By MARTHA BELLISLE, CEDAR ATTANASIO and COLLEEN SLEVIN, Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — After a Seattle immigration judge dismissed the deportation case against a Colombian man — exposing him to expedited removal — three people sat with him in the back of the courtroom, taking his car keys for safe-keeping, helping him memorize phone numbers and gathering the names of family members who needed to be notified.

When Judge Brett Parchert asked why they were doing that in court, the volunteers said Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers were outside the door, waiting to take the man into custody, so this was their only chance to help him get his things in order. “ICE is in the waiting room?” the judge asked.

As the mass deportation campaign of President Donald Trump focuses on cities and states led by Democrats and unleashes fear among asylum-seekers and immigrants, their legal defenders sued this week, seeking class-action protections against the arrests outside immigration court hearings. Meanwhile, these volunteers are taking action.

A diverse group — faith leaders, college students, grandmothers, retired lawyers and professors — has been showing up at immigration courts across the nation to escort immigrants at risk of being detained for deportation by masked ICE officials. They’re giving families moral and logistical support, and bearing witness as the people are taken away.

Immigration court volunteer Marjorie Miller gives guidance and support to a Colombian man who was about to be taken into custody by Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers in the hallway after his hearing with an immigration judge in Seattle, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Martha Bellisle)

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project was inundated by so many community members wanting to help that they made a volunteer training video, created “Know Your Rights” sheets in several languages and started a Google sheet where people sign up for shifts, said Stephanie Gai, a staff attorney with the Seattle-based legal services non-profit.

“We could not do it without them,” Gai said. “Some volunteers request time off work so they can come in and help.”

Robby Rohr, a retired non-profit director said she volunteers regularly.

“Being here makes people feel they are remembered and recognized,” she said “It’s such a bureaucratic and confusing process. We try to help them through it.”

Recording videos of detentions to post online online

Volunteers and legal aid groups have long provided free legal orientation in immigration court but the arrests have posed new challenges. Since May, the government has been asking judges to dismiss deportation cases.

Once the judge agrees, ICE officials arrest them in the hallways and put them in fast-track deportation proceedings, no matter which legal immigration pathway they may have been pursuing. Once in custody, it’s often harder to find or afford a lawyer. Immigration judges are executive branch employees, and while some have resisted Homeland Security lawyers’ dismissal orders in some cases, many are granted.

FILE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents escort a detained immigrant into an elevator after he exited an immigration courtroom, Tuesday, June 17, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Olga Fedorova, file)

Masked ICE agents grabbed the Colombian man and led him into the hallway. A volunteer took his backpack to give to his family as he was taken away. Other cases on the day’s docket involved immigrants who didn’t show up. Parchert granted “removal in absentia” orders, enabling ICE to arrest them later.

When asked about these arrests and the volunteers at immigration courts, a senior spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security said ICE is once again implementing the rule of law by reversing “Biden’s catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets.”

Some volunteers have recorded arrests in courtroom hallways, traumatic scenes that are proliferating online. How many similar scenes are happening nationwide remains unclear. The Executive Office for Immigration Review has not released numbers of cases dismissed or arrests made at or near immigration courts.

While most volunteers have done this work without incident, some have been arrested for interfering with ICE agents. New York City Comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested after locking arms with a person in a failed attempt to prevent his detention. Lander’s wife, attorney Meg Barnette, had just joined him in walking migrants from a courtroom to the elevator.

FILE – A family from Cuba is detained and loaded on to a bus with tinted windows and bars following an appearance at immigration court, June 11, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Helping families find their relatives as they disappear

The volunteers’ act of witnessing has proven to be important as people disappear into a detention system that can seem chaotic, leaving families without any information about their whereabouts for days on end.

In a waiting room serving New York City immigration courtrooms, a Spanish-speaking woman with long dark curly hair was sitting anxiously with her daughter after she and her husband had separate hearings. Now he was nowhere to be found.

The Rev. Fabián Arias, a volunteer court observer, said the woman whose first name is Alva approached him asking “Where is my husband?” She showed him his photo.

