ICE agents continued arresting immigrants after routine immigration court proceedings in another Lower Manhattan courthouse Thursday.

THE CITY witnessed seven arrests throughout the morning Thursday, which followed another seven arrests yesterday at an immigration courthouse across the street at 26 Federal Plaza. 

The Trump istration has said the arrests are part of a new nationwide push to speedily deport people who entered the country less than two years ago, outside of a typical immigration court proceeding, through a process called “expedited removal.”

Case after case, inside immigration courtrooms at a federal building at 290 Broadway Thursday morning, government attorneys asked immigration judges to dismiss deportation cases — only so they could be switched to “expedited removal” proceedings. During the hearings, about two dozen ICE agents, some wearing masks, lurked in the lobby below. 

“Film this!” one young man urged a reporter in French as he was being detained by agents in the lobby after his hearing, adding “my family is in the Bronx.” ICE officers then took his belongings and escorted him away. 

Another woman stood with shaking hands after her husband was whisked away. She remained in the lobby for hours, after agents told her to wait. She left the building, alone, shortly before 5pm. 

“We’d been here for appointments before and nothing happened,” she said in Spanish, saying her husband was from the Dominican Republic.

Inside the immigration courtrooms above, Trump istration attorneys laid out various explanations for the moves towards expedited removal. 

“The circumstances surrounding this case have changed. We have now elected to proceed through expedited removal proceedings,” one government attorney, who refused to give her name after the hearing, told Judge Aviva Poczter during the case of a Dominican man named Juan. THE CITY is withholding his last name given the precarity of his legal status.

The lawyer went on to cite the Trump istration’s Jan. 24 regulation that expanded the rules for “expedited removal” allowing the government to seek to deport anyone outside of the protections of the typical immigration court process if they had been in the country for less than two years. Previously the rule only targeted people within 100 miles of the border. 

The new process allows the government to “effectively and efficiently” deport, “the large volume of aliens who are without having been itted or paroled,” the attorney went on. 

Judge Poczter approved the dismissal, saying, “the Department of Homeland Security has wide authority to dismiss cases under our laws.”

Sitting before the judge without an attorney and speaking through a translator, Juan asked, “I wanted to know what has happened to the asylum application.”

“They are going to put you into a different type of proceeding where they will address your application” Judge Poczter replied. 

Minutes later, as he rode the elevator downstairs and emerged into the building’s lobby, he was surrounded by masked ICE agents, who arrested him and escorted him back inside.

Pressed by a THE CITY reporter after the hearing the government attorney refused to provide her name. Judge Poczter declined to comment after learning from THE CITY that the person who had exited her courtroom was now detained in ICE custody. 

Similar scenes repeated throughout the day.

“The circumstances have changed,” another government attorney, who also declined to give her name, told immigration Judge James McCarthy in another courtroom, in the case of an Ecuadorean woman who had a pending asylum case. 

“Is there any reason why you have not filed anything in writing?” McCarthy wondered.

“No, your honor,” she replied. 

“Don’t you think it makes more sense to let these people know before they walk in here that you’re making a motion to dismiss,” McCarthy asked back. 

That woman was able to leave court, making her way past the groups of ICE agents in the lobby without being detained. 

That attorney also refused to identify herself at a reporter’s request, as well as a request from a pro bono immigration attorneys in the courtroom. 

Asked what impact they thought the arrests would have on the functioning of immigration courts, Kathryn Mattingly, a spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the U.S. Department of Justice, declined to comment. Marie Ferguson, an ICE spokesperson, previously referred THE CITY to a Department of Homeland Security statement on the courthouse arrests. 

“Secretary Noem is reversing Biden’s catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets,” the statement read. “This istration is once again implementing the rule of law.”

At one point in the morning, Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman, who has an office in the building, tried to confront the roving federal agents in the lobby, asking them why so many were wearing masks.

“One guy said it was because it’s cold,” he told THE CITY. “It’s about 65 degrees. When I followed up, he walked away.”

“We’ve all been told over and over and over again that they are only going after murderers and rapists and convicted criminals. This is the exact opposite of that,” Goldman told THE CITY. “These are people who are following proper procedures to immigrate to this country.”

While the new expedited removal rule change has been on the books since January, this past week was the first to see the Trump istration begin to deploy it to target people in immigration courts in large numbers, in New York City and other locations across the country from San Diego to Chicago. Several legal challenges to the new rule are wending their way through the federal court system.

Rumours started spreading among activists and immigration attorneys last week of the new tactic starting in New York City and Chalkbeat reported earlier this week on the detention of a 20-year-old Bronx public school student who was detained outside in a similar fashion.

As courthouse arrests escalated this week, a crowd of activists descended on one Lower Manhattan immigration courthouse Wednesday evening attempting to block buses of detainees being moved to another location. Dozens of NYPD agents responded, arresting the demonstrators and clearing the path for the vans to leave the area, and people inside banged on the caged tinted window. 

Immigration attorneys, already in direly short supply, were at a loss grappling on what advice they might offer people headed to court. 

“I’ve been an immigration lawyer for 20 years and I’m just trying to process this,” said one attorney who observed proceedings at 290 Broadway on Thursday. “I’ve never seen such craziness.”