Inside the small, windowless room at 26 Federal Plaza, an immigration court in lower Manhattan, Judge F. James Loprest mundanely sipped an energy drink while contending with computer glitches, trying to get through a recent Thursday.

At least a dozen people on the day's docket never appeared. But those who did were sitting there, waiting for their names to be called. In their cases, which are civil in nature, the government seeks to deport them for lacking a valid immigration status, either because they crossed the border without authorization, or because their visas expired.

Three children leaned on their mothers' laps or arms trying to nap, oblivious to the world, while people whispered.

Speaking through an interpreter, Judge Loprest delivered a condensed civics lesson for the 18 unauthorized immigrants in the courtroom, most of whom were from Central American countries, telling them how the immigration system worked — and warning them that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was challenging their right to be in the United States.

He told them about their rights to petition the U.S. government for benefits, such as work authorizations and green cards. He told them how to apply for asylum. He told them they'd be better off by getting a lawyer. And he pleaded with the noncitizens to attend all the required check-ins required by ICE.

"It's a very good idea to retain an attorney," he told them, as an assistant handed out a sheet listing nonprofits that could help.

He then adjourned their cases to March 12 at 9 a.m., urging them to hold on to their hearing notices as proof of their right to be in court, in case they were questioned by immigration authorities.

"I want to thank everybody for coming here today and taking these hearings seriously," Judge Loprest said. "Have a very good rest of the day. Have a good rest of the summer, a good rest of the year."

But moments later, the goodwill Judge Loprest carefully built collapsed into farce: As the immigrants stepped into the hallway, ICE agents grabbed them, placed them in handcuffs and led them away through a side stairway, letting go only the women with children.

Arrests of noncitizens attending immigration court hearings have wreaked havoc among immigrant communities and alarmed attorneys and judges about what they see as violations of due process.

The Trump administration has been internally pushing for a minimum of 3,000 arrests of noncitizens per day. In an effort to meet that goal, ICE agents have been apprehending people in all areas inside and outside immigration court buildings across the country: hallways, lobbies, parking lots and elevators.

Former and current immigration judges who spoke with Law360 are warning that the Trump administration is using courts as a dragnet, arresting people indiscriminately and expelling them with little to no due process in a bid to fulfill President Donald Trump's goal of mass deportations.

"In order to create the vast numbers of arrests that the White House is demanding, they are arresting people who, minutes before their arrest, have legal status, and they're breaking the law left and right to do it," said Judge Dana Leigh Marks, who retired in 2021.

Under the law, noncitizens facing deportation proceedings are required to attend immigration court hearings. If they miss them, they can be ordered deported on the spot by a judge, which makes them vulnerable to arrest.

Immigration judges said that, during past administrations, having a deportation case dismissed by an immigration court was good news for a noncitizen, practically meaning that ICE was no longer seeking to remove them from the country. Without that active threat, noncitizens could pursue legal ways to remain in the United States or, when those were out of reach, live in the shadows.

Traditionally, unauthorized individuals with pending immigration proceedings, such as petitions for asylum, have been recognized with a right to appear before judges at their scheduled hearings without being detained. Even when detained, a pending proceeding gives a noncitizen the basis to ask the immigration court to be released.

"In the past, that would allow them to remain in the country while their case was being processed," Judge Marks said. "Some of them qualified for employment authorization during that time, others didn't. But they were protected from deportation."

The government's rationale was that a noncitizen is entitled to protection from removal during a pending case because of delays in processing for which they are not responsible. The current backlog in the immigration system is nearing 3.5 million active cases, according to official data.

But since the early weeks of the second Trump administration, ICE attorneys have been asking courts to dismiss cases against noncitizens in order to strip them of that implied protection and place them in expedited removal, a form of fast-tracked deportation that avoids the typical due process rights given to noncitizens.

Immigration attorneys and judges say the administration has now moved to indiscriminately arrest noncitizens showing up in immigration court, regardless of whether they have pending proceedings.

