ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV

The wrongful detention was a case of mistaken identity and didn't last long, according to the federal law enforcement agency, responding to the ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV's inquiry about the incident.

"A Deputy US Marshal who fit the general description of a subject being sought by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was briefly detained at a federal building in Tucson after entering the lobby of the building," the U.S. Marshals Service statement said. "The Deputy US Marshal’s identity was quickly confirmed by other law enforcement officers, and he exited the building without incident." 

The agency declined to provide more details outside its statement, nor confirm the date of the incident. Multiple sources told the Star the detention took place in late May.

An ICE spokeswoman did not respond to the Star's questions about the incident, submitted by email Thursday afternoon, and referred the Star back to the U.S. Marshals Service.

Deputy U.S. marshals provide broad support across the federal justice system, including providing security at federal court facilities to protect judges and court personnel; apprehending criminals; executing federal court orders; and providing for the security and transportation of federal prisoners to correctional facilities.

Deputy U.S. marshals are stationed at the federal building at 300 W. Congress Street, which houses immigration court, where asylum cases and other deportation proceedings take place. They're also stationed across the street at the DeConcini U.S. Courthouse, where federal criminal cases are litigated, including cases of immigrants who have been charged criminally.

Immigration courts have become the latest target of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign. Critics say the operations target immigrants doing the right thing by attending their court hearings, making them easy targets for ICE agents facing pressure to increase daily arrest volumes.

Aggressive arrest quotas from White House officials appear to be leading to more mistakes, such as the reported mistaken detention in Tucson, said Noah Schramm, policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

"We don’t know a lot about the individual case (in Tucson), but what we do know is that ICE as an agency is under a lot of pressure from this administration to reach pretty high deportation numbers, and the tactics they've been employing reflect that," Schramm said.

That includes wrongful arrests of U.S. citizens, and ICE agents more often carrying out operations while in plainclothes, he said. Agents are also bypassing proper procedures, in their haste to make arrests, he said.

"It is not surprising that there would be these cases that the wrong person is detained," Schramm said. "I think it reflects that they are trying to get numbers and that they are okay violating basic principles and basic procedures that are meant to protect people and make sure the wrong people don't get picked up."

The mistaken detention of a deputy U.S. marshal suggests that kind of error is likely happening on a larger scale, he said.

"It begs the question of what other situations are happening, what else aren't we hearing about regular people in the community getting mistakenly picked up?" he said.

The ACLU of Southern California successfully sued an ICE field office in 2020 for its agents' practice of misrepresenting their identity and purpose, in order to make arrests.

In late May, residents of Tucson's south side say that agents who appeared to be with Homeland Security Investigations pretended to be Tucson Electric Power workers, in an unsuccessful attempt to arrest a man from Honduras who has lived in the neighborhood for more than a decade, the Star reported.

TEP said in a  that the utility company has contacted HSI to request that its agents not impersonate TEP workers.

Courthouses targeted

Since mid-May, immigration agents — often wearing masks covering their faces — have been arresting immigrants outside courthouses in major cities across the U.S., including Phoenix and to a lesser extent in Tucson, where the immigration court is smaller.

Those arrests have come after government lawyers suddenly moved to dismiss an immigrant's case. If the judge approves that dismissal, and the respondent in the case doesn't object to the dismissal, that leaves them vulnerable to arrest, immigration attorneys say.

Local organizers, led by the Coalición de Derechos Humanos, say they've been taking shifts inside Tucson's immigration courtrooms, and outside the federal building, where they aim to warn immigrants about the ICE strategy and to encourage those attending hearings to oppose any sudden move to dismiss their case.

Government attorneys in those cases have falsely told judges that they no longer have an interest in pursuing the case, in arguing for dismissal, said immigration attorney Rajan Dhungana. But soon afterwards, immigration agents move in to arrest the person whose case was dismissed, amounting to a "bait-and-switch," he said.

Case dismissal "sounds like a good thing, but it's just a ploy," Dhungana said.

Those who are arrested are then transferred to expedited removal proceedings — a quick deportation process without a hearing before a judge, he said.

Courthouse arrests will discourage immigrants from attending their court proceedings, but failure to appear will result in an order of removal, advocates say.

"Once you're deported in absentia, they can come to your house and arrest you anyway," Dhungana said. "If you don't show up (to court,) you get deported. If you show up, you're put in handcuffs. So it's a lose-lose situation." 

The Trump administration has enlisted law enforcement officers from agencies including the Drug Enforcement Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigations to assist in its mass-deportation campaign.

The Star reported in February about concerns that the administration's prioritization of immigration enforcement could undermine public safety by shifting resources from critical enforcement areas, including drug trafficking, violent crime, white-collar crime, terrorism and child exploitation.