You did everything right. You showed up to your immigration court hearing, on time, with your documents. You were trying to follow the rules. And ICE was waiting in the hallway.
This is not a hypothetical. Since May 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been executing a coordinated strategy that turns immigration court hearings into arrest operations. ICE trial attorneys file motions to dismiss pending cases, and the moment a judge grants the motion, ICE officers stationed in the courthouse hallway arrest the respondent and funnel them into expedited removal under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1), a fast-track deportation process that strips away virtually all procedural protections. No immigration judge. No hearing. No right to present evidence the ordinary way, and no chance to ask for cancellation of removal. But one protection survives, and it is the most important thing in this article. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1)(A)(ii), if you indicate either an intention to apply for asylum or a fear of persecution, the officer must refer you to an asylum officer for a credible fear interview. The regulation says the same: under 8 C.F.R. § 235.3(b)(4), if you express a fear of persecution or torture, or a fear of returning to your country, the inspecting officer cannot go forward with your removal until you have been referred for that interview. That interview is the doorway to asylum, to withholding of removal, and to protection under the Convention Against Torture. So say the words, out loud and immediately: I am afraid to go back to my country. I want to apply for asylum. Say them to every officer you speak to, and keep saying them until someone writes it down. PBS called it a “deportation trap.” That is exactly what it is.
The Numbers Are Staggering
Between May 20 and July 28, 2025, ICE filed 6,210 motions to dismiss across immigration courts nationwide. Over 80% were oral motions, meaning respondents had no written notice and no time to prepare a response, even though a written motion would normally give the other side a chance to respond, and a motion is deemed unopposed only if no timely response is made. The immigration judge sets and can extend those time limits. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.23(a). Nearly 87% of oral motions were adjudicated the same day they were filed. Almost 80% of those were granted on the spot.
The result was predictable. In absentia removal orders (orders entered against people who did not appear for their hearings) nearly tripled in fiscal year 2025, surpassing 50,000. Every one of the top ten cities for immigration court hearings saw increased no-show rates beginning in summer 2025, directly correlating with the start of the courthouse arrest campaign. People stopped coming to court because going to court became dangerous. And when they stopped coming, they were ordered deported in their absence.
This is the catch-22 the government has engineered. Attend your hearing and risk arrest. Skip your hearing and the judge orders you removed in absentia. Those two outcomes are not equally bad, and you should know why before you decide anything. An in absentia order can be rescinded only on the narrow grounds in 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(b)(5)(C): a motion to reopen filed within 180 days if you can show exceptional circumstances, or a motion filed at any time if you did not receive notice or were in federal or state custody through no fault of your own. And under § 1229a(b)(7), if you were given oral notice of the consequences, an in absentia order makes you ineligible for cancellation of removal, voluntary departure, adjustment of status and registry for ten years. An arrest at the courthouse can be challenged in court. A ten-year statutory bar is far harder to undo. Go to your hearing unless your lawyer has arranged something else, and go prepared.
The Single Most Important Thing You Can Do: Get a Lawyer
When the government issued removal orders in December 2025, only 26.7% of respondents had an attorney. That number is a scandal. An unrepresented person walking into an immigration courtroom in this environment is walking into a knife fight with a spoon.
An experienced immigration attorney changes the calculus entirely. Your lawyer can object on the record to an oral motion to dismiss and ask the judge for time to respond in writing. That is a request, not something you can demand: under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.23(a) the immigration judge sets and extends the time limits for making and replying to motions. Your lawyer can also argue that you have a real stake in staying in proceedings to pursue the relief you have applied for. Be clear about what the regulation does and does not say. 8 C.F.R. § 1239.2(c) lets government counsel move to dismiss on the grounds in 8 C.F.R. § 239.2(a) and provides that dismissal is without prejudice. It names no factors and requires no balancing, so that argument has to stand on its own rather than be presented as something the judge is obliged to weigh. Your lawyer can make sure ICE does not quietly strip away your right to apply for asylum, cancellation of removal under INA § 240A, withholding of removal, or protection under the Convention Against Torture.
And if the worst happens, a lawyer who is set up for this work can move quickly to file a habeas corpus petition in federal court. An unrepresented person cannot do any of this.
Prepare Your Case Like Your Freedom Depends on It
The second most important thing you can do is prepare, and prepare aggressively. This means treating every hearing, including master calendar hearings, as though it were your individual merits hearing. Master calendar hearings are preliminary proceedings where scheduling, pleadings, and procedural matters are addressed. Many people and even some attorneys treat them as routine. They are not routine anymore. The dismiss-and-detain strategy targets master calendar hearings specifically because that is where cases are most vulnerable to dismissal before the merits are ever heard.
