The immigration judge made the foreboding remark before Frescia Anthuane Garro Pinchi exited the courtroom on July 3, 2025.

According to court filings, Judge Patrick O’Brien had given the 27-year-old asylum applicant more time to protest the government’s request to dismiss her case — a precursor to speeding up her deportation. He set a new hearing for the end of the month, before adding, “But I probably won’t see you then.”

The Hayward gig economy worker, who had been sending money to her daughter and mother in Peru, stepped outside the courtroom and was promptly arrested by masked federal agents.

The same thing happened to Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen, 30, an abuse survivor from Guatemala with a pending asylum application and a bakery job in San Francisco; Ligia Garcia, 55, an asylum applicant from Colombia working at a restaurant in Santa Clara County; and at least 86 other people who attended San Francisco Immigration Court during a six-month period last year, according to the city’s bar association.

Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio knew she could be one of them.

After her first immigration court hearing in September 2025, the 24-year-old asylum-seeker from Guatemala remained inside the courtroom, clutching her 9-month-old daughter as two lawyers pleaded with the ICE agents outside not to separate mother from child.

In an interview translated from Spanish, Alvarado Ambrocio called the experience “spine-chilling.” It also proved galvanizing, spurring her to join a class-action lawsuit that could end the practice of immigration courthouse arrests nationwide.

Read more at the link in our bio.
📸: @carlosavilagonzalez