When ICE Agents Are Waiting Outside the Courtroom
An asylum seeker and her children face the terrifying new reality of immigration hearings.By Jordan Salama
Photograph by Erica Lansner / Redux
Earlier this month in downtown Manhattan, on the second floor of a deli near Federal Plaza, a twenty-eight-year-old named Mercedes waited anxiously as she prepared for the possibility of her arrest. She was with her eleven-year-old daughter, Jhuliana, who had just finished sixth grade in the Bronx, and her toddler, who was born in New York shortly after Mercedes and Jhuliana crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, in the summer of 2023. The young family sat at a table near a waist-high glass railing that overlooked the cash registers on the first floor, and watched as uniformed men from the Department of Homeland Security filed in and out for coffee and breakfast. “I saw on TikTok the other day that some guys from ICE came into a restaurant and sent everyone running, but they were just getting something to eat,” Mercedes said, laughing nervously. Her toddler, who was almost two, leaned over the railing and called out to the agents in baby gibberish, but the agents did not acknowledge her. “Come, come here!” Mercedes said, and the child ran back into her arms.
It was just before eight in the morning. At nine, Mercedes was scheduled to appear for a “master hearing” in her immigration case. A master hearing is typically the first court hearing in such a case, during which the judge explains respondents’ rights and responsibilities, takes pleadings, and sets a date for a future hearing, at which point respondents with claims to asylum can present any evidence. But, since the spring, federal agents have been lining the hallways and lobbies of the government buildings at 26 Federal Plaza, 290 Broadway, and 201 Varick Street, waiting to arrest migrants as soon as they step out of the courtroom. Initially, in what was perhaps the most commonly observed setup, D.H.S. lawyers would request that respondents’ immigration cases be dismissed; the Department of Justice has encouraged its immigration judges to grant those requests quickly, allowing for migrants’ rapid detention and deportation by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents waiting outside. Now many migrants are being detained regardless of the status of their case. “I just can’t in good faith advise someone to go to Federal Plaza,” Nuala O’Doherty-Naranjo, a New York-based immigration lawyer who is also a well-known community organizer in Queens, told me, just a few days before Mercedes’s scheduled appearance. “Two weeks ago, I would have said maybe. But now? No way.”
After the Trump Administration began making arrests at the courthouses, a couple of months ago, an anti-deportation advocacy group called New Sanctuary Coalition started sending observers to accompany migrants to their federal hearings. “We don’t believe that anyone should be deported,” a Ph.D. student and New Sanctuary volunteer named Brian told me when he arrived at the deli, a little before 8:30 A.M. Brian, who didn’t speak Spanish, handed Mercedes a Know Your Rights flyer. I translated as he asked her to sign a privacy waiver authorizing New Sanctuary to access her information and records in case of her detainment by ICE. Two other New Sanctuary volunteers would be accompanying Mercedes that morning—Jessica, an E.S.L. teacher, and Amelia, a film editor, both of whom arrived shortly after Brian. I asked the three of them if they ever spoke out on behalf of the migrants during the process. They said no. “It would actually do more harm than good,” Amelia said. Their support was largely moral, for companionship and comfort. There was not much more they could help with.
I planned to observe the hearing, too. Earlier this year, I wrote about Mercedes and her family for a piece in this magazine about how TikTok has changed the way that would-be migrants from rural areas in South America think about life in the U.S., and how they stay in touch with their families once they get here. I have remained in contact with Mercedes since the story’s publication, and helped her connect with some local community organizations that offer free social services to recently arrived migrants in the city. In the weeks leading up to her scheduled hearing, I joined Mercedes for two visits to a free legal clinic in Queens that takes place every Tuesday in the basement of one of these nonprofits, Voces Latinas. There, Nuala O’Doherty-Naranjo holds walk-in consultations with migrants who are unable to afford their own legal representation. During her first visit, in mid-June, Mercedes was one of dozens of migrants who waited patiently for their turn. A few months earlier, ICE had entered the organization’s basement, apparently looking for someone, so now the waiting room’s windows were taped over with cardboard paper and the door automatically locked from the inside.
