A federal judge in California has issued a nationwide block against the Trump administration’s policy of making arrests at immigration courts. This policy, which began last year, allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain migrants in courthouse hallways across the country, sometimes moments after they pleaded their cases.
Background
The move raised alarm among attorneys and advocates who said the practice was turning immigration courts from places of due process into zones of fear and punishing people who were following the rules. The Trump administration had rescinded long-held guidance that had limited immigration enforcement in or near courthouses, arguing that the previous guidance hampered the ability of immigration enforcement officers to apprehend dangerous individuals.
In a 71-page ruling, Judge P. Casey Pitts acknowledged the “chilling effect” of ICE’s policy, finding that it was “arbitrary and capricious.” The judge stated that simply extending the 2025 courthouse-arrest policies to cover immigration courthouses would not cure those policies’ fatal defects, as they entirely fail to address the chilling effect of courthouse arrests on noncitizens’ attendance at court proceedings.
Jordan Wells, senior staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, applauded the ruling, saying, “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.”
Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival weighed in on the ruling, 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.”
Original reporting: KRDO (Colorado Springs metro) — read the source article.
