Federal Judge Blocks ICE from Arresting Immigrants in Northern California Courts
A significant ruling was made by a federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday, barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its Justice Department counterpart from making “sweeping” civil arrests at immigration courthouses across Northern California. This decision sets the stage for an appellate challenge to one of the Trump administration’s most contentious deportation tactics.
According to Judge P. Casey Pitts, “This circumstance presents noncitizens in removal proceedings with a Hobson’s choice between two irreparable harms.” The judge explained that noncitizens may either appear in immigration court and face likely arrest and detention or choose not to appear and forego their opportunity to pursue their claims for asylum or other relief from removal.
Background and Context
The decision blocks ICE and the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review from lying in wait for asylum seekers and other noncitizens at routine hearings throughout the region. This move effectively restores the pre-Trump prohibition on such arrests. Authorities have long curbed arrests at “sensitive locations” such as hospitals, houses of worship, and schools, putting them out of reach of most civil immigration enforcement.
Courts were added to the list under President Obama, and the policy prohibiting most courthouse arrests was suspended during the first Trump administration and reinstated by President Biden. Internal ICE guidance from the Biden era found that “[e]xecuting civil immigration enforcement actions in or near a courthouse may chill individuals’ access to courthouses and, as a result, impair the fair administration of justice.”
Impact and Statistics
Despite this guidance, the agency’s courthouse policy was reversed again earlier this year, leading to a surge in arrests and a staggering drop in court appearances, according to court records. Most who do not show up are ordered removed in absentia. Monthly removal in absentia orders more than doubled this year, to 4,177 from fewer than 1,600 in 2024, according to Justice Department data.
More than 50,000 asylum seekers have been ordered removed after failing to appear in court hearings since January — more than were ordered removed in absentia in the previous five years combined. Judge Pitts wrote in his stay order, “ICE cannot choose to ignore the ‘costs’ of its new policies—chilling the participation of noncitizens in their removal proceedings —and consider only the policies’ purported ‘benefits’ for immigration enforcement.”
Future Implications and Challenges
The ruling likely sets the San Francisco case on a collision course with other lawsuits seeking to curb ICE’s incursions into spaces previously considered off-limits. This suit was brought by a group of asylum seekers who braved the risk and were detained when they showed up to court. One, a 24-year-old Guatemalan asylum seeker named Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio, was spared detention only because her breastfeeding 11-month-old was with her in court, records show.
Administration lawyers told the court ICE would almost certainly pick her up at her next hearing. Such arrests appear arbitrary and capricious, and are unlikely to survive scrutiny by the courts, Judge Pitts ruled. A district judge in Manhattan ruled the opposite way on a similar case this fall, setting up a possible circuit split and even a Supreme Court challenge to courthouse arrests in 2026.
For now, the Christmas Eve decision only applies to ICE’s San Francisco Area of Responsibility, a region encompassing all of Northern and Central California, as far south as Bakersfield. The administration told the court it intends to appeal to the 9th Circuit, where Trump-appointed judges have swung the bench far to the right of its longtime liberal reputation. Read more about this story Here
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