ICE Courthouse Arrests Blocked Nationwide by California Judge

The Trump administration’s policies authorizing widespread civil immigration arrests at courthouses and allowing migrants to be held in short-term detention cells for up to three days violate the Administrative Procedure Act, a district court in San Francisco ruled Tuesday.

The ruling goes significantly further than a previous order from Judge P. Casey Pitts, issued in late 2025, which temporarily suspended the courthouse arrest policies only within US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s San Francisco area of responsibility, covering northern California, Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan. Pitts’ Tuesday decision vacates the policies entirely, on a nationwide basis.

“The policies discuss the benefits of courthouse arrests to the government’s enforcement of immigration laws but do not directly address the concerns raised in earlier guidance concerning chilling effects, safety risks, and impacts on hearing attendance,” Pitts said in an order for the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Pitts vacated three ICE courthouse-arrest policies after finding all three policies arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA. The district court granted summary judgment with respect to alleged APA violations in ICE’s interim and final policies governing courthouse arrests and waiver of a 12-hour limit on detaining migrants in holding facilities.

The suit was brought by Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen, a Guatemalan asylum-seeker whom ICE arrested as she was leaving a routine hearing at the San Francisco immigration court. ICE was previously restricted in its courthouse arrests until January 2025, when President Donald Trump reversed course.

But the arrest policy rescinded all prior limits on immigration courthouse arrests without providing any replacement guidance, leaving agents with zero internal limitations, Pitts said. The district court also found ICE failed to consider arresting fewer people as an alternative to its detention waiver and improperly left in place existing standards, including a prohibition on beds in holding rooms, that directly contradicted the new policy.

The government argued the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. CASA barred nationwide relief, but Pitts rejected that argument, finding the ruling addressed injunctions, not the APA’s separate remedy of vacatur.

California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero previously raised concerns with the rising pattern of courthouse arrests in January and asked the state to offer virtual appearances for those afraid to appear in court.

Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, ACLU of Northern California, and Carecen SF represent the plaintiffs.

The case is Sequen v. Albarran, N.D. Cal., No. 5:25-cv-06487, order 6/23/26.