No Right to Defense. The Trump Administration Arrests Asylum Seekers at Immigration Court Entrances

CBS News reports that last week the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began an operation for the expedited deportation of immigrants who have court hearings scheduled soon. This is another step by the Trump administration aimed at fulfilling its promise to carry out the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history. Initially, ICE prosecutors ask immigration judges to close certain immigrants' cases, after which agency representatives can arrest them and start the expedited deportation process.

At first glance, it might seem that this concerns people who secretly cross the U.S. border and hide from authorities. However, in practice, these individuals do not fall under the new program since they do not seek legal status and therefore do not use judicial protection. Usually, illegal immigrants avoid being noticed by U.S. authorities altogether, effectively remaining “invisible” to them. Accordingly, their cases do not reach immigration courts, making arrest near the court building impossible.

The program also excludes people who try to enter the U.S. under the guise of refugees but lack genuine grounds for status. They often formally apply for political asylum at the southern U.S. border but then, once free, simply fail to appear in court, remaining in the country illegally. Formally without grounds to live in the U.S., they nevertheless physically avoid deportation.

Conversely, genuine political emigrants with valid cases and ready to defend them in court effectively become the sole targets of such programs.

Let's try to understand why such people also formally fall under the definition of “illegal immigrants” in the U.S.

The fact is that, in practice, when a person approaches a border post from the Mexican side, U.S. border guards do not allow them to cross and immediately send them back without accepting their asylum application. Formally, the person is not yet on U.S. territory, so authorities are not obliged to respond to their protection requests.

Accordingly, to apply for asylum, the seeker is forced to first cross the U.S. border—even if only formally by a few centimeters—and only then apply for asylum. This is why asylum seekers admit they have to rent or even buy vehicles to cross the border so that border guards do not turn them back before passing the critical line.

This way of entering the U.S. cannot be called safe either. Once, U.S. border guards even shot at a car carrying Russian illegal immigrants. However, for a long time, there was no other way to enter the U.S. without a visa. Therefore, even without hiding from authorities and officially applying for asylum, such a person was already categorized as “illegal”—because they crossed those fateful few centimeters without documents.

After an asylum seeker entered the U.S. this way and applied for asylum, it was impossible to ignore them. However, immigration authorities still had many ways to complicate the seeker's life.

First, the so-called Title 42 was in effect for a long time—a provision allowing the acceptance of asylum applications but then sending applicants back to Mexico to await case review outside the U.S. This provision was introduced during the pandemic and repealed only in May 2023.

Second, border guards could send such individuals to temporary immigrant detention centers, colloquially called “immigration prisons.” There, asylum seekers had to wait for their immigration court hearings. In previous years, this fate most often befell those who could not provide sponsors. As immigration lawyer Dmitry Filimonov explained, there is no legal act defining sponsor requirements, and the sponsorship institution developed solely through practice.

If a person ended up in temporary detention centers, they could only be released before court after passing an interview verifying the legitimacy of their fear of persecution back home. However, many immigrants complained that prison conditions were so harsh and access to case materials so limited that preparing adequately for immigration court was almost impossible. Moreover, so-called “fear interviews” were often conducted by “immigration prison” staff with bias. Some Russians encountered outright lies and document forgery by detention center employees.

Paradoxically, “ordinary” illegal immigrants had the right to appeal their detention in immigration court, whereas those who legally applied for asylum at an official border crossing could not go to court and had to rely solely on the “goodwill” of an immigration officer.

Political refugee Alexander Klimanov, who himself went through such a prison, assures that he repeatedly saw immigrants who illegally crossed the border being released on bail, while asylum seekers were kept in custody. According to Alexander, there is likely an economic calculation in this practice: illegal immigrants usually do not appear in court, lose their bail, and then, blending into the country, agree to work for meager wages, which also benefits many.

Recently, the situation has worsened further. The movement Russian America for Democracy in Russia warned last year that Russians and citizens of some other post-Soviet countries crossing the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum are placed in “immigration prisons” indefinitely. Whereas before, such terms lasted from several weeks to a couple of months, now, as the organization notes, “detention for both men and women has become almost total and indefinite.“

Nevertheless, there are frequent cases where asylum seekers are released to await court freely: either immediately after crossing the border or after several weeks or months of detention and after passing the fear legitimacy interview. This is logical, considering the court may take place years after crossing the border. From this moment arises a legal contradiction: the person is, in fact, already in the country completely legally. They have documentation proving legal presence in the U.S., their data is in the court system, and a court date is set. Yet their “illegal immigrant” status, caused by the “original sin” of crossing the border, officially remains.

This situation became even stranger in February 2023 when the Biden administration allowed the use of the CBP One app, previously used for freight delivery to the U.S., to register immigrants. Now anyone wishing to seek asylum had to pre-register online while in Mexico, after which they were officially assigned a date to cross the border at an official checkpoint. Thus, from that point on, such immigrants could no longer be accused of “illegally” crossing the U.S. border!

On January 20, 2025, the Trump administration closed the CBP One app, then relaunched it in March 2025 with a new purpose—to assist illegal immigrants in self-deportation, renaming it “CBP Home.” Nevertheless, even without it, the current program of immigrant arrests near immigration courts looks like real punishment for lawfulness. Essentially, the only “guilt” of these people is that they did not deceive immigration services, did not run from authorities by illegally blending into the country, but genuinely appeared in court for their case hearings as required by U.S. authorities.

Main photo – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detaining a suspect. Photo: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement