Communities are mobilizing in protest, clashing with ICE, and offering support to people targeted for rapid deportation, after masked officials this past week descended on courthouses, arresting people appearing at federal immigration court hearings, taking people into custody “immediately after judges dismiss their immigration cases.” This move is designed to “speed up deportations and bypass lengthier immigration processes,” as the Trump administration faces continued push back.
In an interview with It’s Going Down, an organizer Nor Cal Resista grassroots group which works with asylum seekers and refugees in Northern California, stated that this latest move by ICE is intended to “create fear and chaos in immigrant communities, and dissuade people from pursuing their legal right to seek asylum,” and is taking place as the Trump administration has revoked Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of people and ICE has continued targeting entire communities, international studentsand US citizens. The GOP is also currently pushing through a new budget proposal that includes massive tax cuts for the super-richbroad attacks on basic safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP for the poorand earmarks billions for the deportation machine.
As the organizer from Nor Cal Resist commented, “[These] tactic[s] show how hollow the administration’s propaganda about immigrants has been from the start— if people didn’t have a legal pathway, there wouldn’t be a need to engage in this kind of theatrics to dissuade people from participating.”
About 5-6 plain-clothed ICE agents were seen outside immigration courtrooms at Seattle’s Federal Building today. Several DHS vehicles were also spotted nearby. In response, dozens of community members rallied outside. This comes after 4 migrants were arrested here yesterday.
According to the Independentsuch arrests at courthouses are happening in multiple US cities, including Phoenix, AZ, Seattle, WA, Dallas, TX, and beyond. In response, communities in various cities are mobilizing. As the Seattle Timesreported, immigrant rights groups and community members rallied in protest outside of a courthouse this past week following arrests by ICE and distributed Know Your Rights materials to those inside.
Demonstrators clash with ICE agents outside a courthouse in Phoenix, AZ.
Protests in Phoenix remain ongoing, with demonstrators in the past few days clashing with ICE agents and attempting to block vans carrying away detainees. Meanwhile in San Diego, as journalist Wendy Fry reported, “A man was detained Friday for allegedly impeding and obstructing the detention of a Guatemalan man who was lawfully attending his immigration court hearing in San Diego. The man from Guatemala was taken to detention even though his attorney said he had done nothing to violate terms of his release.”
A man was detained Friday for allegedly impeding and obstructing the detention of a Guatemalan man who was lawfully attending his immigration court hearing in San Diego. The man from Guatemala was taken to detention even though his attorney said he had done nothing to violate terms of his release.
— Wendy Fry (@wendyfry.bsky.social) 2025-05-24T06:51:36.687Z
An organizer with Nor Cal Resist, who is currently offering “Migra Watch” trainingsspoke on the importance of offering solidarity with those targeted by ICE, stating, “As an organization, we want to make sure we are not doing the work of the administration, but are responding by sharing useful information— that we have legal resources that can help people understand their legal situation, and we have activists who can attend court with folks so they don’t have to go it alone…We have rights and we can exercise them even in this atmosphere of intimidation. We know that many of our community members who are in the asylum process have compelling cases that may lead to grant of asylum, and that is worth going through the process. The administration knows that too, which is another reason why they are choosing to bully people out of participating in the legal process.”
They went to on argue, “As allies we need to continue to show up wherever ICE shows up, whether in courtrooms, at workplaces, or in our neighborhoods, and provide visible and vocal resistance to their attempts to bully and threaten us. We need to make sure people have access to good information so that they can make decisions based on facts rather than fear-mongering. And we need to grow our networks so that we can respond on multiple fronts and pivot as tactics change.”
Arrests by ICE at federal courthouses are also happening as Trump continues to embrace long-discredited conspiracy theories about “white genocide” of South African farmers and has even moved to accept a small number of white Afrikaners as refugees while shutting down asylum access for people fleeing actual war, genocide, and authoritarian governments.
Six years later – as Republicans openly call for cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaidand abolishing the Department of Education – and Trump is back to his old playbook. Outlets like Fox News have also been hard at work, pivoting from concocted tales of “retail crime,” to fever dreams of a “migrant crime crisis” which has no basis in reality. What is different, is that before what were largely fringe anti-Semitic and white supremacist theories floating around the far corners of the Alt-Right, have now become the backbone of the Republican party. “The Great Replacement,” once a conspiracy pushed by only hardline neo-Nazis and white supremacists, is now being touted by everyone from pharma billionaire Vivek RamaswamySwason frozen foods heir and Twitter troll Tucker Carlsonto the billionaire backed Turning Point USA. It’s followers claim that a “cabal” of (often Jewish) elites or simply just “the Democrats,” are purposely orchestrating the mass migration of non-white people into the US for the purpose of replacing the “real Americans.”
Towards this end, Trump has even gone so far as to invoked Hitler, claiming that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nationwhile Republicans and MAGA activists have described those seeking asylum as carrying out an “invasion” of “military aged men.” The fact that a large section of the Republican party has embraced white supremacist conspiracy theories, attacks on migrants and refugees, and calls for mass deportations, made evident by groups such as Turning Point USAitself funded by vast networks of dark money and wealthy donors, shows the degree of institutional backing within elite circles for these fascist policies.
Despite what neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Republican bureaucrats would have us believe, those being pushed to seek refuge in the United States are not animated by a shadowy conspiracy, but instead, by real economic policies and decades of imperial US military intervention. These are policies which have enriched corporate elites, the military industrial complex, and allowed politicians to rise to power – all while leading to the deaths of countless thousands and only further entrenching workers on both sides of the border in poverty and precarity. Those demonized by the fascist Right – workers coming from Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Venezuela – are all countries where the US has has a deep history of military intervention and violent regime change. In the case of Venezuela, US imposed sanctions are also pushing many to seek asylum from a country rocked by economic crisis and rising inflation. Other countries such as Haiti and Afghanistanhave also seen a rise in attempted migration to the US, in response to decades of US imposed instability and crisis.
These realities are not lost on billionaires such as Trump and the fascists they amplify, yet these forces do not which to challenge or oppose the capitalist class attacking workers; instead – they want to re-direct our rage, largely of US born white workers, not against those at the top, but instead, against those at the bottom.
The movement against ICE also continues to evolve. Inspired by the Tesla Takedown movement which has successfully targeted Elon Musk with a wave of demonstrations since the start of the second Trump administration, a new coalition has recently formed to pressure Avelo Airlines to drop its contract to carry out ICE deportation flights. Writing on the group’s website, it stated: “We are organizing and supporting protests in all 54 cities where Avelo operates. Our goal is to drive new ticket sales to zero.” Demonstrations are planned across the US on May 30th and 31st.
Cover Photo: Screenshot via is the Family
