When Richard Urdaneta Pulido stepped out of immigration court in downtown Los Angeles last week, he had every reason to believe he was on the right path. A 25-year-old asylum seeker from Venezuela, Pulido entered the U.S. legally using the CBP One app, which the Biden administration once touted as a streamlined and humane path to protection. He followed orders, showed up for court, and tried to navigate a byzantine legal system—without a lawyer—while still reeling from trauma. His brother had been killed in front of him and his mother. He feared for his life if returned to Venezuela.
Instead of finding protection, he found a trap.
Moments after his case was dismissed by an immigration judge—dismissed not because of any wrongdoing, but so that the government could pursue expedited deportation—Pulido was surrounded by five plainclothes ICE agents and arrested. His girlfriend watched in horror as he was led into a restricted elevator. She fell to her knees and cried out his name. Pulido is now imprisoned in an ICE detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, thousands of miles from the woman he loves and the life he tried to build.
This is not a story of border enforcement. It is a story of betrayal.
Last week, federal immigration agents across the country began arresting people, whose cases had just been dismissed, after they walked out of immigration courtrooms.
“People are terrified… The Trump administration intentionally or unintentionally, I suspect it’s intentionally, is creating a climate of fear among people who are trying to follow the rules, and that’s just disgusting and outrageous,” said Niels Frenzen, co-director with USC’s immigration clinic in a recent Orange County Register article.
In Southern California and across the country, the Trump administration has revived and expanded one of its most chilling immigration tactics: arresting immigrants at courthouses, right after their cases have been dismissed or continued. These are not fugitives. These are not people evading the law. These are people who have followed government orders, shown up at the appointed time and place, and tried to comply. Their reward? Handcuffs and deportation proceedings.
Last Friday, at least four individuals were arrested in Los Angeles just after walking out of immigration court, according to Lindsay Toczylowski, president of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. In nearby Santa Ana, ICE agents reportedly detained more than 10 people over the course of the week—among them, families with young children, including a father separated from his wife and four-year-old daughter, and a partner taken while his girlfriend stood by holding their seven-month-old baby.
The arrests were carried out by agents in plainclothes—some without visible identification, some masked, some working with private security contractors like G4S, which is owned by Allied Universal. In at least one case, agents drove away in a blue SUV with no license plate.
This is law enforcement turned covert operation. This is how democratic norms rot from the inside.
Veteran immigration attorneys say they’ve never seen tactics like these.
“It’s not normal that ICE agents would be in the courtroom about to arrest people,” said Toczylowski, who has practiced for 15 years.
Niels Frenzen, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic, echoed the alarm: this is a deliberate campaign of intimidation, he warned, designed to make immigrants afraid of accessing the very courts tasked with adjudicating their claims.
For those defending immigration policies, focusing completely on the “criminal” element, the latest actions should—but undoubtedly will not—dispel that myth.
The irony is that the administration isn’t targeting absconders—it’s targeting the compliant. Why? Because courthouse arrests sow the deepest fear. If even those who follow the rules can be disappeared by plainclothes agents, what protection is there for anyone?
It’s also part of a larger, darker shift: the expansion of expedited removal. Created by the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, expedited removal was originally used along the border to quickly deport people without formal court hearings. Now, under Trump’s second term, the Department of Homeland Security has expanded its use into the interior. If you’ve been in the U.S. less than two years, you can now be arrested without warning and deported without ever seeing a judge. No hearing. No lawyer. No appeal.
That’s what happened to Pulido. In court, he tried to speak. “I believe I can contribute a lot to this country,” he told Judge Peter Kim. He explained he was looking for a better life for himself and his children. But Kim brushed him aside. “Those are not grounds to oppose the dismissal,” the judge said.
That might be true under a narrow legal reading. But morally, it’s indefensible. This young man, traumatized, unrepresented, confused by a complex legal process in a second language, was not given the chance to make his case for asylum. He was not warned that the dismissal would expose him to immediate arrest and deportation. The court did not protect him. It served him up.
ICE waited in the hallway.
The message is unmistakable: America’s immigration system is no longer just broken—it is being repurposed into an instrument of cruelty and fear.
Immigrants who might have otherwise complied with court orders, pursued legal remedies, or sought counsel now face an impossible choice: risk arrest by showing up or risk default by staying home. Either way, they lose. Either way, the administration wins—by quietly shrinking the pipeline of asylum claims, by sweeping people off the streets without public scrutiny, by creating an aura of helplessness that serves its political narrative.
These aren’t policies aimed at protecting public safety or ensuring accountability. They’re policies of attrition and deterrence—policies that criminalize presence, punish compliance, and erase due process from the equation.
This isn’t just an immigration issue. It’s a rule-of-law issue. It’s a civil rights issue. It’s a moral issue.
When we allow law enforcement to exploit the courthouse—one of the few remaining institutions where immigrants are supposed to be able to seek justice—we corrode the foundation of the legal system itself. We transform the court from a place of adjudication to a site of ambush. We undermine public trust, not just among immigrants, but among all people who rely on fair process and equal protection.
And we set a precedent that will not be easy to undo.
What’s happening in Los Angeles, in Santa Ana, and soon, perhaps, in cities across the country, is not a neutral enforcement practice. It is a test of whether this country can still live up to its own ideals. Will we defend the dignity of the courtroom? Will we protect those who seek lawful refuge? Will we draw a line against state-sanctioned intimidation?
Or will we let plainclothes agents and private contractors decide who belongs here?
The arrest of Richard Urdaneta Pulido should haunt us. Not because it is exceptional—but because it is becoming the new normal. A country that punishes people for obeying the law is a country slipping into something else entirely.
If we still believe in justice, now is the time to speak up. Because if the courthouse is no longer safe, then none of us are.
So the judge dismissed a claim for asylum, and the asylum-seeker will be deported as a result.
Got it.
Now, one could make an argument “either way”, here – that immediate deportation is an incentive to “not participate” in the asylum process, OR that those seeking asylum would ignore a judge’s dismissal if there was no “result” of such a dismissal.
But I’m failing to see how it’s about “intimidation”.
Why have an asylum process at all, if those seeking asylum aren’t satisfied unless the answer is “yes” (approval)?