Billy Botsch stands in front of his closet every weekday morning wondering what to wear. He narrows his choices down to two colors of the same shirt. He makes sure it's a shirt bearing the acronym of American Friends Service Committee, the immigration advocacy group he works with.
He is headed out on an hourlong trip south to a courtroom in Miami. His wardrobe choice matters.
"Since the immigration courts style themselves as federal courts, you do not want to dress insufficiently formally that you upset the judges with your lack of decorum," he said. "But I also do not want to dress so formally that I give the impression that I'm one of the lawyers practicing in the building."
He has learned to opt for a white or black polo shirt with his organization's name on it.
When he first started this ritual last spring, he wore shirts without any AFSC markings until one day when he exited a courtroom and was stopped by U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement agents. They demanded to see his ID, he said.
"Once they let me go and I walked down the hallway, I saw the next guy out of the courtroom also had on a blue collar shirt," he recalled.
That was one of the first tipoffs he had that something was changing in immigration court. He realized ICE agents were learning about defendants in court and waiting for them outside to detain them.
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Botsch, who goes by William or Billy, has spent thousands of hours watching immigration court processings in downtown Miami. He's there to observe. He is not a lawyer nor a court witness. He is not a court reporter nor a journalist.
Instead, he observes, takes notes and shares what he knows with desperate family members searching for information for loved ones who are detained after leaving court. He talks with legal advisers about seeing migrants arrested after showing up for their scheduled immigration court appearance.
"There's a lot of people who are there and confused, and they don't have anybody to turn to. And by sitting there, I can at least amass information that I can convey to families who are in similar situations," he said.
Botsch travels from his home in Broward County to the courtrooms four days a week. He has watched hundreds of people appear before immigration judges and documented almost 200 people arrested after their appearances before the U.S. justice system.
WLRN asked him to keep an audio diary of his day bearing witness on the front lines of President Donald Trump's illegal immigration crackdown. To follow his day and listen to his entries, click below.
Botsch breaks up his courtroom schedule on Wednesdays. He heads west instead of south, joining a weekly gathering on a sidewalk across the street from the ICE facility in Miramar.
The Miramar Circle of Protection began several years ago with volunteers helping family members coming to the facility to check in with immigration authorities by offering them water, food and a folding chair that would be right at home on the the sidelines of a kids soccer game.
Botsch was there in a red AFSC T-shirt on a Wednesday in mid-December. The facility across the street is ringed in black wrought-iron fencing. A private patrol shooed off people hoping to park on the grass on the ICE side of the street. U.S. Department of Homeland Security-marked vehicles and other cars and trucks drove in and out of the gated parking lot.
Botsch keeps a watchful eye for unmarked 12-passenger vans. He grabbed his cellphone as he saw one preparing to drive out, possibly with detainees onboard headed to a detention facility like "Alligator Alcatraz." He recorded video on his phone and recognized them.
"Every once in a while you'll see a couple caravans of, like, cruisers and SUVs. And sometimes they have people in the back," he said. "I try to see if I recognize anybody. We try to get some photos just so we have that in case somebody's, like, 'Hey, a family member got picked up. We're trying to figure out where they go.'"
The Miramar ICE facility is responsible for Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It's 25 miles from the immigration courtrooms along the Miami River in downtown Miami.
"Here it's very much emphasis on enforcement," he said about the Miramar location. "There's a lot of suspicion that the employees direct toward the people who have to check in here."
The court facility has a more "helpful" environment, he said. "These are two distinct but interoperating components of the immigration system."
He noted the lack of legal representation for many migrants.
"They're trying to navigate a very byzantine bureaucratic system on their own. A lot of them do a really impressive job, even when a lot of them don't speak English," he said.
Providing more legal assistance is one change in the process he would like to see. And more broadly, after spending hundreds of hours in immigration court hearings, he would like the country to "reexamine why we're so eager to say people shouldn't come here. We're a big country. We're a very low population density country. We have lots of needs." he said.
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Botsch has a quiet voice despite the raging debate over immigration. He moved quick when spotting a van leaving the facility than may be carrying detainees. He recalled Proposition 187 in California when he was growing up in the 1990s. Voters passed the initiative to deny some public services like education and health care to people without legal status. It was eventually ruled unconstitutional.
Botsch moved to South Florida in 2019. He started attending the gathering outside the ICE facility soon after. Six years later, he is spending most days watching how the U.S. justice system is responding to the crackdown since Trump's reelection.
" It feels very frustrating at times to see things happen and know there's not a lot I can do to directly influence it," he said as an interfaith vigil was beginning nearby.
" I can only imagine it's so much more powerless when you're going through it with somebody you love and you don't understand what is going on because so much has changed recently."
WLRN asked ICE about housing detainees overnight and sometimes for several nights at the holding facility in Miramar.
"Individuals are typically not held for extended periods; however, processing times may vary depending on operational requirements or case-specific circumstances," ICE responded.
The agency also said all basic needs are provided "in accordance with established ICE standards."
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