Tensions at Manhattan’s immigration courts are reaching a boiling point.
Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement reinstated the officer who was initially relieved of duties after shoving an Ecuadorian woman to the ground as he arrested her husband. The next day, ICE agents shoved journalists, sending one to the hospital.
“Every single week I would ask myself, is this when everything is going to fall apart and explode, and I’m still waiting for it, but we’re getting closer,” said Allison Cutler, an immigration attorney from New York Legal Assistance Group who is in court at 26 Federal Plaza almost every day.
New York City has seen 460 ICE arrests this year through July that likely took place in immigration court, more than in any other city, a new analysis of federal data found. The estimates, by mathematician Joseph Gunther, are the first attempt to quantify arrests in immigration courts at a national level.
Gunther identified nearly 2,400 ICE arrests likely made in immigration courts across the country, a total he said may still be an undercount. The analysis fills a gap left by the lack of DHS reporting on how many arrests ICE has made in or around courts.
Those arrested very rarely had criminal records, the analysis found. Over 90% had only civil immigration charges, such as crossing the border illegally.
ICE did not respond to a CBS News request for comment about the analysis, but Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a May news release that “arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense.”
“It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be,” she said. “These illegal aliens have gone through security and been screened to not have any weapons.”
To quantify courthouse arrests, Gunther cross-referenced data on ICE arrests from the Deportation Data Project with data on immigration court hearings from the Executive Office for Immigration Review. ICE data does not have precise location information on arrests. But by comparing dates, places and demographic information between the two datasets, Gunther compiled a list of arrests that likely took place on the same day as a court hearing. The methodology was reviewed by two immigration experts.
“These are the first general estimates of something that shouldn’t be secret in the first place,” Gunther said. “It shouldn’t be necessary at all to do this drawn-out data analysis to know such basic facts.”
ICE began making arrests at immigration courts in late May, when DHS rescinded Biden-era guidance limiting them.
DHS attorneys then began moving to dismiss cases and initiate expedited removal proceedings. Once immigrants face expedited removal, they are detained and are not entitled to any more hearings before a judge.
Previously, expedited removal had been mostly limited to migrants encountered near the border. In January, the Trump administration expanded that to apply to undocumented immigrants anywhere in the U.S. who entered less than two years ago.
On Aug. 30, a federal judge paused this expansion, blocking ICE’s strategy of fast-tracking deportations of those with dismissed cases.
ICE is also arresting immigrants in court with ongoing cases, immigration attorneys and court watchers said.
“A lot of immigration judges say, I’m going to give you another court date, but I don’t know what will happen when you leave this court room,” said Dee Ann Croucher, a volunteer who observes hearings in El Paso multiple times a week. “I saw a lady just break down sobbing when they said that to her.”
The woman was detained in the hallway after the hearing, Croucher said.
Immigrants arrested in court are often transferred far from home and family, limiting access to legal representation and sometimes placing them in a more conservative court system, immigration attorneys said.
A CBS News analysis of the arrests Gunther identified found that nearly all were transferred to another facility, often hundreds of miles away. Those arrested in New York were moved an average of more than 1,000 miles away, often to Texas or Louisiana.
Some have been released from detention after federal judges ruled their detainment was unlawful, but not everyone has the legal resources to file a petition, said Hasan Shafiqullah, immigration supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society.
“Many people are languishing in detention,” he said. “Because detention is so terrible, people are often giving up and just saying, “You know what? Just give me a deportation order.”
In Miami, some are choosing to self-deport after ICE arrested them in court, said Miami immigration attorney Antonio Ramos, whose office is in the same building as the court.
Miami’s immigration court sees the second-most hearings for non-detained immigrants, following New York. There have been about a third of estimated in-court arrests in Miami than in New York this year, according to the analysis.
New York City’s immigration courts see more non-detained hearings than any other city. Cutler, the New York immigration attorney, said that ICE agents have told her they are specifically targeting New York City because of its sanctuary policies.
“I’ve had officials tell me this to my face that they are punishing New York,” she said. “They would say, when New York stops being a sanctuary city, that is when we will leave.”
DHS has been clear that New York and other cities with sanctuary policies will be the target of increased enforcement, but did not respond to inquiries from CBS News about how they choose which courts to deploy ICE officers to.
Following New York, Gunther’s analysis found there were 190 ICE arrests in El Paso that likely took place in immigration court. Immigration courts in the Los Angeles area — within the city itself and in Van Nuys and Santa Ana — also had a high number of estimated arrests when combined, at 282.
Immigration advocates who observed the arrests in El Paso’s court described a less hostile atmosphere and no instances of excessive force. In one case, volunteers were able to negotiate with ICE agents to allow a noncitizen with a medical disorder to be electronically monitored instead of being detained, said Emily Miller, program manager at the Border Immigration Law and Justice Center in El Paso.
“We have developed a cordial relationship with ICE,” said Miller, who helps coordinate a group of volunteer court watchers. “Whether we agree with what [ICE is] doing or not, there is no yelling and filming taking place anymore. At the beginning, there was yelling and filming, we saw ICE be more forceful, that has stopped.”
Twenty-one of the arrests in El Paso were of children who were arrested with their family members, the analysis estimated. It identifies a total of 73 children arrested, almost all in Texas or the Los Angeles area, and none in New York.
The Biden-era memo had prohibited courthouse arrests because it would “disincentivize noncitizens from appearing for their hearings.” When a noncitizen does not appear for their hearing, an immigration judge may order them removed “in absentia.”
Immigrants face “an impossible catch 22,” said Amy Belsher, supervising attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union: show up to court and risk arrest, or stay home and receive a deportation order.
The rate of “in absentia” removal orders have ticked upward from 46% of non-detained case completions in May, when the arrests first started, to 52% in August.
“It’s going to do lasting and irreparable harm to noncitizens’ trust in government systems,” Belsher said.
