Fears of being arrested and deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials nearly caused a Columbus mother to skip a sentencing hearing for her 13-year-old’s killer earlier this year in a Franklin County courtroom, a judge testified in federal court on Monday.
Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Carl Aveni described the case during a hearing in the Trump administration’s federal lawsuit challenging Franklin County courthouse rules that restrict federal agents’ ability to carry out immigration arrests at the courthouse.
The Justice Department sued one of the two courts that operates out of the courthouse in August over the new rules, saying Ohio courts can’t restrict federal officials’ authority to enforce national immigration laws.
Supporters of the limitations on ICE arrests, which the court passed last spring, say the restrictions guarantee due process by ensuring that victims, witnesses and criminal suspects won’t be deterred from attending court hearings. Because of those considerations, the federal government long discouraged courtroom arrests, or limited them to special circumstances. But under the current Trump administration, ICE has expanded the use of courtroom arrests.
Trump administration lawyers argue courthouses are one of the safest settings for immigration arrests, since everyone there undergoes screening for guns and other weapons.
Lawyers representing the Franklin County Municipal Court – which is the specific court the Trump administration is suing – argued Monday that making arrests in its building amounts to illegally commandeering state court resources to enforce federal laws.
Judge describes high-profile case from February
Lawyers for the Municipal Court called Aveni, a Democrat, as a witness in a Monday’s hearing. Aveni is a judge for the Franklin County Common Pleas Court, which operates out of the same complex of buildings as the Franklin County Municipal Court. Like in other counties, the municipal court deals with lower-level offenses while the Common Pleas Court handles felonies and other more serious crimes.
Aveni pointed to a high-profile hearing held in the Common Pleas Court on Feb 5. 2026, when three men were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences for killing the 13-year-old boy, Angel Diaz. All three pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter after admitting they had fired several guns out the window of their SUV. They said they were driving around a Columbus neighborhood drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana at the time, according to media reports. At least one shot struck Diaz, who was walking home from a local recreation center. Prosecutors said it’s not clear who fired the legal shot.
Aveni testified that Diaz’s mother did ultimately appear in his courtroom and delivered a “sad and tearful” victim-impact statement, which judges are required to consider before setting a criminal sentence. Crime victims and their families have a constitutionally guaranteed right to provide these statements in Ohio under state law.
But the hearing was delayed for 90 minutes while relatives in the courtroom tried to convince the woman that coming to the courthouse wouldn’t get her deported, Aveni testified. The day before that hearing, ICE agents arrested an undocumented immigrant who had appeared in the same court building complex for a misdemeanor traffic offense, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Aveni said another case he oversaw earlier in his career shaped his views on how courts should handle undocumented immigrants. He described a case from 2021 in which two undocumented dishwashers were key witnesses in a felonious assault case in which a man shot someone else in a road-rage incident.
“It is a fundamental due process issue,” Aveni said of the ability for defendants, crime victims, and their families to come to court without being fearful of being deported.
Former judges chime in to keep ICE out of Ohio courts
Five former judges have filed arguments in the Trump case and are taking Franklin County’s side. They argued that even before Ohio joined the Union, U.S. courts have respected immunity from civil arrest that extends to witnesses, defendants and others. The judges also argued that it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to try to force the state into carrying out federal laws.
The Ohio judges who filed the argument include three former Ohio Supreme Court justices: Democrats Eric Brown and Michael Donnelly and former Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor.
The former judges’ legal brief also references a social media post from Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Chris Brown, a Democrat, who said he was set to preside over a trial in a stabbing case in March shortly before the municipal court blocked ICE detentions. The victim, he said, declined to appear as a witness, afraid his immigration status put him at risk of deportation. The alleged perpetrator planned to plead self-defense at trial. Instead, the case was resolved with what Brown said was a guilty plea to a significantly less serious offense.
“We’ll never know if a violent felon was let off or acted lawfully in self-defense, because we never had a trial, because the victim was essentially locked out of the justice process due to ICE’s random and aggressive enforcement policies,” Brown wrote.
Municipal Court officials describe other court disruptions
Franklin County Municipal Court officials in written arguments have also described how the courthouse arrests have disrupted court operations and how such actions affect families with business at the court.
The officials pointed to the June 2025 case of Leonardo Fausto, an asylum seeker who was in the country legally. He was arrested by ICE in a courtroom hallway after pleading guilty to a speeding violation. This left his wife alone to tend to their three children.
Shortly after Fausto’s arrest, teenager Mainor Anariva-Bueso was arrested in the courthouse lobby on the day of his traffic court arraignment.
“ICE also arrested a client of the office as he entered [court] for his jury trial; the client was never returned for court proceedings, and the
case remains open with a warrant issued for his failure to appear,” city lawyers wrote.
Judge expected to rule soon on DOJ request
ICE hasn’t arrested anyone at the courthouse since the anti-ICE rules were imposed last Spring. But Monday’s hearing was scheduled to consider a request from the Justice Department that a federal court block the rules while the case is pending.
During Monday’s court hearing, Southern District of Ohio Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. described the case as involving a “balancing act” between the rights of the state and federal governments to carry out their respective laws.
Sargus, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton, said he would issue a ruling on request from the Trump administration to block the court rules within the next 30 days.
