At least three migrant children were taken into custody and restrained with zip ties at the San Antonio Immigration Court, located at 800 Dolorosa Street, on Thursday, May 29, according to multiple sources.
The incident was captured on video by an immigration attorney, who then shared the footage with attendees of an immigration law conference being held this week at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio Riverwalk Hotel by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., or CLINIC.
CLINIC is an immigration law advocacy group that “provides training and support” to more than 400 Catholic and community-based immigration legal aid organizations, according to their website.
The children — two boys and a girl who appeared to be between the ages of 9 and 12 years old — were detained and zip-tied, along with adults who appeared to be relatives, after an immigration judge had dismissed their case, according to Carolina Rivera, an immigration attorney who serves as a federal advocate and liaison for CLINIC. That dismissal should have meant they were no longer subject to removal proceedings, Rivera said.
“Not only is the detention worrisome, but now we’re at an extra level of worrisome of why are children being zip-tied and traumatized by this?” Rivera said.
Guillermo Hernandez III, a San Antonio-based immigration attorney, also confirmed to MySA that the children were arrested and placed in zip ties Thursday morning.
Like Rivera, Hernandez said this sort of treatment of children is something new.
“We’ve never seen them detain family units, children, like this. And I think it’s part of this administration to round up as many immigrants as possible,” Hernandez said. “We have not seen this before, and I think the point is to instill fear and kind of be cruel about this process.”
But it’s unclear why the children were zip-tied during their detention or why they were detained at all. An email sent to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the federal agency tasked with enforcing immigration law, did not yield an immediate response.
The arrest of the children comes a day after reports that agents dressed in plain clothes with nothing to identify them as federal immigration officials were arresting people as they emerged from the immigration courthouse.
KSAT reported on Wednesday, May 28, that its crews observed two charter buses parked outside the immigration court, where witnesses saw agents detaining people as they left the court. But Hernandez said the courthouse arrests first began in San Antonio last Thursday.
It’s unclear if those agents, or the ones who took the children into custody on Thursday, work for ICE. Rivera said when CLINIC-affiliated officials asked the agents to identify themselves, they replied that “they were FBI.”
While the FBI does not normally tackle immigration enforcement, that has begun to change under the second Trump administration. Just this week, NBC News reported on a policy shift requiring FBI field offices around the country to reassign significant portions of their resources toward immigration.
The FBI San Antonio Field Office oversees federal law enforcement across 17 counties in South Texas, including its headquarters in Bexar County. But it also maintains six satellite offices that span 42 counties, from Waco in Central Texas down to Brownsville in the Rio Grande Valley.
The Trump administration has also substantially expanded its policy on the expedited removal of migrants who have been in the United States for less than two years — something permissible under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA). But the policy has been limited several times in the decades since IIRIRA became law, such as only being applied to migrants apprehended within 100 miles of a land border.
President Donald Trump expanded its implementation during his first presidential term before the policy was again limited by former President Joe Biden. On Jan. 24 of this year, the Trump administration again expanded the expedited removal policy. That rescission also undid a Biden-era prohibition on arresting migrants at so-called “sensitive places,” such as churches, schools, hospitals and courthouses.
The matter is currently mired in litigation, but until the courts sort it out, the public will continue to see immigration agents arresting people in places that have traditionally been off-limits — something that will stoke fear, Rivera said.
“Because of that policy change, we’re seeing what’s happening now. It’s ICE in courtrooms, so that’s gonna create fear around people… that is gonna have an effect on the individuals that are seeking asylum,” Rivera said.
For the experienced immigration attorney-turned-immigration-law-advocate, seeing children restrained by zip ties is disturbing. And it’s something she’s only seen happen under Trump.
“It’s shocking. It’s not how we want to portray ourselves, our country. It’s just not right,” Rivera said.
May 29, 2025
Dina Arévalo
South Texas Reporter
