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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/15/ice-lawyers-hiding-names-court/">theintercept.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">ICE Lawyers Are Hiding Their Names in Immigration Court</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Debbie Nathan</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">July 15, 2025</div>
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<p><span>Inside a federal</span> immigration courtroom in New York
City last month, a judge took an exceedingly unusual step: declining to
state the name of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney
pressing to deport asylum seekers. </p>
<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not really doing names publicly,\u201d said Judge ShaSha Xu \u2014 after
stating her own name and those of the immigrants and their lawyers. It
was the first of two separate instances The Intercept identified in
which judges chose to withhold the identities of the attorneys
representing the Trump administration\u2019s deportation regime. </p>
<p>As ICE agents across the country wear masks to raid workplaces and
detain immigrants, government attorneys need not cover their faces to
shield their identities. Legal experts who spoke to The Intercept agreed
the practice of concealing the lawyers\u2019 identities was both novel and
concerning.</p>
<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never heard of someone in open court not being identified,\u201d
said Elissa Steglich, a law professor and co-director of the Immigration
Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin. \u201cPart of the court\u2019s
ethical obligation is transparency, including clear identification of
the parties. Not identifying an attorney for the government means if
there are unethical or professional concerns regarding [the Department
of Homeland Security], the individual cannot be held accountable. And it
makes the judge appear partial to the government.\u201d</p>
<blockquote>
<p>\u201cPart of the court\u2019s ethical obligation is transparency, including clear identification of the parties.\u201d</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The concealment shocked two lawyers who were representing immigrants
in Xu\u2019s courtroom. Attorney Jeffrey Okun, who was representing a client
via video call, characterized the move as \u201cbizarre.\u201d Attorney Hugo
Gonzalez Venegas called Xu\u2019s behavior \u201ca terrible lack of transparency
on the part of officers of the court.\u201d </p>
<p>Immigration courts, which are run by the Executive Office for
Immigration Review \u2014 part of the executive branch, not the judiciary \u2014
are far less transparent than most courts. Their prosecutors work for
ICE and DHS; they have no obligation to provide defense lawyers; and
their judges are appointed \u2014 and fired \u2014 by the president. </p>
<p>On a Tuesday morning in late June, Xu was running through several
brief, preliminary hearings known as \u201cmaster calendars.\u201d Nationwide,
these proceedings always start out the same way. An immigrant will
appear with their attorney \u2014 if they have the good fortune to retain one
\u2014 often on Webex. A judge presides at a big desk in an actual
courtroom, in this case in lower Manhattan. An ICE lawyer represents the
government in its attempts to deport the immigrant. </p>
<p>As each case commences, the judge recites their own name, followed by
the immigrant\u2019s name, the name of the immigrant\u2019s attorney (if they
have one), and finally, the name of the ICE lawyer. It\u2019s an
on-the-record census that enables due process. </p>
<p>When Xu omitted the ICE lawyer\u2019s name, Okun asked her to identify who was arguing to deport his client. She refused.</p>
<p>Xu attributed the change to \u201cprivacy\u201d because \u201cthings lately have
changed.\u201d Xu told Okun that he could use Webex\u2019s direct messaging
function to send the ICE lawyer his email, and the ICE lawyer would
probably respond with her own name and address. Okun accepted the
arrangement.</p>
<p>When the next case commenced minutes later, Xu again refused to state
the ICE lawyer\u2019s name, and Gonzalez Venegas, also on Webex, argued that
the legal record would be incomplete without it. Xu again said that the
two attorneys could message each other confidentially.</p>
<p>The government\u2019s mystery attorney, who was prosecuting both Okun\u2019s
and Gonzalez-Venegas\u2019s clients, wore glasses and a navy blue suit; her
hair was pulled back primly from her face. She spoke quietly, with a
