A federal decide in San Francisco on Wednesday barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Justice Division counterpart from “sweeping” civil arrests at immigration courthouses throughout Northern California, teeing up an appellate problem to one of many Trump administration’s most controversial deportation techniques.
“This circumstance presents noncitizens in removing proceedings with a Hobson’s selection between two irreparable harms,” Decide P. Casey Pitts wrote in his Christmas Eve resolution.
“First, they could seem in immigration court docket and face seemingly arrest and detention,” the decide wrote. “Alternatively, noncitizens might select to not seem and as an alternative to forego their alternative to pursue their claims for asylum or different aid from removing.”
Wednesday’s resolution blocks ICE and the Division of Justice’s Government Workplace for Immigration Assessment from mendacity in look ahead to asylum seekers and different noncitizens at routine hearings all through the area — a transfer that will successfully restore pre-Trump prohibition on such arrests.
“Right here, ICE and EOIR’s prior insurance policies governing courthouse arrests and detention in holding services present a normal,” the decide mentioned.
Authorities have lengthy curbed arrests at “delicate places”— comparable to hospitals, homes of worship and colleges — placing them out of attain of most civil immigration enforcement.
The designation was first established a long time in the past beneath ICE’s predecessor company, Immigration and Naturalization Companies. ICE absorbed the prohibitions when the company was fashioned within the wake of the Sept. 11 assaults.
Courts had been added to the checklist beneath President Obama. The coverage prohibiting most courthouse arrests was suspended through the first Trump administration and reinstated by President Biden.
Inner ICE steerage from the Biden period discovered “[e]xecuting civil immigration enforcement actions in or close to a courthouse might chill people’ entry to courthouses and, in consequence, impair the truthful administration of justice.”
However, the company’s courthouse coverage was reversed once more earlier this yr, resulting in a surge in arrests, and a staggering drop in court docket appearances, court docket data present.
Most who don’t present up are ordered eliminated in absentia.
Month-to-month removing in absentia orders greater than doubled this yr, to 4,177 from fewer than 1,600 in 2024, justice division information present.
Greater than 50,000 asylum seekers have been ordered eliminated after failing to look in court docket hearings since January — greater than had been ordered eliminated in absentia within the earlier 5 years mixed.
“ICE can’t select to disregard the ‘prices’ of its new insurance policies—chilling the participation of noncitizens of their removing proceedings —and contemplate solely the insurance policies’ purported ‘advantages’ for immigration enforcement,” Pitts wrote in his keep order.
That ruling seemingly units the San Francisco case on a collision course with different lawsuits looking for to curb ICE’s incursions into areas beforehand thought-about off-limits. This go well with was introduced by a bunch of asylum seekers who braved the chance and had been detained once they confirmed as much as court docket.
One, a 24-year-old Guatemalan asylum seeker named Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio, was spared detention solely as a result of her breastfeeding 11-month-old was along with her in court docket, data present. Administration attorneys informed the court docket ICE would virtually definitely decide her up at her subsequent listening to.
Such arrests seem arbitrary and capricious, and are unlikely to outlive scrutiny by the courts, Decide Pitts dominated Wednesday.
“That widespread civil arrests at immigration courts might have a chilling impact on noncitizens’ attendance at removing proceedings (as frequent sense, the prior steerage, and the precise expertise in immigration court docket since Could 2025 clarify) and thereby undermine this central objective is thus ‘an vital side of the issue’ that ICE was required, however failed, to contemplate,” Pitts wrote.
A district decide in Manhattan dominated the other method on the same case this fall, organising a potential circuit break up and even a Supreme Courtroom problem to courthouse arrests in 2026.
For now, the Christmas Eve resolution solely applies to ICE’s San Francisco Space of Accountability, a area encompassing all of Northern and Central California, as far south as Bakersfield.
The geographic restrict is available in response to the Supreme Courtroom’s emergency resolution earlier this yr stripping district judges of the facility to dam federal insurance policies exterior narrowly-tailored circumstances.
The administration informed the court docket it intends to enchantment to the ninth Circuit, the place Trump-appointed judges have swung the bench far to the proper of its longtime liberal status.