“ICE detained him,” Arias told her, and tried to comfort her as she trembled, later welling up with tears. A judge had not dismissed the husband’s case, giving him until October to find a lawyer. But that didn’t stop ICE agents from handcuffing him and taking him away as soon as he stepped out of court. The news sparked an outcry by immigration advocates, city officials and a congressman. At a news conference, she gave only her first name and asked that her daughter’s be withheld.

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Brianna Garcia, a college student in El Paso, Texas, said she’s been attending immigration court hearings for weeks where she informs people of their rights and then records ICE agents taking people into custody.

“We escort people so they’re not harassed and help people memorize important phone numbers, since their belongings are confiscated by ICE,” she said.

Paris Thomas began volunteering at the Denver immigration court after hearing about the effort through a network of churches. Wearing a straw hat, he recently waited in the midday heat for people to arrive for afternoon hearings.

Thomas handed people a small paper flyer listing their rights in Spanish on one side and English on the other. One man walking with a woman told him “thank you. Thank you.” Another man gave him a hug.

Denver volunteer Don Marsh said they offer to walk people to their cars after court appearances, so they can contact attorneys and family if ICE arrests them.

Marsh said he’s never done anything like this before, but wants to do something to preserve the nation’s “rule of law” now that unidentifiable government agents are “snatching” people off the streets.

“If we’re not all safe, no one’s safe,” he said.

Attanasio reported from New York City and Slevin from Denver.

By SUDHIN THANAWALA, Associated Press

Thousands of Afghans in the U.S. are no longer protected from deportation after a federal appeals court refused to postpone the Trump administration’s decision to end their legal status.

A three-judge panel of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia said in a ruling late Monday there was “insufficient evidence to warrant the extraordinary remedy of a postponement” of the administration’s decision not to extend Temporary Protected Status for people from Afghanistan and Cameroon.

TPS for Afghans ended July 14, but was briefly extended by the appeals court through July 21 while it considered an emergency request for a longer postponement.

The Department of Homeland Security in May said it was ending Temporary Protected Status for 11,700 people from Afghanistan in 60 days. That status — in place since 2022 — had allowed them to work and meant the government couldn’t deport them.

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CASA, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group, sued the administration over the TPS revocation for Afghans as well as for people from Cameroon, which expire August 4. It said the decisions were racially motivated and failed to follow a process laid out by Congress.

A federal judge allowed the lawsuit to go forward but didn’t grant CASA’s request to keep the protections in place while the lawsuit plays out.

A phone message for CASA on Tuesday was not immediately returned. Without an extension, TPS holders from Afghanistan and Cameroon face a “devastating choice – abandoning their homes, relinquishing their employment, and uprooting their lives to return to a country where they face the threat of severe physical harm or even death, or remaining in the United States in a state of legal uncertainty while they wait for other immigration processes to play out,” CASA warned in court documents.

In its decision on Monday, the appeals court said CASA had made a “plausible” legal claim against the administration, and urged the lower court to move the case forward expeditiously.

It also said many of the TPS holders from the two countries may be eligible for other legal protections that remain available to them.

Temporary Protected Status can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people who face safety concerns in their home countries because of armed conflict, environmental disaster or other conditions. They can’t be deported and can work legally in the U.S., but they don’t have a pathway to citizenship.

The status, however, is inherently precarious because it is up to the Homeland Security secretary to renew the protections regularly — usually every 18 months. The Trump administration has pushed to remove Temporary Protected Status from people from seven countries, with Venezuela and Haiti making up the biggest chunk of the hundreds of thousands of people affected.

Homeland Security officials said in their decision to end the Temporary Protected Status for Afghans that the situation in their home country was getting better.

Groups that help Afghan TPS holders say the country is still extremely dangerous.

“Ending TPS does not align with the reality of circumstances on the ground in Afghanistan,” Global Refuge President and CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah said in a statement. “Conditions remain dire, especially for allies who supported the U.S. mission, as well as women, girls, religious minorities, and ethnic groups targeted by the Taliban.”

He called on Congress to provide Afghan TPS holders with a “permanent path to safety and stability.”

A man fatally shot in a homeless encampment in St. Paul was identified by the medical examiner’s office Tuesday as a 37-year-old.

Steffon T. Jennings, of St. Paul, died in the North End on Saturday. Officers responded to a reported shooting in the 1200 block of Jackson Street and were directed to a tent in the encampment, where police said several people were attempting to give Jennings first aid.