tinge of vocal fry. Her name, according to Gonzalez Venegas, was Cosette
Shachnow.</p>
<p>Shachnow, 33, began working for ICE in 2021, shortly after she
graduated from law school, according to public records and her LinkedIn
account. The latter lists \u201cCivil Rights and Social Action\u201d among her
\u201cfavored causes.\u201d</p>
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<p>Shachnow did not respond to an email from The Intercept seeking
comment. Neither did the Executive Office for Immigration Review and the
Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, which oversees ICE lawyers. </p>
<p>It is unclear how many immigration judges are failing to say ICE
lawyers\u2019 names, but The Intercept has witnessed the practice twice. On
July 10, Judge James McCarthy in lower Manhattan neglected to identify
the government\u2019s attorney in several cases, referring to the lawyer
instead as \u201cDepartment.\u201d</p>
<p>\u201cDepartment, are we done with pleadings?\u201d McCarthy asked. The word
stood in for ICE\u2019s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
Several immigration defense attorneys were attending the hearings by
video. None objected.</p>
<p>Judge Shirley Lazare-Raphael, who is also a New York City immigration
judge, told The Intercept that the new phenomenon of occluding ICE
attorneys\u2019 names has not been formalized via a directive or rule. \u201cIt\u2019s
up to the judges whether or not they want to do it,\u201d she said.</p>
<p>\u201cThis is a very new and very disturbing turn of events,\u201d said Daniel
Kowalski, a former longtime immigration attorney who now edits the legal
journal Bender\u2019s Immigration Bulletin for LexisNexis. </p>
<p>\u201cWhere does it stop?\u201d asked Kowalski. \u201cAre the immigration judges going to be unnamed? Behind a screen?\u201d </p>
<p>Lazare-Raphael said she had heard that some ICE attorneys have said they found it \u201cdangerous to state their names publicly.\u201d</p>
<p>That reasoning echoes DHS\u2019s questionable claim that ICE agents need
to mask up because of what the department described as an almost 700
percent increase in assaults against agents nationally during the first
six months of this year. But as DHS revealed last week, the raw number
of assaults this year is 79, compared to 10 in the same period last
year. Given that ICE arrests have more than quadrupled since Trump took
office \u2014 and the agency\u2019s determination of what qualifies as an assault
is often dubious \u2014 this uptick likely sounds more dramatic than it is.</p>
<p>Veronica Cardenas, who was an ICE prosecutor for six years before
quitting in 2023, told The Intercept that she thinks the real threat
these lawyers face is shame. She said that her mother came to the United
States from Colombia without papers and was arrested at the southern
border, and that while she was proud of her daughter when she started
working for ICE, Cardenas came to realize the people she was seeking to
deport were a lot like her family. Cardenas now works as an immigration
defense attorney and counsels other ICE lawyers who want to leave their
jobs \u2014 many of whom, she said, have backgrounds similar to hers. </p>
<p>Adam Boyd, a former ICE attorney who resigned last month, according to a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/07/trump-ice-morale-immigration/683477/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">report</a>
in The Atlantic, said that many ICE lawyers feel frustrated about
having to ask judges to dismiss cases so that ICE enforcement and
removal officers can grab immigrants outside courtrooms and swell the
Trump administration\u2019s deportation numbers. Boyd said he left after
making what he called \u201ca moral decision.\u201d</p>
<p>The asylum system has suffered a stunning collapse under President
Donald Trump\u2019s second term. In the past six months, judges\u2019 denials of
asylum have skyrocketed from rates of 62 to 80 percent \u2014 and immigration
enforcement statistics expert Austin Kocher <a href="https://austinkocher.substack.com/p/the-asylum-denial-machine?publication_id=80027&post_id=166234953&isFreemail=false&r=hz9nx&triedRedirect=true" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription">predicts</a> that the figure could soon top out at 95 percent. </p>
<p>As the Trump administration orders ICE to ramp up its removal
operations, hundreds of immigrants to the United States are being
arrested and beaten by people with their faces covered and no proof of
who they are. Now, they may not know the names of the attorneys making
the case to deport them, either.</p>
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