They arrived at the federal building holding nothing but a piece of paper that ordered them to immigration court, a cellphone – and sometimes, a sliver of hope.
Some carry backpacks, knowing what’s inside them may be the only possessions they’ll have when they’re placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention – and eventually sent to some country they may or may not have ever called home.
The migrants – arriving from places near and far – have immigration hearings at the Richard C. White Federal Building in Downtown El Paso. As in federal courtrooms across the country, El Paso immigration judges are dismissing their cases in groups.
While that might sound like a victory for the migrants, it’s a Trump administration tactic to pull them out of the court process that could take years to decide their case and instead put them on the fast-track to deportation.
These arrests and immigration raids have led to mass demonstrations in Los Angeles, as well as Houston, San Antonio and other cities across the nation.
But just how are the courthouse arrests happening and why are civil rights groups protesting? Here’s what to know.
Why are immigration cases being dismissed in court?
As long as people have a pending immigration case, they have authorization to remain in the country and sometimes have authorization to work.
But if a judge, working with ICE attorneys, dismisses their case, it is no longer active in court and people no longer have legal status. In immigration court, judges are employees of the U.S. Department of Justice, not members of an independent judiciary.
While judges sign dismissals, the immigrants are immediately put into expedited removal proceedings – with ICE and other federal agents waiting to detain them as they exit the courtroom.
Who are the courthouse arrests targeting?
The courthouse arrests target those who have been in the country less than two years, had their temporary protected status revoked or have certain convictions.
That makes them “amenable” to expedited removal without their cases having to go before an immigration judge.
Previously, expedited removal was typically applied only to unauthorized immigrants detained within 100 miles of an international border – such as those detained along the border wall – and who had been in the country for less than two weeks.
How many people have been detained immediately following their case dismissal?
That’s not clear. More than 51,300 people were in ICE detention as of June 1, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, a nonpartisan research center at Syracuse University that collects and analyzes U.S. immigration enforcement data. Of those, 66% were ICE arrests and the other 34% by Customs and Border Protection.
The figures don’t break down how many people were detained at or near courthouses or federal buildings where immigration hearings are held.
In May alone, however, nearly 29,000 people were booked into ICE detention, the center reports. The ICE El Paso Processing Center had an average daily population of about 760 detainees as of May 27, according to the latest figures available on TRAC.
Why is ICE targeting courthouses and federal buildings for arrests?
On May 6, DHS announced it was making “common sense” courthouse arrests, stating that it was rescinding Biden-era guidelines that generally prohibited immigration enforcement in courthouses and other sensitive areas such as schools and churches. That came after Trump lifted those protections when he took office Jan. 20.
Conducting civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses where ICE officers have “credible information” that the targeted people will be there helps reduce safety risks to the immigrants, the public and law enforcement officers, Acting Director Tom Lyons told ICE employees in a May 27 memorandum providing guidance on the actions.
The memo stated that the arrests, when practicable, should take place in areas of the courthouse not open to the public — including entrances and exits – and conducted in collaboration with court security staff.
What’s the court process like in El Paso?
The playbook is the same in courts across the country: Cases are dismissed and plainclothes officers waiting nearby arrest the migrants as they leave the courtroom.
In El Paso on Thursday, June 5, a Cuban family of four arrived at the federal building at 11 a.m. for their 1 p.m. appointment. They were dressed up and sat nervously on a bench in front of the building, the 18-year-old fixing her 11-year-old sister’s turquoise hair bow.
At about 12:30 p.m., they made their way into the building, greeted by “A Day in El Paso del Norte,” a 50-foot long mural by John Valadez depicting the people, places and landmarks of the borderland.
The family took the elevator up seven floors, then sat on a row of blue chairs waiting to be called into the next room.
Their names were called, along with four others, and they made their way to the courtroom of Immigration Judge Lorely Fernandez. The voice of an interpreter they’ll never meet or see emitted over the loudspeaker.
Their names and alien numbers – unique seven- to nine-digit identification numbers assigned to immigrants by the Department of Homeland Security – were read aloud. They raised their right hands and were sworn in.
The father in the Cuban family struggled to respond when asked about his connection with the 18-year-old in his group – lost in translation when the interpreter asked in Spanish “how” and not “what” his relationship was with the girl. “It’s good,” he said in Spanish, explaining she was the stepdaughter he helped raise, then pointed to his wife and younger daughter.
What do immigration judges say and do?
“Circumstances have changed,” Fernandez began, adding that anyone who applied for entry at a port of entry was subject to expedited removal, even if it had not been sought when they originally entered the country under President Joe Biden’s administration.
“Because I agree with the government that you are subject to expedited removal under the new administration, I am dismissing your cases,” Fernandez said.
The judge told the people before her that they had the right to appeal her decision, but only had 30 days to do so. If they had a fear of being returned to their country, she said, they must tell their deportation officer. She told them they’d be given an appeal packet that must be completed in English.
