Immigration advocates gathered across Northern California on Wednesday morning to condemn what they called the unprecedented and unconstitutional arrests of asylum seekers in courthouses .

According to Lisa Knox, the co-executive director of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, at least 10 people have been arrested in San Francisco, Sacramento and Concord this week. Some of the immigrants were taken into custody despite having open asylum cases, a tactic that ICE officials have not previously used in the Bay Area, Knox said.

“The Constitution guarantees due process,” she told KQED. “When you’re facing something as life-changing as deportation, you have a right to a process, you have the right to fight that.”

Four of the arrests, which took place Tuesday in the halls of

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