Immigration agents’ visit to Memphis court draws lawyer worries

MEMPHIS — Immigration attorney Sheryl Hurst said she recently saw something she’d never seen before at Memphis Immigration Court: federal immigration agents who had come to the court to arrest one of her clients.

It happened Oct. 27 just outside a courtroom, she said. “What happened is that they approached me and they said, ‘Hey you know, can we go downstairs and talk about this for a minute?’ And at that point I was in shock because this was the first time something like this has happened to me in court.”

The report of the agents’ visit to immigration court comes during a time of upheaval in U.S. immigration enforcement. The Trump administration is still less than a year old. Immigration arrests are up, enforcement practices are changing rapidly, and it’s unclear how everything will play out.

Hurst said the presence of immigration agents could intimidate clients and witnesses and disrupt the functioning of Memphis Immigration Court, which handles cases from a big swath of the middle of the country and determines whether immigrants can stay in the U.S.

“We already have a hard time trying to get witnesses who are undocumented up here to court,” she said.

Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, did come to court that October day, said an agency spokesman, Thomas Byrd.

He said immigration agents have the right to come to immigration court, and there’s no logical reason they shouldn’t. “That would be like saying police officers aren’t supposed to be at criminal court.”

Byrd, who’s based in New Orleans, said the area immigration supervisor for Memphis told him agents go to the immigration court two or three times per year.

“We’re not prohibited from making arrests there, but generally we don’t,” he said.

Byrd sent a reporter a memorandum of understanding from 1996 between immigration judges and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS. That’s the old immigration agency that preceded the creation of today’s agencies including ICE.

The memo was signed by Michael J. Creppy, the chief immigration judge at the time. “There have been several recent instances where the presence of INS officers in the courtroom has produced a ‘chilling’ effect on the conduct of the hearing,” the memo said.

The memo made several clarifications to the rules. Among them: immigration judges have the power to tell anyone to leave the courtroom, including immigration agents.

The memo says agents are allowed to make arrests near an immigration courtroom, though they can’t make arrests inside courtrooms, except under unusual circumstances.

Heather Prendergast, chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association national ICE liasion committee, said she checked with colleagues around the country and said they didn’t report increased activity by ICE agents inside immigration courts.

“Fortunately it’s uncommon. I’m hopeful that this is not something that becomes more common.” She said it could intimidate people from appearing in court.

Immigration officers are increasingly making arrests in other types of courts, such as state and local courthouses. That’s drawn scrutiny in places like Pasadena, Calif., and Brooklyn, N.Y., as critics argue the arrests disrupt the criminal justice system.

Immigration enforcement authorities have said one reason they make arrests in courthouses is that security screenings at the courthouse entrances make it less likely the people arrested will have weapons.

The incident about which Sheryl Hurst raised concerns took place at the immigration court on the fifth floor of a swanky office building at 80 Monroe Ave. in downtown Memphis.

Hurst said she was there on Oct. 27 representing a woman who’s originally from Guatemala.

She said the client, whom she declined to name, had entered the U.S. illegally years ago and became a mother to two children here. The client left the country, then returned to the country without permission in September 2015 and was stopped at the border with her children.

Authorities at the border allowed her to reenter the United States, but gave her a type of deportation order called an expedited removal order, Hurst said. She was required her to check in with immigration authorities in Memphis and to wear an ankle monitor, Hurst said.

The client was in immigration court that day for a hearing, Hurst said.

The agents who arrived that day had expected the judge to finalize the existing deportation order and they planned to pick up the client, the attorney said.

Instead, the judge ruled in the client’s favor, vacated the deportation order and placed the client back in normal immigration court proceedings, Hurst said.

Hurst says that when she and the client came out of the courtroom, two ICE agents were waiting. They were dressed in plain clothes and didn’t display any weapons, Hurst said. They asked her and her client to talk downstairs.

She said she showed the agent the judge’s order from that day. One took a picture of it to send to his supervisor. They didn’t make an arrest.

Hurst said she may file a formal complaint about the incident. In the meantime, the client’s fate is uncertain. Hurst said she’s waiting for the court to set a hearing date.

Reach reporter Daniel Connolly at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.