Your Court Date Shouldn’t Be a Trap. Here’s How to Protect Yourself.

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 right to present evidence. No right to apply for asylum, cancellation of removal, or withholding of removal. 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 the EOIR Immigration Court Practice Manual, Chapter 5.12, provides a 10-day response period for motions. 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 get deported anyway. There is no safe option, and that is itself a due process violation.

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 to oral dismissal motions and demand the full 10-day response period under the Practice Manual. Your lawyer can argue that you have a significant interest in remaining in proceedings to pursue relief, which is a factor the immigration judge must weigh before granting dismissal under 8 CFR 1239.2(c). 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, your lawyer can be in federal court within hours filing a habeas corpus petition. 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.

The numbers bear this out. In 2025, federal judges ruled in favor of detained immigrants in roughly 97% of decided habeas cases, 350 wins out of 362 decided cases, across approximately 160 different judges in about 50 federal courts nationwide. More than 11,110 habeas petitions were filed in the first weeks of 2026 alone, surpassing the approximately 9,250 filed in all of 2025. Emergency motions for temporary restraining orders can be heard within hours.

In December 2025, Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California granted a class-action preliminary injunction in Immigrant ARC v. Department of Justice, blocking ICE from arresting people at courthouses within the court's jurisdiction, covering Northern and Central California, Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan. Judge Pitts found the policy "arbitrary and capricious" under the Administrative Procedure Act and recognized the chilling effect on noncitizens' attendance at their own hearings. That injunction is limited to that geographic area, but the legal reasoning applies everywhere, and similar challenges are being litigated across the country, including a class action filed in the D.C. District Court by the National Immigrant Justice Center and others.

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 the one place the government cannot control: federal court.

Something is keeping you up at night. Let’s talk about it. Free consultation in English, Spanish, French, Creole, or Mandarin.