Come to every hearing with your asylum application filed, your supporting documents organized, your country conditions evidence assembled, and your witnesses identified. When a judge sees a respondent who is prepared, who has filed applications, who has evidence ready, it is far harder for ICE to argue that the case should be dismissed. Preparation is not just good lawyering. In the current environment, it is a form of protection.
If you are seeking asylum, have your declaration ready. If you are seeking cancellation of removal, have your evidence of hardship to your qualifying relatives documented. If you are seeking adjustment of status, have your visa petition and supporting evidence prepared. Whatever your form of relief, the further along your case is, the stronger your argument against dismissal, and the harder it is for the government to rip that relief away from you.
Video Appearances: One More Reason to Have Counsel
Some immigration judges permit represented parties to appear by Webex video rather than in person. This eliminates the physical risk of a courthouse arrest entirely. Your attorney appears on your behalf, you participate from a safe location, and ICE has no one to grab in the hallway.
But this option is not universally available. Many judges require in-person appearances, particularly for individual merits hearings. Whether video appearance is available depends on the specific judge, the specific court, and the posture of the case. Navigating this requires an attorney who knows the local practice and the individual judges. It is one more reason, among many, that having experienced counsel is not a luxury in the current environment. It is a necessity.
When the Worst Happens: Federal Court Is the Bastion
Here is what we tell every client: hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. And the worst-case preparation is this: we are always ready to go to federal court.
If ICE unlawfully detains you, whether at a court hearing, at your home, or on the street, the remedy is a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, filed in the United States District Court where you are being held. Unlike immigration courts, which are run by the Department of Justice (the same agency that runs ICE’s parent department), federal district courts are staffed by Article III judges with lifetime appointments. They are independent. They answer to the Constitution, not to the administration’s enforcement agenda.
Habeas petitions in immigration cases have been filed in large numbers since 2025, in district courts across the country. We are not going to attach a success rate to them. The figures circulating online measure how often courts agreed with a particular statutory argument, not how often a detained person was released, and we will not repeat them. What is true and useful is narrower: a federal district court can act quickly, and emergency motions are sometimes heard the same day.
On December 24, 2025, Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California postponed the effective date of ICE's courthouse-arrest policies under 5 U.S.C. § 705, in Pablo Sequen v. Albarran, No. 5:25-cv-06487-PCP. That order was a stay of agency action, not a preliminary injunction, and it reached only ICE's San Francisco Area of Responsibility, which covers northern California, Hawaii, Guam and Saipan. It never covered central or southern California. On June 23, 2026, the same court went further: it granted partial summary judgment and, under 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), vacated ICE Policy No. 11072.3, ICE Policy No. 11072.4 and EOIR Operating Policies and Procedures Memorandum 25-06 outright. A vacatur is not confined to one region. The government has appealed to the Ninth Circuit, No. 26-4310, and the district court denied a stay pending appeal. As of September 17, 2026 that relief is in force, but the appeal is pending and this can change, so ask your lawyer where it stands before you rely on it. A separate class action in the District of Columbia, Immigrant ARC v. Department of Justice, No. 1:25-cv-02279 (D.D.C.), before Judge Trevor N. McFadden, was filed on July 16, 2025. It is a different lawsuit from the California case, not an additional one. No injunction has issued in it, and as of September 2026 it was still in summary-judgment briefing. Two points of precision about the California rulings. The December 2025 order found only that the policies were likely arbitrary and capricious, which is the standard for interim relief; the unqualified holding came in the June 2026 merits ruling. And the language about noncitizens being discouraged from appearing for their hearings comes from EOIR's own earlier guidance, quoted by the court, rather than from a finding the judge made on his own.
This is why it matters, critically, that your attorney has federal court experience. Immigration lawyers who only practice before the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals cannot help you when ICE detains you and the fight moves to federal court. We handle federal appeals and habeas petitions as a core part of our practice. We have done it for twenty years. When ICE takes someone, we do not wait. We file.
You Do Not Have to Face This Alone
The government is counting on fear to keep people from asserting their rights. They are counting on people skipping court, losing by default, and disappearing quietly. Do not give them what they want.
Get a lawyer. Prepare your case. Know your options. And know that if the worst happens, there are attorneys who will fight for you in federal court, before judges who are independent of the agency that detained you.
Something is keeping you up at night. Let’s talk about it. Free consultation in English, Spanish, French, Creole, or Mandarin.
Written by
Joshua E. Bardavid
Immigration attorney at Bardavid Law, P.C. with years of experience helping clients navigate the U.S. immigration system.