Activists: ICE agents arrested migrants outside Detroit courtroom
This story was copublished with Outlier Media.
Federal immigration agents arrested at least four Venezuelan migrants outside a Detroit courtroom Wednesday morning just moments after a judge dismissed their asylum cases, according to activists who witnessed the proceedings.
“It took five minutes,” said Paula Duran, an organizer with the People’s Assembly, a group of activists working to resist an uptick in immigration enforcement. “They left the courtroom and immediately, in the waiting room, handcuffed them and took them with other ICE agents.”
The arrests at the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building followed a pattern that immigration advocates say has intensified nationwide in recent weeks. Ruby Robinson, managing attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, said arrests outside courtrooms — once rare — have become increasingly common as the Trump administration pushes to ramp up deportations.
The tactic puts migrants in a “catch-22,” Robinson said. Showing up to court hearings is the only path to legal status. But now, showing up can also lead to deportation.
The Trump administration’s “expanded expedited removal” policy allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest and deport people without a court hearing if they’ve been in the U.S. for less than two years.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the administration to strip legal protections from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who fled violence and ongoing crisis in their home country.
Robinson stressed that not everyone who attends their immigration court hearing will be detained. Activists said dozens of hearings took place Wednesday without arrest.
Still, Robinson noted that people who are undocumented and recently arrived are most vulnerable. “We encourage everyone to comply with the law and the legal processes, and we have to tell people that they need to be prepared that they may not come back from the court,” he said. “People feel entrapped.”
He urged immigrants to know their legal rights and to make plans with their family for worst-case scenarios such as deportation.
Duran said many of those arrested Wednesday appeared blindsided. “They said, ‘I really don’t understand what changed,’” she recalled. “‘I have done everything that you told me to do. I’m on good behavior. I have been paying my taxes. I don’t have any traffic ticket. I don’t have any trouble anywhere.’”
Judge David Paruch, who presided over the migrants’ hearings, was appointed in 2010 by then-Attorney General Eric Holder. Paruch denied 53% of the asylum claims that came before him from 2019-24 — compared to the 63% average for Detroit’s immigration court, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Asked to confirm the activists’ account of the arrests, ICE declined to confirm the details of “routine daily operations.”
“Most aliens who illegally entered the United States within the past two years are subject to expedited removals,” the agency wrote in an unsigned email.
The statement notes that migrants can prevent their case from being dismissed if they can establish that they have a “valid credible fear” of persecution. Robinson estimated that about 25,000 people currently in removal proceedings through the Detroit immigration court don’t have lawyers.
Courtroom closed
Courtroom access was eventually blocked Wednesday morning, raising questions about the transparency of proceedings that have the potential to upend lives and separate families. Members of the public, including a reporter and Detroit City Council Member Gabriela Santiago-Romero, were barred from the courtroom by security guards.
Duran said security guards removed observers after they asked for the name of a person who was being detained. One guard said demonstrators had attempted to stop an arrest.
Immigration court hearings are open to the public, with limited exceptions.
“The fact that they’re refusing us entry, to me, is very concerning,” Santiago-Romero said. “We are allowed to listen to court proceedings. It’s important, if we can’t stop it, to know what’s going on to at least report to families, but they’ve refused us access. I don’t know how many more cases are happening today.”
The Department of Justice office that oversees immigration courts did not respond to a request for comment.
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