Volunteers who accompany immigrants cited while inside federal building’s hallways

Holding rosaries, a group of parishioners from Christ the King church in south San Diego prayed outside the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building on Tuesday while one of their own appeared before an immigration judge inside.

Part of the group would have ordinarily done so from the hallway outside the courtroom. But after learning that volunteers had been cited in the building by federal police on Thursday and Friday, they decided to avoid any trouble.

For much of the past year, groups of volunteers have accompanied immigrants to their scheduled court hearings and check-in appointments with Immigration and Customs Enforcement inside the federal building in downtown San Diego amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

But last week, volunteers said something changed.

Some of them waiting in the hallway outside the ICE check-in office were told by federal officers that they could not be there, said Patrick Corrigan, a volunteer with the Faithful Accompaniment in Trust and Hope, or FAITH, program, which faith organizations launched last summer.

On Thursday, he was one of four volunteers cited by Federal Protective Service officers, who ...