Immigrant advocates and local law enforcers expressed fears on Thursday that the arrest of an undocumented woman at a Texas courthouse as she sought protection from domestic violence would discourage others from asking for help.

Officials in El Paso, Texas, said that the detention of the woman moments after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents watched a judge grant her a protective order was an alarming development that had sent shockwaves through the community.

The woman has been a victim of violence by her partner on at least three occasions, has filed three police reports and endured punching, kicking, choking and having a knife thrown at her, Jo Anne Bernal, the El Paso county attorney, said on a conference call with reporters.

As the protective order was granted on 9 February, Bernal said, an Ice agent sat through the proceedings in the courtroom. Two federal agents were placed at exits, she said. After the end of the hearing, agents escorted the woman from the courtroom area on the 10th floor and out of the building. She is presently in the county jail.

“None of us can recall an incident where immigration authorities made their presence known inside a courtroom in this courthouse, and especially not in a courtroom that is reserved for victims of domestic violence,” Bernal said. “We need to be very firm in our voice: the courthouse is not a place for enforcement of immigration law, the courthouse is a place where victims of domestic violence come for protection.”

Jaime Esparza, the local district attorney, said: “They came into the courthouse and I think it sends a horrible message to victims of domestic violence on whether or not they’re actually going to have the ability to seek justice in our courthouse.”

Michelle Ortiz, deputy director of Americans for Immigrant Justice, a Florida-based group, said such arrests threatened to undo decades of bridge-building work between immigrant communities, their supporters, and law enforcement.

“Enforcement action like this one, I mean, it takes us back 30 years and it’s terrifying because we do so much outreach and community events with law enforcement trying to get the word out that this is safe, and in your home country it might not be safe, and in your home country there is corruption and there is law enforcement that does not care about domestic violence and is not going to protect women – but you’re in the United States now, where everyone is protected regardless of immigration status,” she said.

“And I’m really afraid that we won’t be able to say that any more. It’s disheartening and frankly it’s terrifying.”

“It will make our communities less safe because it will make immigrants afraid to come forward to report crime,” said Jonathan Ryan, executive director of Raices, a Texas-based immigrant legal aid group.

“We’ve been working with undocumented victims of domestic violence for 30 years. They’re always afraid to come forward because their entire life has reaffirmed that they should fear authority, that they should fear men, and they don’t have rights. That’s the process by which they have become so chronically abused and these stories feed into what is already a long-term pervasive narrative among survivors of violence, that no one cares about them.”

El Paso, a city of about 675,000 in far west Texas, borders the bigger Mexican city of Juárez and has a large undocumented population. County officials suspect Ice acted on a tip-off from her alleged abuser, since he was the only other person given written notice of the hearing.

But in a statement, Ice said that the woman was arrested on a felony charge of illegally re-entering the US “after receiving a tip from another law enforcement agency indicating that a previously deported felon had illegally re-entered the United States”.

According to Ice’s criminal complaint, reported by the El Paso Times,

the woman is a Mexican citizen who has been deported repeatedly and has a criminal history. It says that Ice agents were “conducting surveillance” at the courthouse “in attempts of seeing” her, then took the woman into custody when she walked out. Bernal said that video footage indicated that her detention began inside the building.

Nearly 700 people were detained last week in a series of Ice operations in cities from Los Angeles to New York, homeland security secretary John Kelly said in a statement on Monday.

Many did not have criminal convictions and appeared to have been picked up by officials initially seeking someone else, adding to alarm among advocates who are worried that the government is now pursuing a less targeted strategy than under Barack Obama. While his administration deported large numbers of unauthorised immigrants, Obama pledged that “felons, not families” would be the priority.

Last week, Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, a mother of two who was convicted of using a fake social security number in 2008, went to a regularly scheduled meeting with immigration officials in Phoenix, Arizona, and was detained, then deported. Agents had previously allowed her to remain in the country under supervision.

“We are hoping that this is an isolated incident,” Bernal, the El Paso county attorney, said. “We are fearful that it is not.”