A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from making arrests of illegal immigrants at immigration courthouses, adding to restrictions that courts have placed on federal authorities making such arrests.
U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts issued a ruling Wednesday finding the 2025 Immigration and Customs Enforcement courthouse arrest policies, which revised federal policy to allow for broader immigration arrests at courthouse, are “arbitrary and capricious” and were not properly implemented under federal rulemaking procedures established in the Administrative Procedure Act.
“In sum, nothing in ICE’s courthouse-arrest policies or the case law identified by the government explains the lack of a logical connection between ICE’s rationales and its expansion of civil arrests at immigration courthouses,” Pitts wrote in his Dec. 24 ruling. “This, too, likely makes ICE’s courthouse-arrest policies arbitrary and capricious.”
Pitts also expressed concern over the “chilling effect” the policy would have on asylum-seekers and other migrants’ attendance at appointments at immigration court.
“ICE cannot choose to ignore the ‘costs’ of its new policies—chilling the participation of noncitizens in their removal proceedings—and consider only the policies’ purported ‘benefits’ for immigration enforcement,” Pitts wrote.
The ruling in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California only affects “ICE’s San Francisco area of responsibility,” but creates a split from a ruling on the matter in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York earlier this year. In September, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel ruled that the ICE courthouse arrest policies did follow proper federal rulemaking procedure and were not arbitrary or capricious.
Pitts acknowledged the September ruling in the New York federal court in his Wednesday ruling, disagreeing with it and saying that ICE’s “bare acknowledgement of the 2021 guidance’s existence and rescission does not constitute reasoned decisionmaking.”
The split between two federal courts could provide a reason for review at the Supreme Court, should these two cases and others make their way through federal appeals courts.
The Christmas Eve ruling by Pitts marks the latest instance of courthouse immigration arrests being barred in Democratic-controlled jurisdictions. New York state and Cook County, Illinois, instituted policies barring arrests at local courthouses, to the frustration of the Trump administration.
SUPREME COURT DENIES TRUMP BID TO DEPLOY NATIONAL GUARD TO CHICAGO
The administration sued over the New York law, claiming it violates the supremacy clause by unlawfully obstructing federal law enforcement operations. A federal judge tossed the lawsuit in November, finding the law was constitutional.
The Cook County policy has not been challenged by the administration in court, but officials in the Department of Homeland Security have publicly criticized policies that block courthouse arrests.
