HOUSTON: Minutes after an immigration judge rejected his asylum case earlier this week, Oscar Gato Sanchez was arrested as he exited a federal courthouse in Houston.

“I’m a Cuban citizen unjustly arrested,” he said as plainclothes officers led him away on Monday. His aunt Olaidys Sanchez, a 54-year-old legal resident of the United States, sobbed against a nearby wall.

Her nephew was placed in an unmarked gray vehicle that took off with sirens blaring, heading towards an immigrant detention center in Conroe, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Houston, according to official documents. Gato Sanchez is now among dozens of migrants detained there, awaiting deportation.

In recent weeks, there has been an uptick of immigration enforcement operations at courthouses, as thousands of migrants pursue the asylum process by attending hearings.

Agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enter the court facilities unidentified, migr­ant advocates say, and those who do wear badges often cover their faces.

Since President Donald Trump returned to power in January, ICE has been authorised to conduct enforcement activities in courts. Journalists have also witnessed arrests at courthouses in New York.

In late May, US media published footage from a court in San Antonio, Texas, where a woman who had just been arrested cried out to ask anyone in earshot to pick up her children from school. Meanwhile, a young boy tried to comfort his mother as they were loaded into a vehicle to be taken away.

Gato Sanchez entered the United States in December 2023. Like many other migrants, he turned himself in to authorities after arriving and was freed on condition that he appear in court at a later date. He filed an asylum petition in May 2024 and went on Monday to the Houston court, where a date was to be set for a hearing on his case.

Instead, a judge rejected the petition, after a public prosecutor said it was “no longer in the best interest of the government,” said Bianca Santorini, a lawyer who began representing Sanchez immediately after his arrest. “If you’re here without legal status, as soon as your case gets dismissed, the case doesn’t exist anymore, the asylum application doesn’t exist anymore,” she said.

“So as soon as he walks out, he’s here with nothing pending,” and it’s at that vulnerable moment that the arrest occurs, she added.

Respecting rules

Santorini believes ICE now has informants inside the courtroom. “They’re not walking to every person who walks out of court and saying ‘let me see your paperwork, let me see what happened.’ They already know when people walk out of court what happened,” she said. Even though he had an asylum application pending, Gato Sanchez will not get his day in court, despite the Constitution guaranteeing such a right, she added.

“It doesn’t guarantee you’ll win. It doesn’t guarantee you get to stay, but it guarantees you have a day in court. Give me the day in court,” she said. The majority of immigrants present themselves in court in good faith, said Cesar Espinosa, executive director of the immigrant-rights organization FIEL.

“Most of these people are following some sort of law, whether it’s asylum law or even showing up to court. They’re here trying to do the right thing, to try to see if they can fight their case,” he said.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2025