“Regarding detention, you are subject to mandatory detention because you are an arriving alien,” the judge said.
Fernandez called out each person’s name, asking them one-by-one if they wished to appeal.
“Apelar,” one man said. “Apelacion,” another uttered.
“Are we going to be taken now or will we actually have time to call our attorney?” a young Venezuelan named Angel Gabriel asked in Spanish, wringing his hands and pulling on the cuffs of his black-and-red flannel shirt. An older man with graying hair wiped a tear from his face.
Lourdes Massiel, a young woman in jeans and a sweatshirt carrying a stuffed backpack, quietly pleaded with the judge not to dismiss her case, saying she feared returning to Venezuela.
“Le pido de corazón que no revoque mi caso,” she said in Spanish. “I ask you with all my heart not to revoke my case.”
Fernandez told her it would be up to her deportation officer – and not the immigration court – whether to grant her a screening for a credible fear that would help determine her eligibility for asylum.
The judge dismissed all their cases. The eight people walked out of the courtroom into the waiting area and then into the hallway.
How are the arrests happening?
In the hallway a few yards away from Judge Fernandez’s courtroom stood a group of at least a dozen plain-clothed law enforcement officers – most in baseball caps and their faces uncovered.
Agents from ICE and the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, are primarily conducting the arrests, although other federal agencies such as Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Marshals are involved.
“Here they come,” said one agent, who others referred to as “commander,” as the immigrants made their way to the elevator where the agents gathered.
Groups of agents approached them, asked their names and told them they were being detained. Some shielded their faces with paperwork and escorted the people into the elevator and into a holding room on the first floor.
What happens to the migrants after they’re arrested?
Once arrested, the migrants are transported to some holding facility to be processed and are then transferred to detention facilities across the country. From El Paso, many are transferred to the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, New Mexico.
Within minutes of being led down the elevator at the El Paso federal building last week, the Cuban sisters walked out arm-in-arm, their parents close behind, surrounded by five agents who were now masked. The detainees were led out a black back door leading to the parking lot, escorted into white vans where they were handcuffed, and were driven out to an ICE processing center.
Mailet, the mother, is now at the South Texas Family Residential Center in South Texas, according to the ICE detainee locator. Trump in March reopened the facility, one of the largest immigration detention centers in the nation with a capacity to detain about 2,400 people, which had been closed under the Biden administration because of high operating costs, the Texas Tribune reported.
It’s unclear whether Mailet’s daughters are with her. Her husband, Jorge Luis, is listed as being in ICE custody but the detainee locator does not list a location. A location for Angel Gabriel is also not listed.
This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
What Cindy Ramirez describes in her article is part of the background to what we have heard about the protests in Los Angeles. The protests spontaneously responded to ICE’s sudden increase in aggressively finding bodies to deport to fill its new daily quota. ICE collaborates with immigration “courts” – the in-house hearing boards which decide immigration cases and not part of an independent judicial court – to actually create “illegal” immigrants out of previously legal applicants in the midst of their immigration process. As the judge in Ramirez’s article says, this creation of “criminality” is by policy, and one for which there is no real remedy. This is one of the reasons the federal courthouse has been one of the focuses of LA demonstrators.
[The partial justification Ramirez mentions for this policy, that it takes years to get through the process, is itself a bogus way of creating difficulties for migration to the US. There are a shortage of immigration judges. If the funding of immigration courts were anything like the money thrown to increase ICE to the point of practically outnumbering the US army, the case would not take years.]
Another ICE tactic was to roundup day-laborers who congregated at a Home Depot parking lot traditionally used by homeowners who needed to hire someone temporarily for a project. These workers may or may not be undocumented, may or may not be citizens, but ICE picked them up, and that parking lot has been another focus of demonstrations.
Not only are the federal government’s actions grossly unfair, thus unjust, but they are on-the-spot tactics rather than actions intended to solve a perceived problem with immigration. They create crisis haphazardly and thoughtlessly. Here is a view of how unprepared the government was in handling the sudden increase in the newly created “undocumented” fit for deportation: the government appears to be holding the deportable people in basements and empty offices without water and with only a smattering of chips for food: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/11/la-ice-raids-immigration-conditions.
Meanwhile, the big shots in the Washington sewer system – the replacement for the swamp, one supposes — are ranting about getting rid of the rapists and murderers (like the Cuban family in this article, no doubt).
I am saddened, horrified, incensed and infuriated.
My new go-to snap response to MAGA ppl is: “stop eating ALL food that you did not 100% produce and process. (That’s just one angle re the imoact to them.)
I expect citizens illegally detained for protesting will be put tovwork in the fields, orchards, construction sites, dairies, ranches and slaughterhouses — Jobs citizens would have to be forced to do.