Federal judge bars ICE from arresting immigrants at courthouses nationwide

A federal judge in Manhattan has ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement may not arrest immigrants in or near immigration courthouses anywhere in the country, finding that the Trump administration's 2025 policy expanding such arrests was adopted without any reasoned explanation and violates federal administrative law.

The decision, issued late Wednesday by U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York and made public Thursday by the plaintiffs, is the second final ruling by a federal court this year to strike down the policy nationwide. It caps a 14-month lawsuit brought on behalf of two immigrant advocacy groups after ICE agents began detaining noncitizens immediately after they appeared for scheduled hearings, a practice that civil rights lawyers say ensnared teenagers, asylum seekers and longtime residents with no criminal record.

What the court ordered

In a 36-page opinion in African Communities Together and The Door v. Venturella, Case No. 25-cv-6366, Judge Castel granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs, holding that the policy adopted by ICE in 2025 was "arbitrary and capricious" under the Administrative Procedure Act because the agency never explained why it was abandoning narrower, Biden-era limits on courthouse arrests. The court vacated the January 2025 interim guidance and May 2025 final guidance to the extent they rescinded an April 2021 policy restricting civil immigration arrests in or near immigration courts, and restored that 2021 policy nationwide, effective immediately.

Under the restored rules, ICE agents may still make arrests away from courthouses and may make arrests at a courthouse only in narrow circumstances, such as an imminent threat to public safety. The ruling does not apply to criminal matters or to state courthouses, which are already covered by New York's own Protect Our Courts Act.

The order is the second time this year that a federal court has reached that result for the entire country. Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California vacated the same two guidance documents nationwide on June 23 in a separate case, Pablo Sequen v. Albarran, brought by a Guatemalan asylum seeker arrested leaving a San Francisco immigration hearing. Judge Castel's opinion notes that his ruling and Judge Pitts' can coexist, since both rest on the same conclusion that the agency acted without a reasoned basis for the policy change.

A case built on a government admission

The lawsuit, filed August 1, 2025, by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the national ACLU, Make the Road New York and the law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, initially sought only a partial stay. Judge Castel allowed one of the two plaintiff groups, The Door, to proceed on narrower grounds in September 2025, while the broader fight over ICE's courthouse arrest authority continued.

The case turned in March 2026, when Justice Department lawyers acknowledged in court filings that a 2025 memorandum they had relied on throughout the litigation did not, in fact, authorize arrests at immigration courthouses at all — an admission the plaintiffs' lawyers described at the time as a "shocking revelation." Judge Castel responded by granting an interim stay on May 18, 2026, barring ICE from civil arrests at three Manhattan immigration courts: 26 Federal Plaza, 290 Broadway and 201 Varick Street. Thursday's order affirms that reasoning and extends it to every immigration court in the country.

• Case: African Communities Together and The Door v. Venturella, No. 1:25-cv-06366 (S.D.N.Y.)
• Filed: August 1, 2025; final order entered September 30, 2026
• Effect: vacates nationwide the 2025 guidance that expanded ICE courthouse arrests; restores narrower April 2021 limits
• Parallel ruling: Pablo Sequen v. Albarran, N.D. Cal., June 23, 2026, reached the same result independently

Who the policy affected

Since the Trump administration rescinded the 2021 limits in 2025, arrests of noncitizens immediately after court appearances rose sharply, particularly in New York, which at times accounted for roughly half of all immigration-court arrests nationwide. Advocacy groups documented cases including a 16-year-old Bronx high school student arrested while attending a routine hearing and a 19-year-old Buffalo resident detained and placed in expedited removal proceedings after a scheduled court date. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued the arrests discouraged immigrants from showing up to mandatory hearings at all, creating a choice between risking detention by appearing or risking an in-absentia deportation order by staying away.

Reaction

Attorneys for the plaintiffs characterized the ruling as a decisive rebuke of the policy.

"For too long, we watched masked, often armed, ICE officers ambush noncitizens in courthouse hallways, throw immigrants to the ground, and tear sobbing children from their parents. But with today's order, the court made clear: ICE's cruel, unjustified policy of conducting mass immigration arrests in courthouses is unlawful and cannot stand," said Amy Belsher, director of immigrants' rights litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Oscar Sarabia Roman, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said the ruling restores a basic expectation of the legal process. "People should not be arrested for doing exactly what the legal system requires of them," he said. "They should be able to come to court, take part in their cases, and leave without fear."

Katie Rosenfeld, a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, said the decision "restores important safeguards and makes clear that ICE cannot abandon those protections without a reasoned explanation." Harold Solis, co-legal director at Make the Road New York, called the ruling "a monumental victory for immigrant families and the rule of law" and said the groups' focus now shifts to ensuring the government complies. The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment on the ruling.

What happens next

The government has not indicated whether it will appeal Judge Castel's order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In the parallel California case, the administration had not announced an appeal within the ruling's first days either, though officials signaled they were considering emergency relief from a higher court. Immigrant rights groups say their next task is monitoring compliance; in the earlier phase of the New York case, advocates accused ICE of continuing courthouse arrests even after a judge's order took effect, a dispute that contributed to the delay in reaching Thursday's final judgment.

The opinion also wades into a live, unsettled question in federal courts: whether judges may still vacate unlawful agency policies on a nationwide basis after the Supreme Court's 2025 decision in Trump v. CASA, which curtailed district courts' power to issue broad "nationwide injunctions." Judge Castel concluded that vacatur of an agency rule under the Administrative Procedure Act is a distinct remedy that survives that ruling, siding with recent decisions from his own courthouse and the D.C. Circuit. That legal question, separate from the merits of the courthouse-arrest policy itself, is likely to keep working its way through the appellate courts regardless of what the administration decides to do with this particular case.