After nearly three hours, Mercedes entered O’Doherty-Naranjo’s small office. In American-accented Spanish, O’Doherty-Naranjo told Mercedes that the judge who was assigned to her case was “difficult,” but that her asylum application—which was based upon striking claims of sexual violence, stalking and death threats, and police indifference in Ecuador due to her Kichwa-Puruhá Indigenous ethnicity—was strong. Mercedes, whose first language was Kichwa, only learned Spanish when she was around ten years old, and had trouble understanding the lawyer. “She spoke so quickly,” Mercedes said as we left the consultation, a bit bewildered; later, the Voces Latinas staff helped her file a motion to attend her master hearing virtually, instead of in person, which would have allowed her to proceed with her case without potential confrontations with ICE. A few days afterward, the court denied her request. Barring a medical emergency or an out-of-state move, Mercedes would have to show up. “Bring your kids,” O’Doherty-Naranjo told Mercedes on her second visit to the clinic, three weeks later. She hoped that ICE agents might be more reluctant to detain a mother with her children, because of limitations against holding children in detention alongside adults. “So, the floor where a lot of migrants are sleeping right now, they won’t put a kid there,” she continued. “They’ll literally have to get her a hotel room and put an ICE agent at the door. And nobody has the time or the money to do that.” Still, O’Doherty-Naranjo admitted with a sigh, “These days you really never know.”
We were all uneasy when we left the deli for the federal courthouse, at quarter to nine. We were delayed by a few minutes because Jhuliana wanted to buy a packet of Welch’s Fruit Snacks for her sister with a five-dollar bill she’d fished out of her yellow school backpack. “I’m very nervous,” Mercedes told me.
Together, she and Jhuliana pushed the baby’s stroller down the street to the courthouse, passing through metal detectors and placing their belongings in an X-ray machine downstairs, before riding the elevator to a room where men dressed in business-casual attire seemed to be observing us. We walked into a long hallway in which several sheets of pink paper were taped to the wall, listing respondents’ names and hearing times underneath their assigned judge and corresponding courtroom number. The New Sanctuary volunteers, eager to help, began carefully examining the lists. Meanwhile, Jhuliana, who had memorized the judge’s name, almost immediately found the docket with their names near the end of the hallway.
“Here it is,” she said, quietly, in Spanish. “The twentieth floor.”
Two masked federal agents were standing at the entrance to the waiting room as we got off the elevator. Both wore gaiter masks that covered their faces up to their eyes. Both had on “New York” baseball caps, and on one the letters were written in scary-looking gothic font. Mercedes and Jhuliana held their breath as they walked inside. Mercedes checked in with a court employee at a small table in the front, who told her to take a seat and wait until her hearing was called. Already, several dozen people were sitting in the rows of blue chairs. A significant number of them seemed to be observers or volunteer companions. They were mostly older, and one carried a Kamala Harris 2024 tote bag. The rest were immigrant respondents and their families, awaiting their own hearings, dressed as nicely as they could. One family had two children about Jhuliana’s age, a boy and a girl, who were dressed in shalwar kameez. A short, thin young man in a collared T-shirt, whose accent sounded Venezuelan, was present with his wife and small child. Mercedes was wearing a light-blue short-sleeve shirt, with a gold-colored necklace.
The ICE agents wore Army-green T-shirts under tactical vests, their large arms covered with visible tattoos, and belts equipped with a flashlight, handcuffs, and a gun. They walked up and down the length of the room, stopping occasionally to look at the people waiting in their seats. They stared at Jhuliana for a while, before Jessica sat down next to her and began engaging her in conversation. One had a stapled packet of paper, presumably with respondents’ names, photos, and other information, which he seemed to be studying as he surveyed the crowd.
At one point, they stood near the courtroom security officer, a Black man with an Allied Universal security badge, and the three of them started cracking jokes and laughing. I wanted to hear what they were saying, so I moved closer.
“Set an example,” one of the ICE agents said.
“I’ve been waiting to arrest one of those motherfuckers so that they back down,” said the other.
It wasn’t entirely clear who they were talking about, but I could only imagine they meant the observers. Immigration court is a public space, open to all. A few minutes later, the hearing was called. Respondents entered the courtroom first, followed by observers, some of whom were turned away for lack of space. The security officer made an announcement before he closed the door: if any of the observers “impeded” the court proceedings in any way, he would have us removed from the building and charged with trespassing. “No more games,” he said. He sounded very serious. In addition to migrants, multiple observers have already been detained in New York immigration courthouses; in what has arguably been the most high-profile arrest, Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller and a Democratic mayoral candidate, was detained at 26 Federal Plaza for several hours after accompanying a migrant out of his hearing.
