San Diego lawsuit aims to prohibit ICE arrests outside immigration courtrooms

A class-action lawsuit is challenging the Trump administration’s practice of arresting people upon exiting their immigration court hearings, as has occurred in several cities, including San Diego, over the past several months — although local court watchers say arrests in the hallways have stopped in recent weeks.

Filed on behalf of two asylum seekers detained outside the San Diego federal building’s immigration court this year, the lawsuit claims that the federal government is employing tactics that violate individuals’ due process rights.

“We’re asking a federal judge to look at what the agencies are doing and to declare that it’s unlawful,” said Kimberly Hutchison, partner at the Singleton Schreiber law firm, which filed the suit last week in the San Diego federal court.

The Department of Homeland Security — the parent agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, all of which are named in the lawsuit — did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit notes the shift in policies concerning civil immigration enforcement “in or near” courthouses.

Under 2021 ICE guidance, the Biden administration acknowledged that civil immigration enforcement “may chill individuals’ access to courthouses and, as a result, impair the fair administration of justice.” The policy limited civil immigration enforcement in or near courthouses to cases involving national security threats or individuals posing a risk to public safety, among others.

Policies on law enforcement operations in previously protected locations, including courthouses, were rescinded by the latest Trump administration.

The new guidance states that “ICE officers or agents may conduct civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present at a specific location.”

“We say that reversal of those written policies is what in the legal world we call ‘arbitrary and capricious,’” said Hutchison. “Which basically means that it’s not well reasoned, that it’s not based on facts.”

The lawsuit asks the judge to vacate the new guidance.

The two unnamed asylum seekers who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit are a Sahrawi man — part of an ethnic group indigenous to Western Sahara — who was arrested in June, and a Colombian man arrested in late May.

They both entered the country last year, were released from federal custody after processing with notices to appear, and were detained at the San Diego immigration courthouse after government attorneys moved to dismiss their cases. Neither has a criminal record, and both have expressed fear of returning to their countries, according to the lawsuit.

Courthouse arrests have been condemned by Democratic leaders and have prompted efforts by community volunteers and religious leaders to accompany immigrants to court and keep track of arrests.

Several of those volunteers said they have seen fewer arrests at the San Diego courthouse lately and have instead seen an increase in migrants released with ankle monitors. Still, the volunteers continue to show up at the federal building daily.

On Friday, a woman approached the Rev. Hung Nguyen, an associate pastor at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Logan Heights, and asked him to accompany her to her scheduled hearing. The woman, who appeared in court alone, is also Catholic and said the priest’s presence would help her feel calmer.

The volunteers say the recent decrease in hallway arrests could be related to a court order blocking the Trump administration’s efforts to expand expedited removals to include noncitizens arrested anywhere in the U.S., rather than only those arrested at or near the border.

The court order, issued by the U.S. District Court of Columbia, paused this directive; it has been appealed.

“In the last few months, the government has made aggressive use of its newly expanded expedited removal power. When people have appeared in immigration courts for their normally paced immigration proceedings, for instance, the government has moved to dismiss those proceedings, promptly arrested individuals inside of those courts, and then shuttled them into much faster moving — and much less procedurally robust — expedited removal proceedings,” U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb noted in her Aug. 29 order.

Nguyen, who regularly accompanies migrants at immigration court, said Friday that the group has not seen any arrests in the hallway for the past two weeks.