Lockwood: Listening in at immigration court in the summer of courthouse ICE arrests

“This summer has been brutal for our undocumented and mixed status community members in Orange County. The violent arrest of Orange resident Narciso Barranco at his landscaping job in June drew both local and national attention to the frequent raids by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that target people on the basis of their ethnicity, language, and form of employment – now with the Supreme Court’s stamp of approval. But ICE’s malign presence in our community has had a less visible, but no less oppressive, side as well: courthouse arrests.

Since early July, I have been volunteering with an interfaith group at the Santa Ana Immigration Court, located in a featureless office park on Dyer Road. As part of our ministry, we accompany immigrants to their hearings. In the best cases, we are able to take down the contact information of a loved one before ICE agents detain an immigrant and take them out the back door. In the worst cases, we bear silent witness to the routinized violence of an immigration system that tears apart families and the more acute violence of courthouse arrests by plainclothes ICE agents.”

Continue reading: https://voiceofoc.org/2025/09/lockwood-listening-in-at-immigration-court-in-the-summer-of-courthouse-ice-arrests/