After the security officer’s warning, court began. We were all told to turn off our cellphones. When called, respondents were to sit at one of two tables; a tall lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security was already at the other one. The judge was curt but courteous; a Spanish-language interpreter was available on a large video screen to his right. The first three respondents were all Spanish speakers—first a woman with two teen-age children in the audience, then the young man with a wife and small child, and finally another middle-aged woman—and all of them had addresses in the Bronx. The judge gave each of them time to find a lawyer, and set their next hearing dates for June, 2026. Then he jumped the line. “Let’s skip to the woman with the small children in the middle row,” he said. Mercedes was called to the front. The judge asked her what language she was most comfortable in, and she said, “español.” I wondered what would have happened had she said “Kichwa.”
The judge said that he had already given Mercedes time to find a lawyer, and asked if she had been successful. “I’m still saving up for one,” she said, echoing the Spanish words of the respondents before her. But instead of giving her more time the judge said that he would proceed today with part of her case. He verified the details of her address and her children. Because she had crossed the border illegally, near Hidalgo, Texas, without any kind of permission from a border official, he said that the U.S. government had deemed her “inadmissible,” a qualification he agreed with. If she were to be deported, the country of removal was set to Ecuador, her homeland.
Then the judge proceeded to her asylum application, which had been submitted in time. He asked her if she feared returning to her home country. “Yes,” Mercedes answered. The judge encouraged her to find representation and submit evidence for her asylum claim thirty days before her final hearing, which he set for April, 2027. If she could not find a lawyer by then, she would have to represent herself.
He was about to move on to the next person when Mercedes spoke up. “Your Honor, can I ask you for a favor?” she said.
The courtroom held its breath. “Yes,” the judge said.
“My clock, it’s been stopped, and I was wondering if Your Honor could reactivate it.”
She was referring to the hundred-and-fifty-day waiting period after which asylum seekers in the United States can apply for a work permit. Hers hadn’t been running for months. The judge said he didn’t control the clock, but it should be automatically reactivated the following day. If that didn’t happen, she could return to the fifteenth floor of the same building and inquire at the window counter.
That was it. Mercedes said thank you, and took her seat. Her baby was fussing as the next respondent began, so the judge clarified that anyone whose case had been finished for the day was free to go. Some fifteen people stood up—the previous respondents, their families, and various observers—and began to exit. Mercedes and her girls, along with the New Sanctuary volunteers, were some of the first to walk out of the room. The masked agents were standing right by the courtroom door, and no one made eye contact as we walked directly to the elevators. We got into one and pressed the button for the lobby.
“Wait, wait.” Someone rushed to the elevator before the doors closed, calling out in a loud whisper. It was the woman who had gone first, with her two teen-age children. They stepped inside, and the woman said, “Close the door, close the door.” I pressed the button several times and the door slid shut. The other migrants in the elevator looked at one another and sighed.
“Ay, Dios, qué miedo,” the woman said.
“What happened?” I asked in Spanish, as the elevator descended.
“I think that ICE arrested that man.”
“Which man?”
“The one who went second.”
“The one with the family?” I remembered him, the one who sounded Venezuelan, who was thin and short and wore a collared T-shirt.
“Yes, they stopped him when he was coming out and started talking to him. I can’t believe it.”
“It looked like they were waiting for him,” her son said.
“Qué miedo,” the woman said again, and she shivered.
We walked quickly through the ground-floor lobby. Mercedes was holding Jhuliana’s hand in one of hers and pushing the stroller with the other. “How do you feel?” I asked Jhuliana.
“Good,” she said.
I looked at Mercedes. “It’s good news?” I asked. She smiled gently. “Yes.”
Outside the building, we said goodbye to Amelia and Jessica, the New Sanctuary volunteers, before hurrying to the Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall subway station, where we boarded an uptown 6 train. Once we were pulling away from the station, Jhuliana finally opened up with a dramatic exhale. “I was so nervous,” she told me. “I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Mercedes, for her part, quietly texted her sisters, her mother, and her brother on WhatsApp. She thought she’d caught a glimpse of the man ICE had talked to out on the street as we left, but we would never be entirely sure what happened to him. Later, when I got home, I noticed that she had posted a video to TikTok. “Madrecita de mi vida, thank you for your prayers.” The first clip, only two seconds long, showed one of the agents, masked and armed, looming over her.
