ICE Targets Bay Area Immigration Courts, Multiple Arrests Made: Reports

SAN FRANCISCO — Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained at least eight people — four in San Francisco and four in Concord — at immigration courts Tuesday in a move one advocate described as unprecedented and unconstitutional, according to reports.

The four arrested in San Francisco were taken into custody as they left the courtroom, Milli Atkinson, director of the San Francisco Bar Association’s Justice and Diversity Center Immigrant Legal Defense Program, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“ICE is certainly weaponizing the courts and that’s their intention,” deputy defender Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, of the immigration unit in the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, told the Chronicle. “… They want immigrants to be afraid to show up to the court so that the government can more easily fast-track deportations against them.”

Those arrested are expected to be sent to a detention facility, the Chronicle reported.

At least four others were detained by ICE at a Concord immigration court, according to NBC Bay Area.

The Department of Homeland Security told NBC Bay Area in a statement that, "Secretary (Kristi) Noem is reversing (President Joe) Biden's catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets.”

ICE spokesperson Richard Beam confirmed Tuesday to the Chronicle that the agency “is doing targeted enforcement at immigration courts.”