Migrant-rights advocates say the new approach is causing confusion as undocumented immigrants see cases dismissed before ICE agents move in.
Protesters confront federal agents outside Phoenix immigration court
Protesters confront federal agents outside a Phoenix immigration court chanting “Shame!” and “No more ICE!” on May 21, 2025.
Federal agents executing President Donald Trump’s plans to dramatically scale up deportations have adopted a new tactic of detaining undocumented immigrants while they’re leaving mandatory court appearances.
In many cases, immigrant-rights advocates say, the people being detained were expecting only a routine court check-in after being permitted to enter the United States during the Biden administration. Trump has ended many of the programs that Biden used to allow undocumented people to enter and live in the country, and ICE agents are now targeting those people for removal.
“This escalation of tactics breaks down trust,” the New York Immigration Coalition said in a statement. “People should be free to attend their important court cases without fear of being arrested, detained and deported outside of the court.”
Under Biden, many people who crossed the border without permission turned themselves in, were paroled into the country and later allowed to plead their case before an immigration court. A few were released with orders to wear GPS trackers, but many others were just told to come back to court at an appointed time.
Now, in addition to more aggressively stopping people at the border, the White House has given ICE agents new powers to detain and deport people when they show up for those court hearings, as long as they arrived in the United States within the past two years.
The shift in tactics has prompted confrontations between advocacy groups and ICE agents, and injected further uncertainty into the lives of undocumented people who believed they followed the rules properly. Some advocacy groups are suing to stop the process.
In Phoenix, ICE agents detained more than a dozen people outside court over a two-day period, May 20 and 21. Normally, undocumented people who are going through the immigration court process cannot be deported until a judge issues a final order of removal. But federal lawyers have been dropping those cases, allowing ICE agents to swoop in and detain them under the new Trump “expedited removal” process.
Phoenix immigration attorney Nera Shefer said some of her clients came to court and were prepared to celebrate when federal lawyers dropped the case against them. Instead, they left the courthouse in handcuffs.
“It used to be getting your case dismissed was a celebration,” she said. “Not anymore. The government is given the opportunity to reprocess you under the new rules. That’s what it means.”
Immigration-rights groups report having seen also federal immigration attorneys and ICE agents adopting the new tactics in New York, Seattle and Miami.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Biden’s decision to allow millions of people to enter the United States. And Trump has also repeatedly complained that it would take too long to hold court hearings for every one of those people.
The administration has adopted a string of new tactics to speed up deportations, from invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deporting accused criminals before they ever appear in court.
“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” Trump said in a April 21 social media post. “We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the country. Such a thing is not possible to do. What a ridiculous situation we are in.”
Immigration advocates and attorneys have argued that witholding such trials is a violation of the Constitution, which guarantees due process to anyone in the United States, not just citizens or other legal residents.
Trump has promised to conduct 1 million deportations annually, a dramatic escalation from previous administrations, including his own first term. Congress is considering a proposal to add 10,000 new ICE agents and double the number of detention beds.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed that his administration would primarily target violent offenders. Immigrant-rights advocates say the administration’s get-tough approach is also targeting people without criminal charges or even immigration violations.
Contributing: Edwardo Cuevas, USA TODAY, Raphael Romero Ruiz, David Ulloa Jr and Richard Ruelas, USA TODAY Network