Search for lawyers intensifies as court detentions ramp up

This article was originally published by Documented, an independent, non-profit newsroom dedicated to reporting with and for immigrant communities in New York City. The original article can be accessed here.

I. M. always believed having a lawyer would help his odds when seeking asylum. When he arrived in New York City in June of 2023, the 53-year-old Peruvian made it his mission to contact multiple legal organizations city-wide. But all of them told him they were already at capacity and could not take his case. 

He attended his first hearing virtually in March 2024, where the judge confirmed his details and scheduled a second in-person hearing at Federal Plaza for July 24 this year. But, after seeing TikTok videos showing masked ICE officers detaining people at court, his search for legal assistance has intensified: “I am scared that if I go alone that they won’t let me out, or that they will send me to a detention center.”

Amid an overburdened legal aid system, the latest immigration court crackdown has left many immigrants like I.M. scrambling for legal help — sometimes months before their hearings. Providers told Documented they’ve seen rising demand for both detained and non-detained representation, including for preliminary and administrative hearings which in the past had not seen a need for representation. Although city and state governments have added funding to counter Trump’s policies, asylum seekers say the urgency has pushed them toward private lawyers, who quote fees as high as $8,000 to take over their case — far beyond their reach. Unable to afford the costly rates, some have even considered self-deportation to avoid detention.

Since mid-May, reports and videos of asylum seekers being detained by ICE at immigration courts have increased significantly, sending shockwaves through New York’s immigrant communities. As Documented previously reported, ICE attorneys have been filing motions to dismiss asylum cases, with the intent to place certain immigrants into expedited removal proceedings — a policy that was expanded earlier this year. 

Originally limited to immigrants who were apprehended within 14 days of arrival and within 100 miles of the border, expedited removal now applies to anyone who has been in the U.S. for less than two years, regardless of where they are located in the country.

I. M., who shared only their initials for fear of retaliation, first came across videos of people being detained on TikTok sometime in May. In the videos he saw masked men dressed in black huddling over people and tackling them to the ground, he said. The videos frightened him and his partner, both of whom have a hearing at Federal Plaza in 16 days. 

The fear, he said, has caused him to look into how to self deport if his asylum case gets dismissed and he gets detained by ICE. But, ideally, he said, he would like to find a pro-bono lawyer to take over his asylum case and represent him.

“Everyone said they were at capacity, and could only give me some general advice very briefly,” he explained, referring to the local nonprofits he contacted in the previous months. He added that he cannot afford a private lawyer with the salary he makes as a house cleaner. “The job is not very consistent.” 

Deborah Lee, immigration attorney at The Legal Aid Society, said that not only has demand for legal representation increased for both detained and non-detained immigrants, but also across all legal practices. 

“People who are doing housing work, family law, tax work, all these things — they are all being touched by the trend of detention that’s happening, and they’re reaching out for assistance,” Lee said. “People in the community-based organizations that we’re connected with, there’s a tremendous desire for immigration representation.” 

Also Read: Bearing Witness to ICE Arrests at Lower Manhattan Courthouses

After detaining people at the courts, ICE moves individuals to different states, which has complicated the work for legal representatives, Lee explained, emphasizing that outside New York, other states do not have the same level of support for non-citizens. “People are sent to locations like Louisiana, Georgia, or Texas… That’s something that we’ve noticed. Sometimes people are going to far-flung locations and there’s little to no legal service providers there.”

The transfers leave families scrambling to collect money to hire a private attorney, Lee explained, adding that the process is “extremely expensive.”

Historically, asylum cases with legal representation have higher rates of approval in comparison to cases without legal representation. In terms of assisting asylum seekers during a motion of dismissal — though nothing is guaranteed — Lee said that an immigration attorney could help asylum seekers make the legal argument to continue the case at the courts in a timely manner. 

In the adopted budget for Fiscal Year 2026, which started on July 1, New York City added an additional $76.3 million in funding for free legal assistance services for immigrant communities and also created a new office that would streamline access to pro-bono attorneys in the private sector as well as at law school clinics, NGOs, and government-sponsored programs. 

“In the United States, everyone is entitled to legal representation, but too often, the cost of legal fees places effective counsel out of reach for too many,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement released Tuesday that noted the budget for immigrant legal services reached a record of $120.7 million.

Additionally, the city plans to allocate $42 million to assist with representation for those facing deportation and other immigration cases, and $12 million to assist unaccompanied minors in removal proceedings.  

Some of the funding will also expand the Rapid Response Legal Collaborative (RRLC), which provides emergency legal support to the city’s public school students and their families who are at risk of deportation or family separation. RRLC is run by the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA), which also operates the MOIA Immigration Legal Support Hotline — a service that has received tens of thousands of calls in recent years.

“The MOIA Legal Support Hotline is free and safe to use, regardless of your immigration status. It is incredibly important that immigrant New Yorkers continue to access city services, including this hotline, without any fear — especially to avoid fraud and misinformation,” Shaina Coronel, director of communications at MOIA told Documented. 

As of June 27, the hotline had received 14,638 calls since January 1, a number that is lower than the same time in the previous three years, all of which saw an increase in demand due to the number of asylum seekers arriving in New York City. According to a press release about the closure of The Roosevelt Hotel, which served as a resources and navigation center for asylum seekers, the city said the “average weekly arrivals have fallen from a peak of 4,000 in May 2023 to fewer than 100 individuals this past week.” 

‘If things are meant to happen, they will happen’

Noel Arteaga, a 43-year-old Ecuadorian, said his most recent hearing at Federal Plaza on June 4 was filled with anxiety and stress. Like I.M., he saw the increase of detentions at the courts and was compelled to have a difficult discussion with his wife and his 13-year-old stepson. “I told her to stay calm, that my concerns were not to scare her but just to be alert,” Arteaga said. “If things are meant to happen, they will happen.” 

He later told Documented that he had allocated some savings in case he was to be detained and needed to pay bond. Even though he tried to stay positive, he said he felt very nervous when he arrived at the courts and was scared because the setting reminded him of the videos he saw online. 

Arteaga had practiced a phrase over and over before his case: “I don’t want to accept the dismissal of the case,” he kept saying to himself, explaining that he learned this phrase by watching reels on instagram from credible immigration attorney accounts— like Anibal Romero and other influencers. But if he was detained, he also knew that he would not struggle nor fight back and that he would follow the law — the same way he has been following the law since seeking asylum in November of 2023, he said. 

At his hearing on June 4, the judge told him his next hearing would be in February 2026. 

As he left the courtroom, a group of volunteers approached him and walked him through the halls, toward the elevator. In a video shared with Documented, two people with masks and wearing dark clothes can be seen roughly 15 feet away, as a group of reporters took photos, their mechanical shutters filling the otherwise quiet space. 

“I felt like I was being watched,” Arteaga said, adding that he paced through the streets very fast to make his way back to the Bronx, where he has been working at a fish market since receiving his work permit.

Two weeks after his hearing, Arteaga told Documented that he was still a bit anxious but has kept himself informed by following news channels on social media. “For my next court [hearing] I will have more than two years here, but nothing is guaranteed,” he said, referring to the expedited removal order that was expanded when Trump came back to power earlier this year. 

Also Read: As ICE Arrests Rise, So Does Resistance in New York City

Arteaga and his wife have met with two private lawyers since his court hearing in June, and both have quoted him $8,000 to take over his case. $2,000 would be due at the start, Arteaga said. He has yet to decide which lawyer to hire. 

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