ICE's novel strategy allows for more arrests from inside immigration courts
By Ximena Bustillo
Updated Thursday, June 12, 2025 • 5:02 AM EDT
Heard on All Things Considered
Vadzim Bulaty, a political asylee from Belarus who opposed the country's seven-term president Alexander Lukashenko, was sitting in a Minnesota immigration courtroom last month.
It was the first immigration court hearing for his eldest son, Aliaksandr Bulaty. Aliaksandr had come to the U.S. to join his father around May 2024 by seeking asylum through the app formerly known as CBP One, which allowed migrants to schedule appointments at legal ports of entry.
The goal of the first court hearing was to ask for more time for a lawyer to help get Aliaksandr's asylum application connected to his father's. But they never got a chance to tell the judge.
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During the hearing in May, the attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requested that the case be dismissed, his father recalled in an interview to NPR.
"I understood the prosecutor's words as the case was being dismissed, and you can be free," Vadzim Bulaty said. "I didn't expect it to be a legal trap, a verbal trap."
Father and son went to leave the building, believing their cases were now going to continue as one. Instead, officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement met them just a few steps from the exit with handcuffs and told Aliaksandr he was subject to expedited removal within three days.
Aliaksandr has spent weeks at the Freeborn Adult Detention Center, with his lawyer fighting his deportation to a country where his father says he's likely to get immediately imprisoned.
He is one of over 100 people who have been arrested at immigration courts across the country as a part of ICE's latest strategy to meet its steep new 3,000-person daily arrest quota.
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The strategy of DHS dismissing cases and then arresting migrants at court at first caught judges and lawyers off guard.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees immigration courts and is part of the Department of Justice, detailed the approach for judges in a May 30 email obtained by NPR. NBC was first to report that email.
It's one of several tactics the Trump administration has used in order to streamline cases and more quickly deport people without legal status from the U.S.
The tactics seem to be paying off: Last week, the administration touted two days of national arrest numbers topping 2,000, their highest since President Trump took office, according to DHS.
"This is all part of a strategy by the current administration to essentially bypass the legal system, to bypass courts, deny people the opportunity of getting a fair day in court in order to rapidly deport as many people as possible without respect for the rule of law," said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
In response to questions about the new strategy in immigration courts, ICE said most people who entered the U.S. illegally within the past two years can be quickly deported.
"ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been," a spokesperson for the agency said in an email to NPR.
Not everyone caught up in this tactic entered the country illegally; those who entered using the CBP One app during the Biden administration were granted temporary permissions to reside in the U.S., which Trump has since revoked.
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Change from past practice
The May 30 email from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, addressed to court supervisors, mentioned that the courts' "caseload has greatly increased in the past few months."
In order to reduce the backlog, judges are encouraged to immediately make a decision on whether to dismiss a case from the bench, and without giving migrants the typical 10 days to dispute it.
Veronica Cardenas, former assistant chief counsel at DHS under three prior presidents, including during Trump's first term, said that a motion to "dismiss" a case in immigration courts used to be a good thing.
In the past, she said, that motion would remove the case from the court calendar and the migrant could seek relief from deportation through other ways such as by applying for asylum.
"But now we're seeing that that dismissal actually means something worse for noncitizens, where ICE officers are waiting outside to handcuff them," said Cardenas, now an immigration lawyer in New Jersey.
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Under the new approach, after their case is dismissed, immigrants are arrested again, at times before even leaving the building — as happened with Aliaksandr Bulaty. Then they're put in a process called expedited removal: a fast-track for deportation that does not guarantee the right to a day in court and comes with a five-year restriction on attempting to return to the U.S.
ICE arrested hundreds of people within the first few days of deploying this strategy in late May in immigration courts, according to a count from the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Immigration attorneys first noticed the new strategy in about 14 cities, and over the past few weeks has seen it expanded to other states and courts, including Boston, New York City and Northern Virginia.
Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, said the new policy aligns with Trump's mass deportation effort by helping courts reduce their case backlog — which currently sits at about 4 million cases.
She also said part of the strategy could also be encouraging people in detention to leave rather than fighting their claims.
"The alien uses that factor [detention] to weigh what they're going to do as well," Ries said. "We can't overlook self-deportation."
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But immigration lawyers argue that this tactic of pulling people out of the court process sidesteps their due process.
The situation puts immigrants in a situation where they may face arrest or an order of removal even if they're following the steps to try to stay in the U.S., Cardenas said.
And if immigrants fail to show up for their scheduled court dates, that results in a final order of removal, too. Cardenas said the policy penalizes those who thought they were doing things "the right way."
"What this administration is doing is instilling that fear, because the rules are changing every day and there's no stability," she said.
