Freeze Put on Deportation Arrests in California Federal Court

The U.S. Border Patrol is barred, for now, from making civil immigration arrests of people appearing in or traveling to and from federal court in the Southern District of California, after a federal judge in the district found the practice likely violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the common-law rule against such arrests.

The Immigration and Nationality Act incorporates a centuries-old common-law privilege against civil arrest at the courthouse, which “goes back to at least the fifteenth century and persisted for hundreds of years thereafter in English and American common law,” the court said Monday.

A temporary restraining order is ...