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 ways.
“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 choice.
“First, they could seem in immigration courtroom and face probably 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 choice blocks ICE and the Division of Justice’s Government Workplace for Immigration Evaluate from mendacity in look forward to asylum seekers and different noncitizens at routine hearings all through the area — a transfer that might successfully restore pre-Trump prohibition on such arrests.
“Right here, ICE and EOIR’s prior insurance policies governing courthouse arrests and detention in holding amenities present a normal,” the decide stated.
Authorities have lengthy curbed arrests at “delicate areas”— reminiscent of hospitals, homes of worship and colleges — placing them out of attain of most civil immigration enforcement.
The designation was first established many years in the past underneath 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 listing underneath President Obama. The coverage prohibiting most courthouse arrests was suspended through the first Trump administration and reinstated by President Biden.
Inside ICE steering from the Biden period discovered “[e]xecuting civil immigration enforcement actions in or close to a courthouse might chill people’ entry to courthouses and, consequently, impair the truthful administration of justice.”
Nonetheless, the company’s courthouse coverage was reversed once more earlier this 12 months, resulting in a surge in arrests, and a staggering drop in courtroom appearances, courtroom information present.
Most who don’t present up are ordered eliminated in absentia.
Month-to-month removing in absentia orders greater than doubled this 12 months, to 4,177 from fewer than 1,600 in 2024, justice division knowledge present.
Greater than 50,000 asylum seekers have been ordered eliminated after failing to seem in courtroom hearings since January — greater than had been ordered eliminated in absentia within the earlier 5 years mixed.
“ICE can not select to disregard the ‘prices’ of its new insurance policies—chilling the participation of noncitizens of their removing proceedings —and think about solely the insurance policies’ purported ‘advantages’ for immigration enforcement,” Pitts wrote in his keep order.
That ruling probably units the San Francisco case on a collision course with different lawsuits searching for to curb ICE’s incursions into areas beforehand thought of off-limits. This swimsuit was introduced by a gaggle of asylum seekers who braved the chance and had been detained once they confirmed as much as courtroom.
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 courtroom, information present. Administration attorneys informed the courtroom 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 steering, and the precise expertise in immigration courtroom since Might 2025 clarify) and thereby undermine this central goal is thus ‘an vital side of the issue’ that ICE was required, however failed, to think about,” Pitts wrote.
A district decide in Manhattan dominated the other manner on an identical case this fall, establishing a attainable circuit break up and even a Supreme Court docket problem to courthouse arrests in 2026.
For now, the Christmas Eve choice solely applies to ICE’s San Francisco Space of Duty, a area encompassing all of Northern and Central California, as far south as Bakersfield.
The geographic restrict is available in response to the Supreme Court docket’s emergency choice earlier this 12 months stripping district judges of the ability to dam federal insurance policies exterior narrowly-tailored circumstances.
The administration informed the courtroom it intends to attraction to the ninth Circuit, the place Trump-appointed judges have swung the bench far to the precise of its longtime liberal fame.
