Fears of ICE arrests cause tension at Seattle immigration court

At courthouses across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been arresting people who show up for required immigration court hearings. Fears of arrests gripped attorneys and their clients this week in Seattle’s court. Seattle Times staff reporter Catalina Gaitán spent time at the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building in downtown Seattle yesterday, amid rumors ICE was planning to show up.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Paige Browning: Let's start with a refresher on ICE arrests. This year, ICE agents have entered courthouses to detain people. What's controversial about this practice?

Catalina Gaitán: My understanding is U.S. Immigration Court has historically been known for being pretty boring. It used to be really unusual to see ICE officers inside the court or inside those buildings. The people who are going to immigration court usually don't have a reason to be arrested by ICE, because they're already in deportation proceedings. But what we're seeing is ICE attorneys are moving to dismiss these deportation proceedings against an immigrant. If the immigration judge agrees to dismiss it, ICE can fast-track deporting that person through a process called expedited removal, which doesn't involve judges.

That sometimes starts with ICE agents detaining people right outside the courtroom. Immigrant rights advocates say this practice violates a person's due process rights and comes really out of the blue. People can't prepare for this. They go in expecting a standard hearing and end up detained. Sometimes that's being witnessed by their children or their family members. It can be really traumatic and has created a lot of fear for people within the immigrant community.

You reported that agents were not present or seen at the courthouse. One line that especially struck me in your article involved an attorney telling her client in Spanish, "breathe." Tell us about that moment. What was happening?

A woman had just come out of her immigration hearing with her son — he looked about 4 or 5 years old — and her lawyer. There was a lot of anxiety for this woman leading up to that moment. The update was that her case had not been dismissed. The mother and her son and their attorney stopped by the elevators to talk about their next steps. But this woman still looked so panicked. The attorney eventually said, “respira, respira.” Breathe. Her client took this big, shaky breath and let it all out, and finally had this big smile, like she could let herself experience relief.

That cycle, of an immigrant going into the courtroom with their attorney, emanating so much anxiety, and then leaving the courtroom with all this relief, repeated itself all morning,

You talked to an immigration attorney, Brittan Schwartz, who expressed a sense of relief that agents seemed to have stayed away for the day. But you wrote that she couldn't shake her fear. She told you she felt the rule of law was no longer being protected. What did she say about that?

Schwartz was concerned, because ICE attorneys and immigration judges have been behaving unpredictably. In her experience, really unexpected things have been happening, unexpected outcomes, and she didn't feel like judges or ICE attorneys were necessarily always following the law. The fact that she didn't have faith in the system to work the way she felt and believed it had been designed, seemed to have really shaken and demoralized her. There was a lot of relief from her and her client, that his case moved along as normal as expected that day. But the fact that both of them had such strong relief was troubling in itself.

A lot of activists appear to be mobilized. Many were at the courthouse yesterday. Some were ready to protest and even mock ICE agents. Are these protests having an effect?

I think the answer to that question depends on who you ask, because yes, there were no ICE agents that we could identify within the crowd or inside the building that day. But one Department of Homeland Security officer was standing outside the building facing this crowd of protesters. He said, “We're not ICE, you need to do your homework.” Someone called back something along the lines of, “But you are part of the same system. You are supporting what ICE is doing.”

No one was arrested at the protest last night. It dispersed after a few hours. Some people might think, because it didn't become more volatile, maybe it didn't have an impact. But for a lot of people there, it seemed like they needed to do something, beyond sitting at home looking at their phones, watching videos of immigrants being detained, of the pain that people are experiencing. Maybe that was making a sign and going to the federal building to let the people who work there know, “I am not okay with this, and my community is not okay with this.” When you think of it that way, I think they would say it was a success.

And it did bring a different experience for the clients who were in court yesterday, who came out with their cases still alive, to activists there cheering them on, as you wrote.

What was interesting about that day was how quickly people wanted to just get out of the building. I think there was so much fear to be there in the first place. The person who was calling out the names of people whose hearings were scheduled that afternoon, they were just calling name after name, and no one was coming forward. It seemed there were a lot of no shows that day.

My understanding is that there's a lot of fear within the immigrant community of even going to their immigration hearings, because there's a possibility that they might be unexpectedly detained. Immediately after their hearing, people would come out really elated or relieved, and their attorney would kind of move them to the elevators as quickly as possible to just get out of there. I imagine, for them, not only was there this relief, maybe even a feeling of escape from making it out OK, but then also seeing outside that there were people who wanted to defend them, in some way that probably meant something.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.