In the middle of May 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) began to arrest noncitizens at immigration courts throughout the country at their court hearings. Initially, the agency targeted only those whose immigration cases an immigration judge had just dismissed at its request, seemingly because it could now attempt to deport them summarily through expedited removal. But ICE has since started to snare people with pending court cases too.
These arrests are prompting public outcry and concern that ICE and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)—the agency that administers immigration courts—are engaged in a coordinated effort to deprive immigrants of due process and deport them. Hundreds of people have been protesting arrests outside immigration courts in New York, Seattle, San Francisco, and elsewhere. While others—including clergy, veterans, and some political leaders—are accompanying noncitizens to immigration court to try to prevent their arrest, document arrests that occur, and help arrestees inform their families before ICE summarily removes them. Judges have deemed individual arrests unlawful as well as EOIR’s guidance directing immigration judges to dismiss immigration cases.
On July 28, 2025, and July 29, 2025, the Council and Latino Justice PRLDEF filed eleven requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) with ICE and EOIR. These requests seek the agencies’ policies for immigration court arrests and dismissal of immigration proceedings, as well as communications between ICE and EOIR leadership about arrests and dismissals. The Council and Latino Justice sought expedited processing on each request.
On October 15, 2025, the Council and Latino Justice sued ICE, EOIR, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. This lawsuit seeks to obtain the above records.
Access to these records is critical for informing the ongoing public debate about ICE arrests in immigration courts and these courts’ complicity in the Trump Administration’s mass deportation regime.
