Immigrant ARC et al. v. Department of Justice et al. (Ending Fast-Tracked Deportations Without Hearings)
About
This lawsuit was filed on 16 July 2025 to end ongoing collusion between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) that has intentionally stripped people of basic due process rights afforded under U.S. immigration law and the Fifth Amendment in order to place them in expedited removal proceedings and deport them without hearings.
All of the plaintiffs appeared at their hearings intending to request protection or other legal status in the United States, only to have a government attorney unexpectedly ask the immigration judge to dismiss their cases. When a judge agreed to the dismissal, often over plaintiffs’ objections, the plaintiffs were arrested and detained by DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who were waiting at the courthouse. Some of the individual plaintiffs have lived in the United States for years and were separated from family members, including U.S. citizens, with no notice. Others came more recently, fleeing persecution in their homelands. In recent weeks, DHS has instructed ICE officers to arrest individuals even when an immigration judge declines to immediately grant dismissal or an individual seeks to appeal the dismissal, disregarding both the judges’ authority and statutory law requiring that individuals have an opportunity for a full removal hearing to determine whether they should be admitted or deported.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), Democracy Forward, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Legal Education and Services (RAICES), and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCRSF). The lawsuit represents 12 people who have been arrested at court hearings, along with organizational plaintiffs Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative (Immigrant ARC) and American Gateways, which provide legal services to people who now face potential arrest and deportation when they attend a court hearing to comply with their immigration proceedings.