Judge blocks Trump immigration court arrest and detention policies

A federal judge in San Francisco blocked Trump-era immigration arrests at courthouses and a policy that let some detainees be held without a time cap, saying both moves were arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. In a 71-page opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts entered a nationwide injunction against the policies after finding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Executive Office for Immigration Review failed to give reasoned explanations for the changes.

The ruling centered on access to court. Pitts said the courthouse-arrest practice began during the Trump administration and allowed federal agents to take into custody people who were already appearing before immigration judges. He rejected the government’s explanation as resting on a false premise that ICE had properly rescinded 2021 guidance limiting courthouse arrests. In his view, ICE was not arresting people for unrelated offenses, but detaining noncitizens for the same immigration violations they were trying to resolve in court, a practice that has deterred victims, witnesses and defendants from showing up.

The judge’s order builds on earlier action in the same court. In December 2025, Pitts granted a stay in Pablo Sequen v. Albarran that blocked courthouse-arrest policies within ICE’s San Francisco Field Office jurisdiction and found the policy likely violated the APA. The December order reversed a decades-long bipartisan practice of treating courthouses, especially immigration courthouses, as sensitive locations and found a severe chilling effect on access to justice.

Pitts also struck down the detention-waiver policy, saying it violated the Fifth Amendment because detainees were held in punitive conditions. Pitts said some people were held for more than 12 hours, sometimes overnight or for multiple days, at a San Francisco-area immigration center. The same court had already ordered ICE on November 25, 2025, to fix unconstitutional conditions in the short-term holding cells at its San Francisco Field Office at 630 Sansome Street.

Since May 2025, KQED counted more than 100 arrests in immigration courthouses and at ICE check-ins. The Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel, James Percival, attacked the ruling on X as “naked judicial activism.”