by MARIANA GARCIA September 5, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)
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Three individuals were arrested following their immigration court hearings on Friday morning in downtown San Francisco.
Two young men, one from Colombia and the other from Peru, were arrested following a motion to dismiss their cases, a tactic used by the Department of Homeland Security attorneys to fast-track deportations. Even if the judge rejects the motion, immigrants are still arrested. The third, a Colombian man, asked Judge Joseph Park to let him self-deport. He was granted a “voluntary departure” order, but ICE arrested him anyway.
The first man who was detained, a 26-year-old from Colombia, had driven from Illinois to California two days before his hearing. He has been in the United States for a year and a half, originally residing in San Jose before moving to Illinois, where he worked as a graphic designer. He had filed an application for asylum in December 2024.
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The Department of Homeland Security attorney motioned to dismiss his case, citing a “change of circumstance.” Park did not grant the motion.
When the man returned to the courtroom benches, attorney of the day Brittney Rezaei gathered the emergency contact information of a friend who had driven him to court that morning, and informed him what would happen on exiting the courtroom. Sure enough, four ICE agents were waiting on the other side of the door. They promptly arrested him.
Outside of the court building, the man’s friend, an older woman from Colombia, was waiting for him to return. She has known the man since he was a young boy and had driven him to his hearing from her home in Salinas earlier that morning. With tears in her eyes, she asked in Spanish, “Why is this happening?”
Following his arrest, two men were called before the judge in a group removal proceeding. One was an older man from Colombia, the other was a 21-year-old from Peru. They did not know each other.
When Park asked the Colombian if he was fearful of returning to his home country, the man desperately looked back at Rezaei in the audience, as if to see how he should answer. He hesitated and then responded no. The DHS attorney signaled a motion to dismiss the man’s case, citing that the man did not fear returning to his home country.
The man then made a comment to Judge Park, saying that he had already booked a flight back to Colombia in December out of fear that he would be involuntarily deported. Park asked the man if he would like to be granted a “voluntary departure” order. Yes, he said. Park granted the order, giving the man until Jan. 5, 2026 to return to Colombia.
After this, the DHS attorney signaled a motion to dismiss the young Peruvian man’s case. Once again, Park did not approve the motion.
The two men then met with two so-called attorneys-of-the-day who provide free legal counsel. They huddled with the lawyers in the back of the courtroom, calling loved ones and informing them that they were about to be detained. “I don’t want to be deported, I don’t want to be held in a cell,” said the older Colombian man. Despite his official voluntary departure order, ICE agents arrested both him and the Peruvian man in the hallway outside the courtroom.
The attorneys they spoke with in court were already in contact with their offices where people were actively working on filing habeas corpus petitions for all three individuals. Such filings challenge the detentions and have been effective in getting those detained released.
Although several families and individuals were scheduled to appear in court Friday morning, a number did not show up. In addition to avoiding ICE, this may have been the result of systemwide BART delays across the entire region.
