A federal judge in San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting migrants at immigration courts across the U.S., striking down ICE and DOJ-EIOR policies as unlawful. The ruling also targets a detention
The last thing some migrants at the San Francisco immigration court expected was to walk out and find ICE waiting with handcuffs.
On a day that also brought a separate legal win for the Trump administration in Washington. D.C. a federal judge shut down the courthouse-arrest practice nationwide—issuing a sweeping injunction that blocks Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting migrants at immigration courts across the United States.
U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts. of the Northern District of California. issued a 71-page ruling that marked one of the most significant judicial setbacks to the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. The court said policies adopted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Executive Office for Immigration Review were unlawful. calling them “arbitrary and capricious” and finding they violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
Pitts ordered the nationwide injunction and also demanded full vacatur of the policies. The judge wrote that federal courts reviewing unlawful agency action must “set aside” those policies rather than limit relief to only the plaintiffs in the case.
Under the decision, ICE loses authority under its 2025 guidance to broadly conduct immigration-courthouse arrests. The ruling also invalidates a related 72-hour detention policy tied to the practice.
Still, Pitts did not create a blanket ban that entirely ends courthouse arrests. Instead, the court said any future enforcement policy must be supported by a reasoned legal explanation. The Department of Justice and ICE could still adopt new policies. but only if they comply with the standards outlined by Pitts.
The policy at the center of the case had one clear trigger: once no active immigration case remained pending. ICE agents could arrest individuals as they exited the courthouse. ICE began making those arrests at immigration courthouses in May 2025 after issuing internal guidance instructing government attorneys to facilitate arrests by seeking dismissal of certain pending immigration cases and coordinating with enforcement officers.
The administration argued the strategy would speed deportations by shifting eligible migrants into expedited removal proceedings. Under the practice, government attorneys sometimes moved to dismiss immigration cases—moves migrants often interpreted as favorable outcomes.
Immigration attorneys described why those dismissals mattered. They noted that dismissed cases can allow migrants to pursue other forms of relief, including asylum. They also pointed to another possibility: dismissals can reflect a determination that an individual is not a removal priority.
Pitts also targeted another part of the administration’s approach—one tied to how long migrants could be held near immigration courts.
The judge struck down a separate policy that allowed ICE to detain migrants for more than 12 hours in short-term holding facilities near immigration courts. In the ruling. Pitts said the detention waiver violated detainees’ Fifth Amendment rights by subjecting civil immigration detainees to “punitive conditions of confinement.”.
Pitts pointed to what happened to migrants held at an immigration facility in San Francisco. where he said some detainees remained held overnight or for multiple days. He wrote that ICE had “failed to consider alternative options to address its capacity issues. ” a failure that. in turn. led to the policy’s adoption. The judge also said ICE had failed to consider its “obligation under the Fifth Amendment not to subject civil immigration detainees to punitive conditions of confinement.”.
The ruling grew out of a class-action lawsuit centered on Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen, an asylum-seeker from Guatemala. The complaint said Sequen was arrested by ICE after leaving a routine hearing at the San Francisco immigration court, and that she was later detained at a nearby facility.
Before the nationwide ruling. Pitts had denied the government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit and granted temporary relief requiring Pablo Sequen’s immediate release. Pitts also barred the government from re-detaining her without notice and a hearing before an immigration judge showing a valid basis for detention.
The government appealed that preliminary injunction, and that appeal remained pending when Pitts issued his nationwide decision.
Pitts’ ruling also leaned on admissions the administration made in a separate case in New York. In March, a Department of Justice attorney acknowledged in court that the government relied on a flawed legal justification. The attorney told the New York court that ICE’s 2025 guidance “does not and has never applied” to immigration courts.
The attorney further said the administration made a “factual error” by asserting that the policy covered civil immigration enforcement actions in or near immigration courthouses. A related New York case had already blocked courthouse arrests at two locations in that state. but Pitts’ decision was the first to extend the blockade nationwide.
The developments came as the Trump administration also scored a different kind of win across the country.
On the same day. the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit revived the administration’s expanded use of expedited removal procedures—allowing officials to quickly deport undocumented immigrants who could not prove they had continuously lived in the United States for at least two years. The ruling came in a 2-1 decision.
In the panel’s opinion, Judge Justin R. Walker, joined by Judge Neomi Rao, said Congress gave the executive branch broad authority to apply expedited removal “to the maximum extent allowed” and that immigration officers are not required to explain how migrants might avoid the process.
Walker and Rao overturned an earlier order by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, who had blocked the policy after finding the administration lacked adequate safeguards to prevent wrongful deportations. Judge Robert L. Wilkins dissented. arguing that the Department of Homeland Security had already deported migrants who had lived in the United States longer than the two-year threshold.
Anand Balakrishnan. senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead counsel. criticized the decision. saying: “The Trump administration’s push for fast-track deportations will subject people to an unfair and error-prone system. This ruling undermines the fundamental principle that people receive due process when the government seeks to deport them.”.
Taken together. the two rulings underscore a legal tug-of-war over how quickly deportations can be carried out and how and where immigration enforcement can happen in the first place—whether at courthouses where hearings end. or through expedited removal meant to move cases faster toward deportation.
federal judge P. Casey Pitts ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement courthouse arrests immigration courts nationwide injunction Administrative Procedure Act Executive Office for Immigration Review Fifth Amendment Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen expedited removal U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Justin R. Walker Neomi Rao Jia Cobb Robert L. Wilkins ACLU Anand Balakrishnan