New York City Immigration Courts Lead the Nation in Arrests, Court Records Show

Number of arrests on the same day as immigration court hearings under the current Trump administration, by court locations.

Even past the 181 arrests THE CITY identified in government records, our reporting found several additional arrests were not reflected in court records — highlighting that these preliminary tallies are undoubtedly an undercount.

The arrest of 20-year-old high schooler Joselyn Chipantiza-Sisalema, who was taken from a court hearing in late June, for example, is not reflected in the current court data.

The court data also omits the detention of a 19-year-old man from Guinea who ICE records indicate was arrested on the same day as his court hearing at 26 Federal Plaza. He has since been transferred to a detention center in Jonesboro, Louisiana, where he was held for 26 days before being transferred to another detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Black Box

The scene at the immigration courthouse on the 12th floor of 26 Federal Plaza on a recent morning showed the ICE arrest apparatus now well entrenched.

Judge James Loprest was out for the day, but many people with pending cases had dutifully shown up anyway. They took turns speaking to the clerk, who handed them notices to appear at a later date. But as they tried to leave, masked agents confronted them at the doorway asking for identification.

Agents whisked a 19-year-old girl into a stairwell for questioning before releasing her several minutes later.

A woman who looked to be in her thirties, wearing gold high heels and a sparkly green jumpsuit, was not so lucky. The woman’s hands trembled as the agents towered over her. “But I haven’t done anything,” she said incredulously in Spanish, weeping softly and asking a volunteer stationed nearby to call her husband, who was waiting for her outside.

“It’s not a question,” an agent said in Spanish with a thick American accent. “We said you’re leaving with us.”

Moments later, the men surrounded the woman and rushed her to a back stairwell and out of sight. She — like the many others apprehended inside immigration courthouses at 26 Federal Plaza, 290 Broadway and on Varick Street — was detained for processing in the ICE office on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza. As the number of arrests has soared in recent weeks, ICE has struggled to move people into actual detention centers, leaving some for days in cramped holding rooms with no beds and limited food.

On Friday, the ACLU sued the Trump Administration over conditions there. People haven’t been able to speak privately with lawyers, the lawsuit alleged, and are only given limited food and left to sleep for days on concrete floors in unsanitary conditions. DHS has flatly denied any mistreatment while repeatedly denying members of Congress access to the site, keeping it entirely out of public view until THE CITY first published videos of it in July.

City Comptroller Brad Lander — who was arrested at 26 Federal Plaza in June while accompanying immigrants to their court appearances — was reluctant during his most recent visit on Thursday to speculate about why enforcement had taken such a different shape in New York.

“It’s one of the big questions,” Lander said, pointing to the public scenes of intimidation in Los Angeles.

Lander has called on Adams to enforce potential building and fire code violations on ICE’s detention floor, though Adams said he has no jurisdiction over the federal building.

“It’s certainly possible that there’s some implicit deal between the Trump administration and Eric Adams, which is why these arrests are being concentrated here versus other places around the country,” Lander said when pressed about why enforcement here had been so different.

“If the mayor wants to demonstrate that there isn’t, there’s a lot of ways for him to show he’s objecting to what’s going on here that he’s failed to do.”

Asked about Lander’s comments, Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for Adams, said that “I can’t tell you why they’re doing this at 26 Federal Plaza.”

She said the mayor has been clear he’s open to working with the Trump administration on criminal matters but draws the line on civil immigration enforcement. She also noted New York City had not seen immigration raids in sensitive locations like churches and schools — something Adams had urged Homan against during their meetings.

“Not having an adversarial-at-all-times relationship can sometimes be beneficial,” said Mamelak.

The Trump administration sued the mayor and City Council in late July, demanding an end to sanctuary city laws that prohibit local government cooperation with civil immigration enforcement. The Adams administration is suing in return, including three lawsuits on behalf of students arrested at immigration court appearances.

“What’s going on at 26 Fed, the mayor opposes, and he’s taken action on that,” Mamelak said.

Adams, however, has largely avoided answering questions or speaking on camera about those conditions. He has repeatedly stressed that the city isn’t responsible for what happens inside of the ICE offices, now including a jail, inside its real estate in Manhattan.

Meanwhile, ICE immigration court arrests continue day after day for people who continue to show up at their court appearances.

‘Guiding Star’?

Courthouse arrests have mostly targeted people who entered the country less than two years ago, THE CITY’s analysis shows, confirming what the Trump administration has said is a new focus on attempting to funnel people into “expedited removal” proceedings that can circumvent immigration courts, which are facing historic backlogs and take years to resolve a person’s deportation case.

But while DHS prosecutors regularly asked judges to dismiss a person’s deportation case ahead of their arrest, judges rarely approved those requests.

Government prosecutors had requested that judges dismiss the removal proceedings in 100 of the 181 instances where people were arrested on the day of their court hearing, THE CITY’s analysis shows. But judges denied 69 of those requests and left 23 of them undecided.

That means only eight dismissals were approved — and that the other 173 people were arrested while their cases were still ongoing, forcing them to fight their asylum claims from behind bars in most cases.

“We very quickly saw on the ground that the procedural posture didn’t actually matter,” said Allison Cutler, supervising attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group. She is one of a handful of attorneys keeping watch on the courthouse arrests, and attempts to advise people without lawyers of their rights as they’re rushed away.

Over the past two months, Cutler has become friendly with court staff, security guards, judges, and even the federal agents, who’ve all had their status quo upended by the arrests.

Many agents, she pointed out, have been drafted from other agencies, including the U.S. Department of Treasury and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to conduct courthouse arrests on behalf of ICE.

“I’ve had multiple officers tell me that they’re gonna quit,” Cutler said, adding they’ve told her they’ve had to forgo working on prior investigations to arrest people inside courtrooms. “They have asked their supervisors if they can continue to work on their investigations, and they’re being told no, and that they have to go to court and do this.”

Meanwhile, immigration judges and court staff in New York are grappling with a grim new normal, with each of them struggling to work out the rules for their courtrooms.

A former New York immigration judge, who called fairness “the guiding star” of the system, called the shift in tactics deeply troubling and unprecedented.

“Now you’re a tool in someone’s tool box so that a person can be detained,” the judge said.