For years, both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice policies limited civil immigration-related arrests in immigration courts because they risked depriving individuals of due process and created a palpable fear that discouraged people from appearing for their hearings.

However, the Trump-Vance administration’s sweeping and unlawful immigration policies have been allowing–and encouraging–Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to conduct arrests at courthouses, when people attend their scheduled hearings. Immigrants and their legal advocates are suing to stop this unlawful policy.

All of the plaintiffs appeared at their hearings intending to request protection or other legal status in the U.S., only to have a government attorney unexpectedly ask the immigration judge to dismiss their cases. When a judge agreed to the dismissal, often over plaintiffs’ objections, the plaintiffs were arrested and detained by ICE agents who were waiting at the courthouse.

Some of the individual plaintiffs have lived in the U.S. for years and were separated from family members, including U.S. citizens, with no notice. Others came fleeing persecution in their homelands. In recent weeks, DHS has instructed ICE officers to arrest individuals even when an immigration judge declines to grant dismissal or an individual seeks to appeal the dismissal, disregarding both the judges’ authority.

One plaintiff was deported to Ecuador within weeks of being arrested at a hearing where he had intended to file an asylum application describing persecution he had faced because of his advocacy for LGBTQ rights; he is now living in hiding. All but two other plaintiffs remain detained, in fear they will be deported to countries including Cuba, Venezuela, the Republic of Guinea, and the Chechen Republic, where they fear persecution because of their political or social activism or LGBTQ identities.

Democracy Forward, the National Immigrant Justice Center, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Legal Education and Services, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area represent 12 people who have been arrested at court hearings, along with organizational plaintiffs Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative (Immigrant ARC) and American Gateways, which provide legal services to people who now face potential arrest and deportation when they attend a court hearing to comply with their immigration proceedings.

The case is Immigrant ARC et al. v. Department of Justice et al.