6 March 12 - 18, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Figuring out how to stay in the country was its own beast. She spent years through the early 2000s stuck in a “vicious cycle” of either “paying the rent or the filing fees” for various applications to stay in the U.S. Un- able to afford a lawyer, she didn’t know she qualified for fee waivers. During bouts of homelessness, shelters were often inaccessi- ble to her because they required proof of employment, which she could not get as someone in the country illegally. Eventually, she caught a break. She com- pleted the application process for authoriza- tions to stay in the U.S. legally and secured employment. She went to law school and started her own firm. “I was the person who was going to go get their green card that is being detained right now,” she said. “At the time I got my docu- mentation, I went to my interview and it was, ‘Well, I’m doing the right thing. Yes, I over- stayed, yes, I worked without authorization.’ I did tell the truth on the applications, but be- cause I was doing it, quote unquote, the right way, I was rewarded with my residency and eventually my citizenship.” Santos Lloyd likely wouldn’t be given the same grace today that she received two de- cades ago. Each day in court, she sees new examples of how “the system is getting worse.” Conservatives have long emphasized the need for immigrants to come to America “the right way,” but in the last year, that proper path to legal residency has eroded. Beyond the fear that ICE’s presence in courtrooms causes, a number of White House policies have made it harder to come to or stay in the United States. President Donald Trump has attempted to end birthright citizenship, directly chal- lenging the 14th Amendment of the Consti- tution, in an executive order whose legality will be decided by the Supreme Court. He has stripped temporary protective status, which grants legal residence in the U.S. to foreigners experiencing extraordinary con- ditions such as war or natural disaster, from Haitians, Syrians and Venezuelans. (Some of those orders are being challenged in the courts.) The president has invoked wartime law to justify deportations; the administration revoked the visas of 6,000 students; it has blocked visa issuances for immigrants from dozens of countries. The courts themselves haven’t been im- mune. By the end of 2025, nearly 100 judges presiding over immigration courtrooms had been fired by the Trump administration, NPR reports. Other layoffs have left the De- partment of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review down hundreds of le- gal assistants and advisers. The San Francisco federal court alone lost 16 judges, 12 of whom were fired. Anon- ymous sources told NPR that the firings oc- curred after the justices were “told to grant asylum more sparingly” and oversee twice as many cases a day as normal. The Department of Homeland Security has since advertised those open benches on Instagram, encouraging job applicants to consider becoming “deportation judges.” “It’s a clear message that what you’re there to do … is not to carefully examine each case for people due process,” Olivia Cassin, an employee at a federal immigra- tion court in New York who was fired last year, told NPR. “The main point seems to be expedited deportation and resolution of cases.” If the “right way” to citizenship was hard before, it’s only getting harder. Santos Lloyd can’t help but empathize. Citizenship has never been a sure thing, but now, if she can’t secure a virtual court appearance for a cli- ent, they face a bigger risk of being sent to a detention warehouse. She tries to prepare her clients for that reality, “especially if there are children in- volved.” “I know that it’s not the scope of my work, and I have to be very careful, because you don’t want to cross lines. But you have to have that conversation. Do you have a pass- port? Do you have keys? Do you have a power of attorney?” Santos Lloyd said. “I give pamphlets [that say] go to your consul- ate, go get these documents.” Dallas’ Dangerous Courtrooms nlike Santos Lloyd, Zoltan has long fielded his client’s fears of apprehen- sion. But similar to the California law- yer, he is now confounded by the seemingly erratic tactics of ICE agents who target courtrooms. “It is no surprise that people aren’t show- ing up to their hearings, because even I don’t understand how to predict who will and who won’t walk out of their hearing free,” he said. “We have masked ICE officers who take the law into their own hands and deter- mine perfunctorily that folks shouldn’t have gotten the chance to see a judge in the first place, and [the agents] wrestle them to sub- mission in the court corridors.” For his clients’ sake, he tries to reassure them before hearings, stating that “so far” a certain type of case hasn’t been targeted, or “most likely” a person will be fine. Because if they fail to appear, their sentence is final. Still, he recognizes that those words are a “thin shield when so much is at stake.” Having a deportation order issued means spending a lifetime avoiding traffic stops. It means limiting travel and not calling 911 in