Old friends, neighbors, loyal patrons of her nail salon and, of course, her husband and children, packed into a small courtroom of the U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

They had made the trip Wednesday afternoon from Western Maryland in support of Mong Tuyen Thi Tran, a mother of four who legally came to the U.S. from Vietnam as a girl and was detained during a routine check-in with immigration officials.

The hearing was to determine whether Tran is being detained lawfully under a writ of habeas corpus. It was her first time in court since being taken into custody May 12.

Her supporters arrived in Baltimore with fear, but also a measure of hope that the hearing would bring the 43-year-old a step closer to returning home to Hagerstown.

Tran, known as Melissa in her community, was beamed against the wall of the courtroom on a video call from Tacoma, Washington, from an empty room of a detention facility where she has been held for more than two months.

The hearing that followed was crushing, and offers a window into a legal system that is stretched thin by the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to deportations. Immigration arrests in Maryland shot up from 29 per week last year to 76 per week under Trump, according to a Baltimore Banner analysis of ICE data.

ICE detained Tran over a decades-old theft for which she served a sentence and paid full restitution. That crime triggered a deportation order that had not been enforced for more than two decades, as long as she reported regularly to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

In the courtroom, Tran’s husband clutched a napkin and held their 7-year-old daughter, who rested her chin on the back of a bench. She stared up at her mother’s face while her father closed his eyes, his lips moving silently. A woman two rows behind them pressed her palms together in prayer.

A recent case in Massachusetts that Tran came across during one of her visits to the law library inspired her legal argument, supporters said. To successfully challenge unlawful detainment, a Vietnamese man invoked a 2008 agreement that stated Vietnam would not accept those who immigrated to the U.S. before 1995 back to their country.

Tran arrived in the U.S. in 1993. But the Trump administration began detaining pre-1995 Vietnamese immigrants in his first term, and has continued to do so since taking office again in January, as part of what the administration says is a campaign to carry out the largest deportation in U.S. history.

Immigrants like Tran must prove Vietnam isn’t willing to take them back while the burden of proof rests on their shoulders. But Laura Kelsey Rhodes, Tran’s lawyer, argued Tran wasn’t given the opportunity to do so.

For over two hours, Rhodes sparred with the judge over, among other things, alleged errors by ICE, including handing Tran documents too late and listing an incorrect second country for her removal.

District Judge Julie R. Rubin frequently asked Rhodes to better explain her arguments, leading to pauses by the attorney as she shuffled through papers.

Later, Tran testified.

She recounted being stripped of her belongings and sent across the country, where she detailed interactions with ICE officials that Rhodes used to illustrate process failures. The judge said she found those examples insufficient.

Tran’s supporters wilted. Tears fell as the judge said the treatment by ICE might have been unkind, but it was not unlawful.

Rhodes asked whether Tran had a chance to tell immigration officials she had not since committed any crimes since the long-ago theft and had repaid all of the stolen money. Had she been able to tell them about her children’s medical circumstances, her own educational accolades, the volunteer work she has done in Hagerstown?

The answer, to all, was no.

The judge said she would issue a written opinion, which came a day later on Thursday. She denied the petition, writing that the court was not persuaded Tran should be granted habeas relief.

To Tran’s supporters, chatting during a 10-minute break before closing statements, the forecast was grim. Neighbors told Tran’s family that this was only the beginning, that they would keep fighting alongside them.

For those final moments, Tran’s family squeezed over to the left side of the bench so that she could see them on camera. They waved at each other and wept. Her husband, Dung “Danny” Nguyen Hoang, held the two young ones, who are both under 11.

The oldest children, both headed to college this fall, sat in the row behind, quietly crying into their hands as the government attorney maintained that ICE has followed lawful procedures and discussed moving forward with their mother’s deportation.

As big brother and sister, they’ve been taking care of their younger siblings and helping with household and business paperwork while their father works overtime at the nail salon.

The family left the courthouse after meeting privately with their lawyer. The oldest daughter was unable to lift her head as she sobbed.

Tran’s husband had given some of the older women from Hagerstown a ride, while his children got a lift from a family member who had traveled from New York.

Tina Nash, a close family friend, spoke with Tran and the family late into the night to figure out what to do next.

They’re racing the clock to get her case heard in other courts, knowing that any day documents could show up to move forward with the deportation.

The Trump administration is working quickly to deport people like Tran to countries like Vietnam that are historically harder to remove people to, said Elizabeth Keyes, an immigration law professor at the University of Baltimore.

“That sense of, you might be here for years and years, is now gone,” Keyes said of people who had been protected by orders issued in prior immigration hearings. Those who have not yet gone to immigration court are going to languish in detention without a deadline, she added.

Tran’s community of family, friends and nail salon customers in Hagerstown set up a GoFundMe to help cover legal expenses.

Nash said Tran recently asked her husband if they could use some of that money to help out a woman she has grown close to in her detention center — someone she said was being deported to Japan and has nothing.

“This is just the type of people they are,” Nash said of Tran and her family. “Just wonderful people.”