Judge strikes ICE courthouse arrest policy

A recent ICE policy allowing agents to arrest people at immigration courthouses violates federal law, a San Jose federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs, a group of immigrants, in a class action over the practice, as well as the agency's waiver of its 12-hour limit for detainees held at short-term facilities. The judge found that ICE failed to provide a sound reason for the practice, as required by the 1946 law that governs the procedures of federal agencies.

"That instruction--codified in the Administrative Procedure Act--does not require an agency to make the choice that a reviewing court might deem preferable," Pitts wrote. "But it demands that an agency at least provide sound reasons for following its chosen course."

Because ICE failed to do so, he wrote, "the Court concludes that each of the challenged policies is arbitrary and capricious in contravention of the APA." The case is Pablo Sequen v. Albarran et al., 5:25-cv-06487 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 1, 2025).

According to Pitts, prior to 2025, ICE instructed agents to make courthouse arrests only if the detainee was someone the agency had a heightened interest in arresting immediately, such as someone agents believed posed a threat to public safety. That changed in 2025 when President Donald Trump revoked the previous policy, which had been in place since at least 2014, according to the ruling. A 2021 policy instructed agents not to conduct arrests at immigration courthouses unless strictly necessary, so as not to interfere with the legal process or discourage noncitizens from attending their court hearings.

An updated policy allows agents to make an arrest at a courthouse whenever they have reason to believe a person they seek to detain will be present. The policy says that most courthouse arrests would largely target people the agency has a heightened interest in detaining but specifies that it isn't limited to that group. It also allowed agents to stop any noncitizen they encountered at a courthouse.

The policy doesn't mention immigration courts specifically, and Pitts noted that the agency says its current position is that it doesn't apply to immigration courts, even if its stance has changed several times. But in that case, Pitts said, the agency doesn't have any guidance to determine when to conduct arrests at immigration courts. Either way, the judge wrote, there's been a clear increase in arrests made at immigration courthouses since the policy took effect.

Pitts found that the policy was arbitrary for three reasons: The agency itself isn't clear what its policy is, it removed the 2021 guidance on arrests at immigration courthouses without addressing the concerns it had mentioned, and the government's stated rationale for it isn't convincing.

Pitts pointed to the fact that the agency struggled to tell him whether the 2025 update applies to immigration courts as proof of the first point, while he said the agency failed to address the impact that removing the 2021 guidance on immigration court arrests would have on immigration proceedings.

"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 wrote.

The agency argued that the policy is sound because other law enforcement agencies are allowed to conduct arrests at courthouses, but Pitts said the analogy is faulty because ICE is arresting people at immigration courthouses for the same offenses they're in court for.

"That analogy does not make sense with respect to civil enforcement actions at immigration courts, where ICE is not arresting individuals who appear for criminal or civil violations 'unrelated' to the arrest but instead arresting noncitizens based on the very immigration offenses for which the noncitizens are appearing in immigration court," Pitts wrote, quoting an earlier ruling.

The judge also took issue with the agency's argument that the changes were made for the sake of public safety, when the previous policy allowed for the arrest of anyone deemed a safety risk.

Pitts also struck down a parallel policy change made by the Executive Office for Immigration Review to allow arrests at immigration courthouses, as well as the waiver of the 12-hour short-term detention limit, finding both to be arbitrary as well.

The plaintiffs are represented by Coblentz Patch Duffy Bass LLP, the ACLU of Northern California and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.