CHICAGO (WLS) — A fresh lawsuit claims that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are working together to “intentionally strip people of basic due process rights.” This is allegedly being done by arresting individuals who show up for their immigration court hearings.
This development follows a recent report by the ABC7 I-Team, which highlighted concerns from two former immigration judges. They worry that under President Donald Trump’s second administration, the immigration court system is being sidelined in favor of faster deportations.
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In a recent interview with the I-Team, the former head of Chicago’s immigration court revealed that she and other assistant chief judges nationwide received new directives from the Justice Department. These new guidelines have relaxed the criteria for dismissing cases involving noncitizens in immigration court. According to the judge, once cases were dismissed, ICE agents were present in the court to re-arrest those individuals.
The potential class-action lawsuit was filed Wednesday by a coalition of immigrant legal rights organizations, including Chicago’s National Immigrant Justice Center.
Representing 12 people who have been arrested at immigration court hearings across the country and in Chicago, the lawsuit alleges these people “have been abruptly ripped from their families… for appearing in immigration court, a step required to enable them to proceed with their applications for permission to remain in this country.”
Keren Zwick is the litigation director for the National Immigrant Justice Center.
“The administration has taken many new steps in the immigration space,” Zwick said. “This one really goes after what is an unprecedented policy of going into immigration courts and arresting people while they’re in the courthouses, taking them out of their removal proceedings and placing them into a different kind of removal proceedings where they have less rights.”
Through the use of “expedited removal” — a process that ICE agents can use to deport someone in as little as three days – the lawsuit lays out the latest attempt by the DHS to ramp up immigration arrests after a White House mandate issued in late May demanded “3,000 arrests per day.”
“One of the things that we’re challenging is basically an instruction from the immigration judges that… trial attorneys don’t have to follow the rules anymore,” Zwick said.
Days following the White House’s arrest quota mandate, an email sent out to Assistant Chief Immigration Judges nationwide from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) on May 30 said attorneys for the DHS would be moving to dismiss cases “to meet the demands of an increasing workload” and instructed judges to make same-day decisions on these motions.
The emailed guidance, independently obtained by the I-Team, also relaxed the standards for dismissing cases. At the same time, the email informed judges that DHS would be conducting enforcement at the courts.
Zwick said the guidance emailed to the judges violates historic standards required for dismissing asylum and other citizenship cases already proceeding forward in court.
“The trial attorneys don’t have to give people notice or an opportunity to respond when they’re trying to do these things,” Zwick said.
Former Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jennifer Peyton told the I-Team she was overseeing Chicago’s immigration court when the guidance was sent out.
“We were given guidance that when the department files these motions [to dismiss], we should not give them ten days for a response, we should adjudicate them right on the spot,” Peyton explained when asked about the guidance. “And so, in fact, in the last several months, there was ICE activity within our courtrooms.”
“The dismissals were being granted and the respondents were being let out in handcuffs,” Peyton told the I-Team.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association, an organization that offers independent legal guidance and analysis to immigration court judges and attorneys, told its members last month the “clandestine EOIR directive” appears to violate federal regulations and past immigration practices, as well as EOIR’s own public guidance issued a week after President Trump’s second inauguration.
In an emailed statement responding to the lawsuit, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said making arrests at immigration court is “common sense.”
“The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense,” McLaughlin said. “It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be. It is also safer for our officers and the community. These illegal aliens have gone through security and been screened to not have any weapons.”
“We aren’t some medieval kingdom, there are no legal sanctuaries where you can hide and avoid the consequences for breaking the law,” McLaughlin added, “Nothing in the constitution prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them.”
Kristi Nelson is a former Chicago immigration court judge who resigned just before this guidance was issued. She believes the EOIR should not be telling judges how to adjudicate cases.
“I think it’s inappropriate to be telling a judge how to rule in any particular case,” Nelson said. “That’s not supposed to happen. I mean, we’re supposed to be, as an immigration judge, we’re supposed to be independent.”
Meanwhile, news of Judge Peyton’s firing has reached Congress.
As the I-Team previously reported, Judge Peyton was abruptly terminated from her position leading Chicago’s immigration court this past month after serving in the role for nearly nine years.
In her termination letter, shared with the I-Team, the Attorney General did not state a reason or cause for the dismissal.
A spokesperson for the EOIR would not comment on Peyton’s termination.
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin on Friday said he believes Peyton’s termination was in retaliation after she gave the member of Congress a tour of Chicago’s immigration courthouse.
“I think this kind of pressure on people who are making those decisions, to not even open the door for a member of Congress to observe a public event is shameful,” Durbin told ABC7. “And it tells you that something is going on there that they’re embarrassed about.”
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