Trump admin blocked from blindsiding immigrants at courthouses in scathing ruling

A federal judge has vacated the Trump administration's policy of arresting immigrants at immigration courthouses, finding Immigration and Customs Enforcement acted with a "complete lack of decisionmaking."

U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California issued the order wiping out both ICE's courthouse-arrest policies and a separate waiver that had allowed the agency to hold detainees in short-term cells for up to 72 hours.

The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of asylum seekers arrested at San Francisco's immigration court while attending required hearings.

Since January 2025, ICE has made courthouse arrests a cornerstone of its mass deportation strategy.

The administration developed a novel approach: dismissing immigrants' cases and immediately arresting them at court — funneling people into expedited removal, a fast-track deportation process with fewer due process protections. The tactic at first caught judges and lawyers off guard.

"The Trump administration's tactic of ambushing people who are complying with their legal obligations at their court appointments is inhumane and unlawful," Hannah Steinberg, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, said of the courthouse arrest practice.

ICE had revoked its 2021 guidance — which restricted courthouse arrests to narrow circumstances — without issuing any replacement rules specifically for immigration courts.

The 2025 policies "do not mention immigration courthouses at all," Pitts wrote, leaving agents operating under no internal limits whatsoever.

"For 80 years, Congress has commanded federal agencies to think before they act," the judge opened, invoking the Administrative Procedure Act — the federal law requiring agencies to provide reasoned explanations for policy changes.

ICE's rationales for the new policy, the court found, were "unconvincing" as applied to immigration courts.

The court called the Executive Office for Immigration Review's parallel policy change "based on a false premise" and labeled the agency's dismissal of chilling-effect concerns "a non sequitur." In a footnote, the judge added: "Puzzlingly, the government also suggests that ICE's courthouse-arrest policies are committed to agency discretion."

The ruling reinstates ICE's 2021 guidance, which permitted courthouse arrests only in narrow circumstances such as national security threats or imminent danger.