Some immigrants are worried that routine check-ins with immigration authorities are making them more vulnerable to being detained, as President Donald Trump and his administration ramp up arrests and deportations throughout the country.
This week, a 30-year-old Venezuelan immigrant who had been periodically checking in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in South Florida — as part of a process to remain in the U.S. — was unexpectedly detained during a routine appointment, his mother .
The mother, whose name is being withheld to protect her son, said he was asked to show up at an immigration supervision office in Delray Beach on Monday afternoon to follow up on his immigration application and “fix something … and, that was a lie,” she said.
The mother said she waited five hours for her son to finish his appointment but instead, she saw him being escorted out by immigration officers.
Her son has lived in the U.S. since he was 6 years old, she said, and despite reporting to his appointment, he was not given a fair chance to fight a deportation order placed against him.
“They didn’t give us the opportunity to at least tell us, ‘Look, you have a deportation order, we want you to be removed by February or something,’” the mother said.
On any given year, thousands of undocumented immigrants across the country regularly report to ICE. These routine appointments help immigration officials keep track of those who are not a priority for deportation as immigrants seek legal alternatives to remain in the U.S.
Immigration officials also have in place additional supervision programs that allow them to keep tabs on undocumented people through GPS ankle monitors, by phone and other types of monitoring. , there are nearly 179,000 people being monitored through these programs nationwide.
Two New York-based immigration attorneys whose names are being withheld to protect their clients said they started noticing a shift after Trump was elected president in November. People in the state who have long been enrolled in one of these immigration supervision programs, or have been checking in with ICE once or twice a year, were asked to report sooner and, in dozens of cases since, they said, their clients ended up being detained and deported.
The ICE Field Office in New York City did not comment and referred NBC News to ICE’s national office, which did not immediately respond.
‘A lot of fear’
There are immigrants who go to ICE check-ins who don’t have deportation orders and are in the process of trying to adjust their immigration status. Others may have such orders, but are appealing them or are not aware they have a deportation order until they show up to their routine check-in.
That’s what happened to a mother who got deported this week alongside her young daughter, a day after reporting to her check-in, one of the attorneys said.
The mother had not been informed that she had lost an appeal in her immigration case before she showed up to her scheduled appointment with her daughter. Instead, she learned about it during the check-in and, by then, the mother couldn’t do much to fight her case, the attorney said.
A recent memo from the Trump administration expanded immigration officials’ “” powers. This allows them to bypass regular immigration law and speed up deportations of anyone with a removal order, regardless of whether they are considered a priority or not.
The attorneys said they are expecting to see more of these cases across the nation. Currently, . Anecdotally, the New York immigration attorneys said they have seen an increase in the number of people who have been ordered removed without a hearing. They say this means more immigrants may be showing up to their ICE check-ins without knowing they may have a deportation order.
Yet immigrants don’t have much of a choice: Failure to show up for a routine ICE appointment hurts their chances of remaining in the U.S. and can even lead to a deportation order.
They want to comply and go the appointments, according to one attorney, “but there’s a lot of fear, obviously, a lot of anxiety.”
Maria Bilbao is part of the , a coalition of community members who gather outside the in the city of Miramar, South Florida, to provide support to immigrants showing up to routine appointments.
On Wednesday morning, Bilbao met a Colombian woman and a Cuban man who showed up to their routine ICE check-in in Miramar and were told to report to the immigration supervision office in Delray Beach instead, where the 30-year-old Venezuelan immigrant was detained on Monday.
The immigration supervision office in Delray Beach is not an ICE field office; it’s run by a private company contracted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE to operate an “” meant to serve as an alternative to detention.
But according to Bilbao, “what’s happening now is strange.” Instead of routine supervisory visits, “they are being detained more often,” she said in Spanish.
In the eight years Bilbao has been assisting immigrants with their ICE check-in appointments, she had rarely heard of people being detained for deportation at that facility.
The ICE Field Office in Miami didn’t respond to NBC News’ email asking how many people were detained Monday in Delray Beach and whether or not those detained are facing deportation. An at least six people being taken into custody that day.
One woman who accompanied her cousin to his routine appointment at Delray Beach on Monday morning, and saw him removed by immigration authorities, told NBC Miami she believed her cousin was “tricked into coming to see their immigration officer, as they’ve done time and time again — but this time they were caught by surprise and taken away,” she said.
In response to the allegations, Garrett Ripa, the acting assistant director of ICE Field Operations in Miami, “there’s no truth to that.”
When asked if undocumented immigrants would be detained or deported regardless of whether or not they have a criminal record, Ripa said, “Every individual in the United States that is either removable or inadmissible from the United States, regardless of whether they have a crime or not, is potentially an individual that we could take an enforcement action against.”
“Now, does that necessarily mean that we’re going to take that person into immigration custody? Not necessarily, there are other avenues we can explore,” he said.
‘It’s a nightmare’
People being detained during their ICE check-ins is not new. It has happened under various previous administrations, including in 2017, which Bilbao said led to the creation of the Miramar Circle of Protection.
“Back then, we called them ‘silent raids,'” Bilbao said.
“So, we expected something like that to happen again this time around, because it is the easiest way for them to deport people,” she said. “It’s a nightmare.”
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated Trump’s promise to carry out “.”
“If you are an individual, a foreign national, who illegally enters the United States of America, you are by definition a criminal,” .
Being undocumented is considered a civil offense, . But it’s considered a crime when an undocumented immigrant who was previously deported re-enters the United States without permission.
The woman who saw her cousin being detained in Delray Beach on Monday said “these people aren’t bad people, these people aren’t criminals … The person, my family member, they took away today, is not a criminal. He has never been to jail.”