emergencies. It means the constant threat of being shipped away from one’s home. More immigrants than ever are choosing that over appearing in Dallas’ immigration court. Of the 10 U.S. cities with the most completed immigration cases in 2025, only two others, Atlanta and Charlotte, saw in absentia rates rise above 70%. Miami, in 10th place, orders deportations in only 34% of cases. “It’s a puzzle. I don’t know why Dallas is leading. The only thing I can think of is that what guides no-shows is fear, and what gen- erates the fear is ICE’s conduct,” Zoltan said. “Their intimidation, their presence, it makes such an impression on me every time I see them.” Arrests at the Dallas courtroom are often violent. The person usually goes kicking and screaming, outnumbered and seized by masked agents. Family members look on in tears, and strangers try not to look at all. Eventually, the immigrant is swept behind a set of swinging double doors whose closing thump sounds like a death knell. Zoltan has seen it. He still can’t believe it. And he understands why it would leave someone never wanting to set foot in an im- migration court again. “I’m not the least bit religious. But to me, attending services in a civil institution, I hold that in high esteem,” he said. “I think this violates something damn near sacred.” ▼ POLICE A SHOT IN THE DARK DALLAS POLICE PLAN TO DO MORE ABOUT RANDOM GUNFIRE. BY EMMA RUBY A cross Dallas, 911 reports of random gunfire have fallen over the past three years. The Dallas Police De- partment, though, knows that doesn’t mean the problem has been solved. In 2025, Dallasites called in 12,765 re- ports of random gunfire, down from the more than 14,000 calls made in 2024 and 2023. Members of the Dallas City Council have speculated that the decreased call vol- ume comes as residents have become fa- tigued by how little there seems to be done about the nuisance crime. “I heard random gunfire, probably early Sunday morning this weekend,” said Coun- cil member Kathy Stewart during a Feb. 9 Public Safety Committee meeting. “I should have gotten up and reported it … but until we have the technology [to address random gunfire], I’m afraid it just feels like it’s not anything and officers can’t get there quickly enough.” Stewart’s district comes in at No. 10 out of 14 for gunfire calls; in 2025, the district had 736 reports made, DPD data found. The department is currently building a random gunfire dashboard, said Major Yancey Nel- son, which will help track which areas are most affected. That data could help the de- partment determine where to launch future programs targeting random gunfire. City Council districts 4, 5 and 1 had the most reports of random gunfire, with 1,786, 1,342 and 1,301 911 calls, respectively. Dis- trict 14, which includes parts of downtown, Uptown and East Dallas, had the fewest ran- dom gunfire reports at 304. Random gunfire is the kind of report that has the potential to stretch police forces thin. On average, the department fields 35 calls for the issue each day. DPD sorts 911 calls into a four-tier priority system that outlines in- tended police response times. Random gun- fire is a priority-three call, and that tier level was averaging nearly a two-hour police re- sponse time as of January of this year. On holidays where random gunfire is a popular celebration tactic — this past New Year’s Eve, the department received 759 calls for gunfire on top of 270 reports of fire- works — it can be even more difficult for of- ficers to wack-a-mole out the noise. The department knows something needs to change. In 2024, the department launched a pilot drone program it believed would help identify where gunfire occurs. The program is currently limited to a one- mile area, and officials told committee mem- bers last year that the system still relies on an officer being dispatched to a report. Officers are now looking into a program that would dispatch an independent, evi- dence-collecting drone within 30 seconds to two minutes of receiving a gunfire call. The drones would be able to film activity in a re- ported area and connect with Flock license- plate reading cameras to track a suspect. The idea is still in a “concept phase,” stressed Nelson, but seems to have support around the horseshoe. Council member Jaime Resendez, whose district ranked second for most random gun- fire reports last year, described a crackdown on random gunfire as “one of the most impor- tant things we can do to improve the quality of life for residents in the city of Dallas.” DPD is also soon launching a billboard campaign to educate on the penalties associ- ated with random gunfire, and the need for residents to continue calling in the reports. Recklessly discharging a firearm in a munic- ipality is a Class A misdemeanor that can earn up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. “It is terrorizing people and it’s making them feel unnecessarily unsafe,” said coun- cil member Cara Mendelsohn. “And that’s what we all need to be saying to everyone in our communities. This is not allowed, and it won’t be tolerated.” Stewart F. House/Getty Images Some immigrants fear ICE detainment. >> p8 Unfair Park from p4