"ICE officers are showing up in immigration court and dismissing proceedings against respondents so they can be expeditiously removed without a day in court. They're tackling folks in the hallways at 26 Federal Plaza, folks who showed up to court in good faith to have their day before a judge," said Michael J. Wildes, a managing partner at New York-based immigration boutique Wildes and Weinberg PC. "That undermines the court system, and it makes folks think twice before complying with court notices to show up."

ICE has not responded to requests for comment.

Last week, Judge Jia M. Cobb in the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration's dramatic expansion of expedited removal process — from one designed to deport unauthorized immigrants apprehended near the border, to one used to arrest people anywhere in the country — likely violates the due process clause in the Fifth Amendment.

In an Aug. 29 order pausing the expansion of the policy directed by the administration, practically returning expedited removal to the way it worked during the Biden administration, Judge Cobb said that under the Constitution, people who are subjected to expedited removal are at least entitled to an opportunity to contest their eligibility for fast-tracked deportation.

The Trump administration filed a notice of appeal Tuesday. At the same time, it asked Judge Cobb to stay her order while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit looks at the case.

An immigration judge presiding in New York City, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Trump administration, said that ICE's courthouse arrest and dismissal policy is designed to instill fear in noncitizens so they avoid attending immigration court hearings. The judge said that because of these tactics people have been scared away from going to court. On some days, up to 60 percent of noncitizens on the docket fail to show up for their initial hearings.

"That's quite deplorable," the judge said. "It's not a choice either to go to immigration court and possibly be arrested or stay home and risk being ordered removed in their absence."

As a result, the judge said, the number of people ordered removed has increased. "The numbers seem to bear it out," the judge said.

Official numbers seem to support that. According to a Law360 analysis of data published by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, a research center at Syracuse University that collects official government statistics, the number of removal orders issued across the country nearly doubled from almost 25,000 in December 2024 to nearly 49,000 this July.

While deportation orders issued in absentia rose steadily throughout the Biden administration, peaking at 223,000 in fiscal year 2024, an average of nearly 18,600 per month, the monthly average has reached 24,308 during the first three quarters of the current fiscal year, a pace that is set to yield a new record.

According to data captured by TRAC, 72% of noncitizens who were ordered deported in New York City in July were issued removal orders in absentia. In Dallas, that percentage reached 89%.

"Historically, having your case dismissed was great." the unnamed New York immigration judge said. "But in this kind of new world, it means that ICE is still interested in you — but now as a subject of the expedited proceeding — which of course entitles them to detain you pretty much without too much recourse."

Arrests at the Courthouse

It wasn't the first time that Gning Boubacar, a citizen of Senegal, had to appear in immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza.

Outside of courtroom 34, where Judge Loprest presides on a docket usually filled with unrepresented noncitizens, an "01" adjournment code next to Boubacar's name meant that his case had been previously adjourned to give him time to find a lawyer.

"Have you been looking for a lawyer?" Judge Loprest asked Boubacar, communicating through a French interpreter.

"No, not yet," the man replied.

Boubacar applied for asylum in September 2024. He is one of more than 2.2 million immigrants who have already filed formal asylum applications and are now waiting for asylum hearings or decisions in immigration court.

Judge Loprest recommended a series of legal aid organizations that could help Boubacar present his asylum claims — a complex task that requires specific skills that only attorneys or accredited representatives possess.

"Use my name, if you want," the judge told him.

The judge then advised him to visit the first floor, where officers with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — ICE's sister agency tasked with processing immigration benefits such as green cards — could help him obtain a work authorization.

But on the threshold of the courtroom's door, a group of masked ICE officers was already waiting. As soon as he stepped out, Boubacar was immediately placed in handcuffs and carried away.

Attorneys with New York Legal Assistance Group, a legal aid nonprofit organization, told Law360 that ICE officers during the arrests sometimes manhandle people who have just stepped out of a courtroom.

"We've seen people being arrested violently," said Allison Cutler, a supervising attorney at NYLAG. During an arrest last month, ICE officers pushed chairs to the side in a waiting area adjacent to courtroom 34 and then tackled a man to the ground. An officer placed his knee on the immigrant's back, forcefully placing handcuffs on him and causing bleeding from his wrists, apparently because it was done incorrectly, she said.

