Whereas the Trump administration likes to boast about its immigration crackdown, it’s not desirous to share the main points of who’s doing the cracking. And now it is not simply Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers who can conceal their identities. Authorities legal professionals representing ICE get to take action as nicely.
On Tuesday, The Intercept reported that at the very least two immigration judges are permitting authorities legal professionals to cover their names. Does anybody else get to cover their names? In fact not. When Decide ShaSha Xu declared at first of a listening to that “We’re probably not doing names publicly,” she did so solely after stating her title, the title of the immigrants, and the names of their legal professionals. That is crucial, per Xu, as a result of “privateness” and “issues currently have modified.”
That is mainly exceptional. Courts preserve an entire report of proceedings, and figuring out the legal professionals concerned is a core a part of that. Secret legal professionals are simply not a factor. This leaves immigrants unable even to determine who’s pushing for them to be deported. However hey, some ICE attorneys assume that it’s “harmful to state their names publicly,” and a few immigration judges seem to agree.
You could be questioning why immigration judges would go together with this. Immigration judges aren’t appointed and confirmed by the Senate, and they aren’t a part of the judicial department. Moderately, they’re staff of the manager department, so their hiring, firing, and duties are dictated by the administration. That’s why they are complicit within the ruses that the administration is utilizing to make simple arrests.
In late Could, immigration judges acquired a memo from the Division of Justice, telling them to let Division of Homeland Safety legal professionals make oral motions to dismiss, then grant the dismissal instantly. As soon as the immigrant leaves the courtroom, since they not have a pending immigration case, ICE arrests them and proceeds to deport them. If immigration judges will go together with that, there’s no cause to assume they received’t let DHS attorneys keep nameless.
Whereas the transfer to make the courtroom course of opaque is new, it builds on the administration’s permitting ICE brokers to wear masks and obscure their identities. Can’t actually have a secret police until you even have a secret court docket, as a result of the intent right here is to deprive immigrants of the due course of they’re owed. For the reason that Supreme Court docket has blessed the thought of deporting detainees with no significant alternative for them to problem their removing, it’s fairly clear that they’re not going to restrain the administration.
The administration has justified maintaining the identities of ICE brokers secret due to an alleged spike in violence towards them. Nonetheless, that quantity is ever-shifting. First, the violence had elevated by 300%, then by 413%, after which by 700%. When The Washington Put up’s Philip Bump analyzed the data final month, he discovered that violence towards Customs and Border Patrol brokers was down in contrast with the identical interval in 2024, and that the variety of incidents was very low. For instance, in March 2025, there have been 20 incidents of violence towards CBP brokers. In April, it was 32, and in Could, 21. That’s why the administration retains utilizing percentages slightly than uncooked numbers.
There are different methods the administration is working to cloak their unlawful actions.
Immigration legal professionals have allegedly been blocked from seeing their purchasers. Members of Congress have been refused entry to immigration amenities regardless of a regulation permitting them to entry the facilities, however the administration has fastened that by merely stating it would not observe the regulation. Lawmakers now should give DHS 72 hours’ discover earlier than visiting an immigration facility, and DHS can deny them entry for any cause or no cause.
The Justice Division even told a court docket on Tuesday that the police report of activist Mahmoud Khalil’s March arrest was privileged and that they wouldn’t present it, due to the regulation enforcement privilege, which protects sure knowledge when an investigation is ongoing. The choose was dumbfounded, stating they have been making an attempt to use the privilege to one thing that already occurred.
All of that is deeply anti-democratic. Secret courts, secret police, secret prices, secret deportations, secret amenities. The administration is constructing a parallel “justice” system for immigrants the place all the pieces is hidden from these it targets, the place everybody colludes to facilitate unlawful, swift, and brutal deportations. It’s the farthest factor from justice possible.
