New guidelines in January authorized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to make arrests at courthouses and to fast-track the removal of anyone in the country for less than two years.

“All of a sudden… …what that means is that they can be on a plane out of here in three hours,” said Eilish Villa Malone, one of a handful of immigration attorneys awaiting their clients' cases.

Immigration attorneys estimate seven people have been detained so far this week using these new methods.

“They were here yesterday. They're here today. Sounds like they're going to be here tomorrow," said Sonia Rodriguez, an attorney for THRIVE International, a refugee and asylum seeker nonprofit. “Probably ongoing. We don't know yet.”

Rodriguez said the arrests appear to be happening after a government attorney moves to dismiss someone’s deportation case.

If they don't object or appeal it, recently arrived immigrants can face expedited removal, which does not require their deportation case to go before a judge.

KUOW has reached out to federal officials about the shift in priorities, but they have not responded to requests for comment.

Three people had their cases dismissed Wednesday morning. They were then arrested by federal agents and escorted down six flights of stairs or taken down a freight elevator surrounded by plainclothes officers.

A woman whose case followed theirs sat inside the courtroom, wearing a white sweater with her black hair pulled into a tight bun. She listened through headphones to a translation of what the judge was telling her. To her left, an attorney from the U.S. Department of Justice moved to dismiss her case.

Outside, her family was waiting. ICE officers nearby waited to arrest the woman if a judge approved her dismissal.

The woman, speaking through a translator, asked for more time to get a lawyer. The judge denied the government’s motion to dismiss her case and had the court clerk print out a new application for asylum.

The ruling gives the woman more time. Her case will be transferred to an immigration court in Virginia, close to her home in Richmond.

“Thank you and have a blessed day,” the woman told the judge.

Later Wednesday, a man who had his hearing dismissed was detained on his way out of court by at least seven immigration agents. Immigration attorneys filling the courtroom hallways witnessed his arrest.

Attorneys worry the ICE presence will scare people away from their hearings. That could lead the judge to rule to deport someone because they didn’t show up at court. Already more than a dozen people have gotten a final order of removal for not showing up.

“If immigrant people know that ICE is waiting at the court, what are they gonna do? They're not gonna come to their court,” Villa Malone said. “And what happens when you don't go to your court, you get a removal order from the judge.”