The Silent Struggle of ICE Attorneys in Trump's America
In the labyrinthine federal buildings of lower Manhattan, a quiet crisis unfolds daily within immigration courtrooms. Prosecuting attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, are tasked with implementing the Trump administration's aggressive deportation agenda. These legal professionals, often earning more than $100,000 annually with generous federal benefits, find themselves at the center of a moral and professional storm.
A Day in Court: Anxiety and Deportation
One morning last June, Estefani Rodriguez, a prosecuting attorney for ICE in her late 30s, appeared on the verge of a nervous breakdown during a virtual court session. Through the Webex platform, she presented motions to deport non-citizens from the United States, her hands repeatedly touching her mouth and rubbing her eyes with visible angst. In the physical courtroom near Broadway Street sat eight immigrants from Latin American countries, including teenagers and a 10th-grade girl addressed as "ma'am" by the judge. None had legal representation, and masked ICE agents lurked in the hallway, ready to make arrests.
These immigrants had crossed into the country from Mexico months earlier without prior approval, then applied for asylum. The Trump administration had announced that most people entering this way in the past two years could no longer receive asylum and could be arrested in courthouses, a policy that shocked immigrant rights advocates. When the judge asked Rodriguez if two immigrants were banned from pursuing asylum claims, she responded flatly, "It appears that they are." By August, Rodriguez had resigned after nearly nine years with the federal government, calling her decision "difficult but necessary."
The Expanding Reach of ICE Lawyering
Nationwide, ICE employs approximately 1,700 attorneys whose work is vital to the administration's goal of deporting 1 million people annually. According to data from Mobile Pathways, a California nonprofit, asylum was granted in only 11% of cases in 2025, a significant decline compared to previous years. Meanwhile, 43% of applicants were denied asylum, and a third abandoned their cases, likely due to fear of courthouse arrests. In one particularly disturbing incident, a Spanish speaker attempted to attend his hearing via mobile phone from outside the courthouse, telling the judge, "I'm scared!" When he didn't return to the courtroom as ordered, his asylum case was thrown out as "abandoned."
While media coverage often focuses on fired immigration judges and ICE agents, the attorneys who prosecute these cases remain largely unnoticed. From June 2025 into early 2026, observations of more than 40 ICE attorneys in Manhattan revealed how they've helped transform the immigration court system into what critics call a parody of due process. The strategies they employ to curtail asylum since Trump's second term began are described by court watchers and former officials as newly fashioned and tawdry.
Why Attorneys Stay Silent
Repeated attempts to contact former ICE attorneys have been met with silence. George Pappas, a former immigration judge, explained this reluctance: "They're scared shitless of what the press will say about them." He added that when these attorneys look for other jobs, "they're afraid they're going to get blacklisted." A retired civil attorney who volunteers as a court watcher offered another perspective, noting that lawyers should never speak negatively about former clients, even when that client is the federal government.
The attorneys themselves represent a diverse cross-section of New York City professionals. Of 44 lawyers observed in Manhattan, the group is split about equally between white people and people of color from various ethnic backgrounds. According to voter registration records, 37 are on the rolls, with 21 identifying as Democrats and only three as registered Republicans. Many have backgrounds as assistant prosecutors in district attorneys' offices, while others have done defense work with nonprofits advancing immigrant and human rights.
Personal Conflicts and Professional Pressures
Online, these attorneys appear as typical upwardly mobile New York City professionals. One loves exploring dining spots in Brooklyn and was accepted into the Park Slope food co-op. Another practices jiujitsu, while others post about romantic weekends in the Hudson Valley. Most attended prestigious law schools in the New York City area, including Columbia, Yeshiva, NYU, and Fordham. Yet in courthouses, they dress in understated professional attire and speak in deferential voices as they make cases for deportation.
Veronica Cardenas, a former ICE prosecutor whose parents came from Colombia and Peru, quit in 2023 after realizing she was deporting people "just like my mother." She tried to apply for other jobs but received no responses, with someone telling her, "No one wants to hire you because you work for ICE." She now runs a solo immigration defense practice in New Jersey. Cardenas has counseled ICE attorneys who want to leave but feel trapped by financial obligations. "A lot are new lawyers," she said. "They have mortgages. They're helping their own parents financially. They've got student loans."
The Bureaucracy of Deportation
Sociologist Dylan Farrell-Bryan, who interviewed dozens of ICE attorneys during Trump's first term and into Biden's tenure, published her findings in 2024. She noted that white, male attorneys frequently described their work as patriotic duty to keep America safe from criminals and asylum fraudsters. Female lawyers, however, characterized deportation litigation as a neutral process they followed as conscientious civil servants. One attorney said, "Sometimes the law doesn't let us do what the public would view as the right thing," while another stated simply, "My job is to do what I'm told."
Farrell-Bryant called these rationales "an unthinking internalization of duty" and contextualized them through Hannah Arendt's concept of "the banality of evil," which the German Jewish philosopher developed while studying bureaucrats who carried out Hitler's genocide.
New Legal Strategies and Their Consequences
In recent months, ICE lawyers have increasingly employed a strategy called "pretermission" – summarily canceling asylum applications before final hearings, usually claiming paperwork lacks sufficient information. While immigrants traditionally had the right to return with more detailed applications, many judges are now canceling cases after ICE lawyers propose pretermission. These attorneys are even moving to send "pretermitted" immigrants to countries they've never visited.
In April 2025, ICE lawyers made only 133 pretermission motions nationwide. By November, the monthly tally had increased fortyfold, then more than doubled the following month. Though few pretermissions have been enacted due to legal challenges, they've overwhelmed Manhattan's courtrooms. In one January hearing, an ICE lawyer moved for pretermission of a Mauritanian man to Uganda, with the judge suggesting the man simply leave the U.S. voluntarily before the decision came down.
The Few Who Walk Away
Amid this legal turmoil, a handful of attorneys have publicly resigned. Andy Viera-Rivera wrote on LinkedIn in December, "I stand with my people. My Latinos. Mi gente. Their stories, their sacrifices, their resilience, and their dreams of safety, dignity and belonging are not abstract to me. They are my family. They are my history." He now runs an immigration defense law firm, stating he left ICE because "it was time to take a stand."
Estefani Rodriguez, after her visible suffering in court, now works at Seton Hall University's law school, helping students provide pro-bono defense work for immigrants facing detention and deportation. She recently reposted an invitation to group therapy sessions for immigration legal advocates to process emotional trauma from working under Trump's immigration crackdown, led by a psychotherapist and a "death doula" who helps people process grief.
Rodriguez has written about struggling with "how to be someone's champion. To not see the holes in the case, but to try to look at the best way to present the case. Most importantly, how to care deeply about the outcome again." As the immigration court system continues its transformation under political pressure, the attorneys tasked with implementing these policies navigate complex moral landscapes, with their silence speaking volumes about the pressures they face in Trump's America.
