US Judge Stops ICE From Arresting Immigrants in Court, for Now

ICE agents are barred from conducting civil arrests on immigration courthouse grounds in New York City, pending the outcome of a federal lawsuit over Homeland Security’s policy of arresting noncitizens at their scheduled hearings.

Manhattan Judge P. Kevin Castel issued his stay Monday, nearly two months after US Justice Department lawyers admitted they had relied for months on incorrect information to justify civil migrant arrests at US immigration courts, and said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were to blame.

Castel’s order modifies his September decision in which he refused to halt the government’s arrest practices but then stayed a related DHS directive telling immigration judges they have the power to dismiss a pending removal action orally without providing noncitizens an opportunity to make a written submission.

The government’s admission “warrants reexamination” of the September order, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York judge said.

The revision is needed to “correct a clear error and prevent a manifest injustice” and to allow the plaintiffs challenging the arrest policies to reargue that portion of their stay motion “that was predicated on the government’s now-withdrawn assertion that the 2025 ICE Courthouse Arrest Policies applied to immigration courts,” Castel said.

His order applies to the Manhattan immigration courts at 26 Federal Plaza, 201 Varick St., and 290 Broadway.

The suit brought by two New York-based nonprofits challenges an interim and final Trump administration guidance, both issued in 2025, broadening the circumstances in which civil immigration arrests could be made in or near courthouses, and rolling back Biden-era guidance restricting courthouse arrests. African Communities Together and The Door argue those 2025 guidances violate the Administrative Procedure Act and constitutional due process by denying immigrants an opportunity to seek asylum.

The Door has a “substantial likelihood” of showing that the arrest policy is arbitrary and capricious, Castel said, while upholding his previous order declaring that only The Door has standing to seek a stay.

ICE failed “to display a conscious awareness that it was rescinding an arrest policy applicable to immigration courts,” he said, referring back to the Biden administration guidance. The agency also didn’t “offer even a rudimentary reason why a policy of allowing arrests unfettered by any agency guidance whatsoever was better than the policy it was rescinding,” Castel said.

None of the policies issued under Biden or Trump gave ICE “carte blanche to proceed without regard to the restrictions in the applicable guidance,” the judge added.

The New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Make the Road New York, and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP represent the plaintiffs.

The case is African Communities Together v. Lyons, S.D.N.Y., No. 1:25-cv-06366, order 5/18/26.