Benjamin Remy, another lawyer at NYLAG, told Law360 that arresting people at court hearings is only the first step in a fast-tracked journey of deportation.

Respondents are seized at the courthouse and quickly sent to ICE immigration facilities across the country, often in Texas and Louisiana. Their pending immigration cases are then transferred to immigration courts in those states, where judges are less sympathetic to migrants and more likely to issue deportation orders, he said.

"It's very purposeful, very orchestrated," Remy said. "They know exactly what they are doing."

There are 30 distinct grounds on which a noncitizen can be deemed deportable from the U.S. The normal process of removal involves an immigration court issuing a deportation order. Those orders entitle noncitizens to file an appeal at the Board of Immigration Appeals within 30 days of the judge's decision. During that time frame, noncitizens cannot be deported.

But the process of expedited removal doesn't involve the court at all. Rather, it empowers an immigration official to make a determination that a person is removable and quickly arrange for ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations — the agency component tasked with identifying, arresting, detaining and removing unauthorized noncitizens — to expel the person from the U.S., without any right to an appeal.

The process was implemented in April 1997 during the second Clinton administration to help border officers quickly apprehend and deport people who had just crossed the border. In 2004, President George W. Bush ordered the first expansion of the program in the country's interior, subjecting to expedited removal unauthorized immigrants apprehended within 100 miles of the border, and who had been in the country for 14 days or less.

But the most significant expansion came in 2019 during Trump's first term. Expedited removal was expanded to cover the entire territory of the United States, targeting noncitizens present in the country for two years or less. President Joe Biden returned expedited removal to pre-2019 limits, but the day after reentering the White House, on Jan. 21, Trump brought it back to extend to the whole country.

The Trump administration has since made aggressive use of this process to remove people who have been in the country for years or even decades. The Aug. 29 ruling by the district court compels the government to afford due process to people who are part of the population subjected to the expanded expedited removal policy.

"They have a weighty liberty interest in remaining here and therefore must be afforded due process under the Fifth Amendment," the court said in its order.

In addition to boosting fast-tracked deportation, the administration also took steps to facilitate the arrest of noncitizens anywhere.

With a memorandum issued on Inauguration Day, then-acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman rescinded a Biden-era "protected areas" policy, eliminating formal protections for sensitive locations like hospitals, clinics, schools and places of worship.

Former Los Angeles Immigration Judge Ashley Tabaddor told Law360 that courthouse arrests and the government's move to dismiss immigration cases have occasionally happened, but they were rare and carried out with cause.

Now, the Trump administration is pursuing them systematically with the goal of eliminating any sense of safety that immigrants felt when attending a court hearing, visiting a hospital emergency room or going to school, she said.

Tabaddor, a former federal prosecutor who also served as chief counsel of DHS in the Biden administration, said that ICE's latest tactics fit into an overarching push to transform the court system into a deportation pipeline. The result, she warned, is an immigration court that is increasingly sidelined.

More than 100 immigration judges at different stages of their career, from supervisors to frontline jurists, have been fired since Trump returned to the White House, she said.

"You have to look at it as a systematic attack at every level to just completely transform the entire immigration world into one, solid, fast deportation machine consistent with whatever the White House wants," she said. "The immigration court and the immigration judge system has now been turned totally on its head."

A "Bureaucratic Trap"

In the first months of the second Trump administration, ICE attorneys across the country serving as prosecutors in removal proceedings began to ask immigration judges to dismiss pending deportation cases against noncitizens.

The goal is to strip noncitizens of the legal protections available in full-blown removal proceedings. In many cases, immigration judges agree to the dismissals enabling ICE's tactics by making the noncitizens susceptible to expedited removal, according to the active judge whose name is being withheld by Law360, who described the practice as "sneaky, underhanded."

"I try to encourage judges: Don't just grant these motions to dismiss," the judge said. "Unfortunately, a lot of judges do what ICE wants."

A rule requires judges to give noncitizens at least 10 days to respond to an ICE attorney's request for dismissal. During that window, a noncitizen can retain counsel, file for asylum, or for permanent residency. But feeling pressured by the U.S. government to close cases quickly, judges often grant dismissals on the spot, paving the way for ICE to detain people as soon as they leave the courtroom.

