Immigrants arrested outside courtrooms in San Diego after attending hearings

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carried out a raid at the San Diego federal courthouse on Thursday, targeting immigrants who were attending hearings tied to their asylum claims.

The arrests at the Edward J. Schwartz building in downtown mark the latest action carried out by federal agents in what appears to be a coordinated operation focusing on courtrooms across the country — from New York and Illinois to Texas and Arizona.

They come as President Donald Trump has pressed for the Department of Homeland Security to speed up the removal of noncitizens to make good on his promise to carry out mass deportations, even as he faces a litany of legal battles tied to his immigration policies.

Advocates who witnessed the arrested in San Diego Thursday said some of the individuals arrested had their asylum cases dismissed prior to being taken by ICE agents. Others were there to begin the process with court dates set up using the now-defunct CBP One app.

ICE agents also purportedly attempted to detain several others in San Diego without checking to see if there was a warrant first. Per advocates, the agents realized "they had the wrong individuals" after attorneys pushed back against the arrests.

Additional details about the incident, including how many asylum-seekers were arrested and specifics about their claims, are not known at this time.

FOX 5/KUSI reached out to DHS for more information on the incident and is awaiting response.

“These actions are a deliberate attempt to crush the human spirit and undermine the very principle that our asylum laws are meant to uphold," Crystal Felix, a legal representative for the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium, said in a statement on the raid.

"It’s also a staggering waste of court resources – cases are scheduled, prepared, and then gutted at the last minute, showing blatant disregard for due process and efficiency," she continued.

Trump opened the door to these such enforcement actions back in January, when he signed an executive order calling on DHS to remove policies that prevented immigration enforcement in "sensitive areas," like churches, schools and courthouses.

The move was one of many the president signed aiming to rescind Biden-era policies and create new federal powers — or scale up existing ones — to crack down on illegal immigration.

One such change that has come into play in the arrests at courthouses in recent weeks was an expansion to a fast-tracked deportation process known as expedited removal, which had previously only been used to remove immigrants who were detained at the border.

Normally, undocumented people going through the asylum process cannot be deported until a final order of removal has been issued by a judge.

Expedited removal allows federal officials to deport noncitizens without an opportunity to make their case in an immigration court. Under the newly expanded version of the policy, anyone who has been in the country for less than two years can be subject to the accelerated process.

The Trump administration appears to have increasingly turned to this process for people who are engaging in the legal system.

Federal prosecutors have reportedly begun asking courts to dismiss asylum cases, instead of litigating them to obtain a final order of removal, thereby allowing their temporary protected status to be revoked and making them immediately eligible for expedited removal.