A federal judge in California on Tuesday issued a nationwide block in opposition to the Trump administration’s policy of making arrests at immigration courts, placing an finish to a apply that garnered nationwide consideration.
Last 12 months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement began detaining migrants in courthouse hallways throughout the nation, generally moments after pleading their circumstances. The transfer raised alarm amongst attorneys and advocates who mentioned the apply was turning immigration courts from locations of due course of into zones of worry and punishing individuals who had been following the principles.
Tuesday’s ruling marks a significant blow to the Trump administration, which rescinded long-held steering that had restricted immigration enforcement in or close to courthouses. Trump officers had argued the earlier steering hampered the power of immigration enforcement officers to apprehend harmful people.
In a 71-page ruling, Judge P. Casey Pitts acknowledged the “chilling effect” of ICE’s policy, discovering that it was “arbitrary and capricious.”
“For the avoidance of doubt, simply extending the 2025 courthouse-arrest policies to cover immigration courthouses would not cure those policies’ fatal defects. As the Court has previously detailed, the policies entirely fail to address the chilling effect of courthouse arrests on noncitizens’ attendance at court proceedings, which is both a critical factor underlying ICE’s 2021 guidance and an ‘important aspect of the problem’ in its own right,” Pitts mentioned.
“In sum, ICE’s 2025 courthouse-arrest policies are devoid of rational explanation for (or even acknowledgement of) the agency’s choices (1) to remove its earlier restrictions on civil arrests at immigration courthouses and (2) not to extend the new policies’ limitations to immigration courthouses,” Pitts added.
Jordan Wells, senior employees lawyer at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Fransico Bay Area, applauded the ruling.
“The courthouse is meant to be a refuge for the pursuit of justice, not a hunting ground for ICE. No immigrant, whether appearing in San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, or New York, should be forced to choose between their liberty and their day in court,” Wells mentioned in an announcement to NCS.
Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival additionally weighed in on the ruling on X, saying: “When a judge sentences a defendant, the defendant is taken into custody. If an alien is ordered removed by an immigration judge, the same should happen. A district judge ordering otherwise is naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda.”