"They worry about their careers. And so, a lot of judges grant these motions as soon as they're made. And that's kind of sad. I just wish they didn't do that," the unnamed judge said. "It's not breaking the rules to give people time to respond."

In early July, the New York City Bar Association issued a statement decrying the recent pattern of dismissal as a threat to noncitizens' due process rights, describing it as an "ongoing crisis" that is "nearly impossible for unrepresented noncitizens to navigate."

"This creates a perverse legal Catch-22," the City Bar said. "To seek protection, one must be in court — but going to court can now result in the case being dismissed and the person being immediately arrested and removed. Legal presence and legal vulnerability are now paradoxically linked, with no clear pathway for individuals to secure safety without risking detention or deportation."

In its statement, the City Bar recommended immigration judges follow the 10-day rule and to scrutinize motions for dismissals thoroughly. It also advised attorneys to consider opposing the motions citing Mathews v. Eldridge, a landmark 1976 ruling in which the U.S. Supreme Court devised a legal test for determining what type of due process a person is entitled to when deprived of a government benefit.

But legal aid organizations say that ICE has more recently abandoned the practice of requesting dismissals — instead directing officers to detain any noncitizens who attend hearings in immigration court, regardless of whether they have pending immigration cases or not.

Melissa Chua, the co-director of NYLAG's Immigrant Protection Unit, told Law360 that noncitizens seized in the buildings' hallways are detained in makeshift holding cells for days at a time, and then sent to detention facilities out of state, often without any opportunity to contact legal counsel.

In a series of habeas corpus petitions filed on behalf of noncitizens detained at immigration court hearings, NYLAG attorneys have argued that those people have a right to an individualized assessment by a court to determine whether there is a need to detain them.

"They're not a flight risk, because they are showing up to court," Chua said.

In some of those cases, judges have granted release ruling that detaining people without any individualized finding violated constitutional protections of due process, she said.

In an internal memo sent to all ICE employees May 27 explaining the courthouse arrest policy, the agency's acting director, Todd M. Lyons, said it aimed to "reduce safety risks" to the public, unauthorized immigrants being targeted for deportation, and ICE personnel because people inside courthouses have been screened for potential weapons and contraband. Lyons also said the policy was "required when jurisdictions refuse to cooperate with ICE."

Immigrants who don't have legal representation have been most impacted by the policy. While noncitizens who have lawyers are generally allowed to attend court hearings remotely, pro se respondents are required to show up in person — exposing them to arrest.

"The people who are being targeted for detention and arrest are essentially people who are unrepresented but are still going to court in the way that they are being asked to by the U.S. immigration system and that they need to in order to actually assert their full rights that they are guaranteed under U.S. immigration law and the Constitution," Chua said.

Overall, attorneys and judges say the goal of these ICE tactics is to instill fear and discourage noncitizens to exercise their rights to attend hearings and apply for immigration benefits.

Respondents who are ordered deported in absentia have a right to reopen their cases within 180 days of a judge's order, but they must show "exceptional circumstances" that prevented them from attending their hearings.

"The big question will be whether or not being afraid to come to court is a valid excuse not to come to court," the unnamed judge who has requested anonymity said. "Let's face it: I'm not sure that it is."

The judge said that in addition to discouraging people from exercising their rights, ICE tactics are undermining the immigration court system itself.

"You can see what kind of effect ICE policies are having on people and on the courts," the judge said. "That's why I feel it's important to speak out."

Jeffrey S. Chase, a former immigration judge who presided in New York City, told Law360 in an email that the current practices have "weaponized" immigration proceedings — which are civil rather than criminal — and opened the door for government overreach.

"I would think anyone finding themself entangled in a legal dispute would look forward to having their day in court before a fair and independent judge," he said. "How would American citizens feel if after waiting for years for the chance to have their day in court, they were instead swept away by masked federal agents, detained, and denied a court hearing?"

--Editing by Orlando Lorenzo. Graphics by Jason Mallory.

Have a story idea for Access to Justice? Reach us at accesstojustice@law360.com.