Officers took over and called St. Paul Fire Department medics, who pronounced Jennings dead. He’d sustained multiple gunshot wounds, police said.

No one was under arrest as of Tuesday afternoon and police continued to ask anyone with information to call 651-266-5650.

Jennings’ homicide was the fifth of the year in St. Paul. There were 15 homicides in the city as of this time last year, including a shooting by officers that has since been found to be legally justified.

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By KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — A Spanish-language journalist who was arrested while covering a protest just outside Atlanta last month and is being held in a federal immigration jail felt a duty to help those whose voices often go unheard, his children said Tuesday.

Police in DeKalb County arrested Mario Guevara while he was covering a protest on June 14, and he was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a few days later. An immigration judge set a $7,500 bond for him earlier this month, but that ruling has been put on hold while the government appeals it.

For now, Guevara is being held in an immigration detention center in Folkston, in southeast Georgia, near the Florida border and a five-hour drive from his family in suburban Atlanta.

Katherine Guevara, 27, said that for more than 20 years she has watched her father’s “unwavering dedication and selfless commitment to serving the Hispanic community.”

“He chased stories that mattered, stories that told the truth about immigration, injustice, about people who usually go ignored,” she said during a news conference at the Georgia state Capitol.

Guevara, 47, fled El Salvador two decades ago and drew a big audience as a journalist in the Atlanta area. He worked for Mundo Hispanico, a Spanish-language newspaper, for years before starting a digital news outlet called MG News a year ago. He was livestreaming video on social media from a “No Kings” rally protesting President Donald Trump’s administration when local police arrested him in DeKalb County.

Guevara frequently arrives on the scene where ICE or other law enforcement agencies are active, often after getting tips from community members. He regularly livestreams what he’s seeing on social media.

“Growing up, I didn’t always understand why my dad was so obsessed with his work, why he’d jump up and leave dinner to chase down a story. But now I do,” said Oscar Guevara, 21, who now works as a photojournalist for MG News.

Guevara’s children were joined at the news conference by members of civil rights and press freedom groups, as well as state lawmakers.

“Mario Guevara is journalist and so his detention raises even bigger questions, about civil rights, constitutional rights, the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press,” state Sen. Josh McLaurin said.

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Giovanni Diaz, one of Guevara’s lawyers, said he and the family have been speaking to Guevara regularly. He said Guevara is doing well but has “been shaken to his core” because he believes he’s being unfairly punished by a country he loves so much.

“He is still smiling. He’s in good spirits. And he’s in it for the fight, and so are we,” Diaz said.

Guevara is “essentially in isolation,” Diaz said, adding that ICE has said that it’s for his own safety since he’s a public figure and his reporting style was sometimes controversial. But being kept alone, “that wears on you,” Diaz said.

An immigration judge agreed with Guevara’s lawyers that the journalist is not a danger to the community, but ICE is arguing he’s such a threat that he shouldn’t be released, Diaz said. The lawyer said he’s optimistic that the Board of Immigration Appeals will decide in Guevara’s favor and he will be able to post bond, allowing him to be free while he fights the government’s efforts to deport him.

Guevara has been authorized to work and remain in the country, Diaz said. A previous immigration case against him was administratively closed more than a decade ago, and he has a pending green card application.

Video from his arrest shows Guevara wearing a bright red shirt under a protective vest with “PRESS” printed across his chest. He could be heard telling a police officer, “I’m a member of the media, officer.” He was standing on a sidewalk with other journalists, with no sign of big crowds or confrontations around him, moments before he was taken away.

Police charged Guevara with unlawful assembly, obstruction of police and being a pedestrian on or along the roadway. His lawyers worked to get him released and he was granted bond in DeKalb, but ICE had put a hold on him and he was held until they came to pick him up.

DeKalb County Solicitor-General Donna Coleman-Stribling on June 25 dismissed the charges, saying that video showed that Guevara was “generally in compliance and does not demonstrate the intent to disregard law enforcement directives.”

The sheriff’s office in neighboring Gwinnett County announced on June 20, once Guevara was already in ICE custody, that it had secured warrants against him on charges of distracted driving, failure to obey a traffic control device and reckless driving. Gwinnett County Solicitor-General Lisamarie Bristol announced July 10 that she would not pursue those charges.