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Fears of returning to dictatorship
Aliaksandr Bulaty is still fighting his removal. It helps that, unlike many other migrants, he has a lawyer: Malinda Schmiechen, who also represented his father's case.
"My client is someone who has no criminal background. He had filed an asylum application," Schmiechen said. "He is now detained in a county jail and he's going to be there for a while."
This week, Schmiechen was able to successfully argue before an immigration judge to reopen Aliaksandr's immigration case. This means that for now he won't be imminently deported, though he will stay in detention. His case now returns to the removal proceedings it was in before he was detained.
Vadzim Bulaty said he is able to regularly talk to his son — and hears about his overcrowded detention room shared with 30 others; the lights don't turn off and they're not allowed to go outside for fresh air.
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Since immigrating to the U.S. in 2022, Vadzim Bulaty said he has generally felt welcome. The family has adjusted well, learned to smile and greet strangers in their small suburb of Otsego, Minn.
"We are very glad that we ended up in America, because America is an amazing country in relation to immigrants," he said. "In no other country in the world would we be so at home."
However, even with his own legal status, he is now worried for himself, his wife and his other sons. And he fears what could happen to his eldest.
"I ran away from one dictatorship," he said. "And I would not want another dictatorship in America."
NPR's Anna Yukhananov contributed to this report.
Transcript
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The Trump administration is using new tactics in its deportation campaign. One strategy involves making arrests at immigration courts. NPR's Ximena Bustillo has the story.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Vadzim Bulaty is a political asylee from Belarus. He traveled to the U.S. several years ago with his wife and three children, but his fourth and oldest son, who was 17 at the time, was the child of another marriage and had to stay behind.
VADZIM BULATY: (Through interpreter) And we ran away very quickly. We didn't have time. We would not have had time to even get permission to talk to his mother. It was very difficult.
BUSTILLO: His son, Aliaksander, eventually left Belarus on his own and made his way to Mexico. From there, he reached the U.S. border and requested asylum through an app formerly known as CBP One. That was last spring. A year later, Aliaksander went to an immigration court with his father for his first appearance.
MALINDA SCHMIECHEN: So his father told me, Malinda, I made a mistake.
BUSTILLO: That's Malinda Schmiechen, a lawyer for the Bulatys who was unable to be at court that day and told them to ask the judge for more time to bring a lawyer.
SCHMIECHEN: He said, I didn't do what you told me. The government attorney said that they would dismiss my son's case. That sounded like a good idea. We agreed for that to happen. And then as soon as we got out of the courtroom, the government arrested my son.
BUSTILLO: Aliaksander has now spent a few weeks in a detention center in Minnesota.
BULATY: (Through interpreter) I understood the prosecutor's words as the termination of the case, and you can be free. But I did not expect that this will be a legal trap, a verbal trap.
BUSTILLO: He is one of over 100 people that immigration officers have arrested after the Department of Homeland Security attorneys dismissed their cases in immigration court. That's according to account from the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed the new tactics to NPR. Lora Ries from the right-leaning Heritage Foundation says that helps the administration's strategy of mass deportations.
LORA RIES: Immigration detention is a means towards removal, if that's the final order. And expedited removal is a shorter process than regular proceedings.
BUSTILLO: There is a nearly 4-million-case backlog in immigration courts. The Trump administration is encouraging judges to move faster through that backlog. According to an email obtained by NPR, immigration judges have been encouraged to dismiss cases from the bench, knowing that immigrants may be immediately arrested. Veronica Cardenas, an immigration attorney, says the strategy has caught judges, attorneys and immigrants by surprise.
VERONICA CARDENAS: It's caught a lot of people off guard because this used to be something that was positive, where a case was dismissed.
BUSTILLO: Cardenas, a former DHS attorney, said immigrants are put in a tough spot. If they don't show up to their scheduled court hearing, that is also an automatic order for removal.
CARDENAS: And it makes everything so difficult. You can't outrun this administration.
BUSTILLO: Aliaksander's father says that they are glad they came to America, a country they believed welcomed immigrants with open arms.
BULATY: (Through interpreter) Here we feel, or rather we felt, at home, and we took many things as an example for our family - for example, to smile at everyone when meeting them, to say hello.
BUSTILLO: The Bulatys are afraid of what could happen to their son if he returns to Belarus.
BULATY: (Through interpreter) What's happening now, it scares us. You know, I ran away from one dictatorship, and I would not want another dictatorship to be in America.
BUSTILLO: His lawyer got Aliaksander's immigration case reopened in court. He will not be immediately deported, but he'll remain in detention, and his case resets to where it was on that day he was arrested.
Ximena Bustillo, NPR News, Washington.