Story Highlights
U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts ruled that ICE’s policy of arresting noncitizens at immigration courthouses violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
The 71-page ruling found the policy was “arbitrary and capricious” because it failed to address the chilling effect on court attendance.
The decision also struck down a separate waiver allowing ICE to hold detainees in short-term facilities for up to 72 hours instead of the previous 12-hour limit.
What Happened
U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts, of the Northern District of California, ruled this week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Executive Office for Immigration Review violated the Administrative Procedure Act when they rescinded longstanding limits on civil arrests at immigration courthouses without providing what the court found to be an adequate explanation. In a 71-page order, Pitts vacated the policies nationwide, finding that the agencies acted in a manner that was “arbitrary and capricious” under federal administrative law.
The ruling traces back to a significant shift in ICE practice that began in May 2025, shortly after President Donald Trump returned to office. For years prior, dating back to 2014, it had been ICE policy to limit courthouse arrests to high-risk individuals, such as those already convicted of crimes or suspected of being terrorists, spies, or gang members. In 2021, the agency had further narrowed its own guidance to restrict enforcement actions at courthouses to cases involving national security threats or an immediate risk that evidence would be destroyed. That changed abruptly when ICE circulated an internal directive instructing government immigration attorneys to facilitate courthouse arrests, including by seeking dismissal of pending cases in coordination with enforcement officers, effectively turning routine immigration court appearances into opportunities for detention.
Judge Pitts found extensive evidence that the policy change produced precisely the harm that the agency’s own earlier guidance had been designed to prevent. He cited testimony, including from a former immigration judge in San Francisco, describing a “dramatic decline” in attendance at master calendar hearings once enforcement activity at courthouses picked up, undermining the very court process the government claimed authority to police. “The courthouse is meant to be a refuge for the pursuit of justice, not a hunting ground for ICE,” said Jordan Wells, senior staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the organizations that brought the challenge. Pitts wrote that simply extending other, narrower 2025 enforcement policies to immigration courthouses “would not cure those policies’ fatal defects,” since the agency never addressed the chilling effect on attendance that its own prior guidance had identified as a core concern.
The ruling extended beyond courthouse arrests to address detention conditions directly. Pitts also struck down a June 2025 waiver that had allowed ICE to hold detainees in short-term holding facilities for up to 72 hours, or longer under exceptional circumstances, rather than the agency’s longstanding 12-hour limit. The judge found that ICE failed to consider reasonable alternatives and did not adequately address whether facilities designed for brief processing were appropriate for multi-day detention. The decision follows a separate, earlier ruling by a federal judge in New York that had already barred courthouse arrests within that state, making this the second judicial setback nationally for the policy since May.
Why It Matters
This ruling addresses a core due-process concern: whether individuals can safely exercise their legal right to appear in court without fear that doing so will result in their immediate arrest and detention. The policy of arresting noncitizens at courthouse hearings, often immediately after they had just made their case before an immigration judge, raised fundamental questions about whether the government was effectively punishing people for participating in the very legal process designed to adjudicate their cases.
The decline in court attendance documented in the ruling illustrates a troubling unintended consequence of the policy: rather than ensuring orderly enforcement of immigration law, the practice appears to have driven noncitizens away from the legal system entirely, undermining the government’s own ability to process cases through established channels. This dynamic concerns legal experts across the political spectrum, since a functioning immigration court system depends on parties showing up to participate in their own proceedings.
The ruling also reinforces important limits on administrative agency power under the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law requiring agencies to provide reasoned explanations when they change established policy. Pitts’s finding that ICE’s reversal lacked adequate justification reflects a broader pattern of courts pushing back against abrupt federal policy changes that fail to grapple with the consequences of departing from prior practice, regardless of the underlying policy area.
The administration’s sharp public reaction, including DHS General Counsel James Percival‘s characterization of the ruling as “naked judicial activism,” and criticism from figures including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, underscores how contentious this issue has become within the broader debate over executive authority and judicial review of immigration enforcement practices.
Economic and Global Context
The ruling has immediate operational implications for ICE’s detention capacity strategy. The agency had cited a shortage of detention space as a key reason for waiving the 12-hour short-term holding limit, reflecting broader capacity constraints across the immigration detention system as enforcement activity has expanded significantly under the current administration. With that waiver now vacated, ICE faces renewed pressure to identify alternative detention arrangements or face additional legal exposure for holding individuals beyond the previously established limits.
The decision also lands amid a broader wave of immigration-related litigation working through the federal courts simultaneously, including a separate D.C. Circuit ruling the same week that restored an expanded version of the administration’s “expedited removal” authority, allowing officials to remove certain individuals without a full hearing. This split outcome, a setback on courthouse arrests paired with a win on expedited removal procedures, illustrates how immigration enforcement authority is being shaped through a complex and often contradictory patchwork of ongoing federal litigation rather than through a single, clear legislative framework.
Internationally, the courthouse arrest controversy has drawn attention from human rights observers concerned about due-process protections for noncitizens navigating the U.S. legal system, particularly as enforcement practices have shifted significantly since the start of the administration’s second term and have become a recurring subject of diplomatic discussion regarding the treatment of foreign nationals within the United States.
Implications
In the near term, the Trump administration is expected to appeal Pitts’s ruling, continuing a pattern of contesting adverse immigration enforcement decisions through the appellate courts. Given the nationwide scope of the injunction and its significant operational implications for ICE, an expedited appeal seems likely, though the timeline for any appellate resolution remains uncertain.
For immigration attorneys and their clients, the ruling provides important, if temporary, reassurance that appearing for scheduled immigration court hearings will not automatically expose noncitizens to arrest at the courthouse itself, potentially helping to restore confidence in a court system that advocates say had been significantly undermined by the prior enforcement approach.
For policymakers and the broader public, the case highlights the ongoing tension between the executive branch’s enforcement priorities and the judiciary’s role in ensuring that federal agencies follow proper administrative procedures when changing established policy. How this tension resolves, both in this specific case and across the broader landscape of immigration litigation, will significantly shape the practical contours of immigration enforcement heading into the 2026 midterms and beyond.
Sources
“Federal judge rules ICE can’t make arrests at immigration courthouses”
