the rules with no notice. And it includes a loss of liberty. So we are detaining people after changing the rules on them in a way that is an attack on due process, that is an intentional incitement of fear in the community, and it is not what I believe this country stands for.”
Arrests historically have been extremely rare in or immediately near immigration courts, which are run by the U.S. Department of Justice. When they have occurred, it was usually because the individual was charged with a criminal offense or their asylum claim had been denied.
“I have never seen this in more than 20 years of doing this,” said Jennifer Piper, west region program director at American Friends Service Committee, a social justice organization. “I’ve never seen one single person detained at immigration court. …This is both unnecessary and unprecedented.”
The latest effort includes people who have no criminal records, migrants with no legal representation and people who are seeking asylum, according to reports received by the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
While detentions have been happening over the past few months, the number of reports skyrocketed last week, said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel at AILA.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of Homeland Security, said in a statement that it was detaining people who are subject to fast-track deportation authority.
Steve Kotecki, a Denver spokesman for ICE, did not return a request for comment Friday.
The unidentified family of three was ushered down a staircase at the federal building and into a vehicle, Brock said. She believes they were taken to an immigration facility in Centennial to be processed.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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